The first migrants of the year 2022 arrived on the coasts of Kent in the United Kingdom, braving difficult weather conditions. Sixty-six people aboard two boats, including a family with a baby, were recovered Tuesday, January 4 by the coast guard, according to the British Home Office. Thirty-eight other people aboard a single boat were intercepted by the French before reaching the English coast.
→ ANALYSIS. 2021, a record year for maritime migration
This announcement is a real snub to the British government, which can only recognize its failure to put an end to illegal immigration to its country. The year 2021 ends with a record number of migrant arrivals – 28,395, compared to just 8,417 in 2020.
British government wants to make crossings “impractical”
Some have paid with their lives, like 27 passengers in a precarious boat that sank at the end of November 2021 – the deadliest in this busy seaway -, causing a great wave of emotion in the public.
Tim Naor Hilton, head of Refugee Action, an independent British charity founded in 1981, believes that the failure of the British government to ensure safe roads for refugees will only increase the number of victims. “Migrants will continue to cross in makeshift boats and smugglers will continue to profit from this business, unless ministers open more avenues of access for those seeking asylum in our country”, did he declare.
But the British government continues to claim that it wants to make “Impracticable” these crossings, for which smugglers increasingly resort to larger capacity boats, which can hold several dozen people.
A bill deemed cruel by associations
Meanwhile, a controversial Nationality and Borders Bill – considered anti-migrant, according to human rights organizations – is under consideration in the House of Commons. If adopted, it would make illegal entry into UK soil a criminal offense. The smugglers would be liable to life imprisonment.
→ READ. Afghanistan: London tries to deter would-be emigrants
Human rights associations are outraged once morest a text they consider cruel. But for the government it will create “A fair but firm immigration system will protect the most vulnerable and crack down on illegal immigration and the criminal gangs that facilitate it”.
Illegal immigration as well as asylum policy, favorite themes of Brexiters during the campaign for the referendum to leave the European Union in June 2016, is still one of the concerns of the voters of Boris Johnson who elected him. at the head of the Conservative Party in the general elections in 2019. This highly inflammable subject places the Prime Minister under strong pressure from his party, which is also down in the polls, as does his Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel in charge of the file immigration.
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