Tiktok ads entice Indians to pay £10,000 for small boat crossings
YOUNG Indians are paying £10,000 to secure illegal entry to the UK via small boats across the Channel, an investigation has found.
Families are selling land and property to raise the funds needed to pay the agents for visa entry into Europe, usually through Serbia or Greece, before travelling on to northern France for the £3,500 small boat crossings.
They are coming to the UK to work in low-paid, black market jobs in hospitality, the gig economy as food delivery drivers or agriculture.
The trade is being fuelled by adverts on Tiktok that promote Serbia as a route into the UK, even though the country earlier this year closed a loophole that allowed Indians 30-day visafree travel within the EU.
The adverts show dozens of young Indian men making the onward journey organised by trafficking gangs from
Serbia to Austria under a banner welcoming them to the “dark life”.
Home Office figures last month showed Indians were the second biggest cohort, after Afghans, of Channel migrants, with 675 arriving on small boats in the first three months of this year. This amounted to almost a fifth of the total 3,793 crossings in January to
March, and the same number of Indians as the whole of last year.
The arrivals are detained upon landing in the UK, but are usually then sent to migrant hotels, from where they leave to enter the black economy.
Satnam Singh Chahal, executive director of NAPA, a non-profit organisation on illegal migration, said that the rising unemployment rate in India and the promise of a better life in the UK were the main reasons behind young men leaving India for abroad.
Legal skilled worker routes require any visa applicant for the UK to have a sponsored job in advance, with a salary of at least £26,200 a year.
“Families feel compelled to sell their land or other properties to send their children abroad because they don’t find jobs in India,” he said. “They take land routes through Serbia and Greece to enter Europe and finally into the UK through the English Channel.
“There are some of them who will be smuggling drugs like heroin and brown sugar [an opioid] from India to the UK.”
He added: “These illegal Indian immigrants will be found mostly in gurdwaras [a Sikh place of worship], restaurants, and gas stations.
“Entry into gurdwaras is free for all. They will get free food and shelter, no questions asked whether they are legal or illegal immigrants.”
‘Families feel compelled to sell their land to send their children abroad because they don’t find jobs in India’