I worked for Border Force in Calais for 15 years – here’s what the government needs to do to solve the immigration crisis
OUR asylum system is broken – the worst I have ever known.
Border Force simply runs a collection service in the English Channel, bringing migrants safely ashore at the overcrowded Manston Migrant Processing Center in Kent.
As we have now learned, Manston is already packed, now holding some 4,000 people when it is supposed to hold up to 1,600.
Fighting breaks out and disease spreads among those housed there. The whole system is an absolute disaster. But it need not be so.
As a former Border Force immigration chief, working for 15 years in Calais, I have seen how Britain and France have managed to make illegal crossing of the Channel by truck almost impossible.
The fence you see at the Port of Calais – which has done so much to deter migrants from getting on the trucks – is actually a British fence.
Great Britain “a magnet”
It was used as a security measure at one of the major G7 type conferences in the UK and when that ended the Home Office passed the fence on to Calais.
The success of blocking the truck entry method has seen the small boats provided by smugglers turn into a lucrative industry.
Last year, 28,526 people crossed the Channel. This year the figure is already around 40,000 and it is expected to reach around 50,000.
To put that figure into perspective, 65,572 migrants crossed from North Africa to Europe using the so-called Central Mediterranean route between January and September this year.
There are, of course, other routes taken by asylum seekers to Europe, but figures suspect Britain remains a major magnet for illicit migration.
Some 12,000 of those crossing the Channel this year are from Albania – a country that wants to join the EU – compared to just 50 in 2020. All but 2,000 were young men.
Dan O’Mahoney of Border Force said recently that this figure represents up to 2% of Albania’s male population aged 18-40.
O’Mahoney admitted that many were “deliberately playing with the system.”
Albanians were told they could stay in the UK using the Modern Slavery Act, issued by then Home Secretary Theresa May in 2015.
She introduced the legislation for all the right reasons, but it has now become a loophole for Albanians who claim they were trafficked into the UK, ie forced or tricked into taking a small boat.
It’s a ridiculous situation. No one pays up to £5,000 for a place on a dinghy if they are trafficked against their will.
The Home Affairs Committee learned last week that only 4% of asylum applications from migrants who crossed the Channel last year had been examined.
This crazy backlog means it costs more than £6m a day for installers in hotels.
We cannot afford to continue like this during a cost of living crisis. So how do we solve the situation with the small British boats?
In 2020, Rear Admiral Chris Parry proposed using cruise ships as floating bays for migrants.
It was deemed ridiculous and poop, but I believe the former director general of the Ministry of Defense was onto something.
So you hire a non-UK flagged liner and position it in part of the English Channel, which is international waters. Instead of disembarking the migrants at Dover, they would have taken them on the liner, which would have decent facilities. And—having never set foot in Britain—they couldn’t claim asylum. You then deal with them and find out who they are.
I believe that many Albanians would not be eligible for asylum. They could then be sent back to Albania on the cruise ship.
It sounds expensive, but look at the exorbitant bills we are already shelling out for hotel accommodations. If you deleted hundreds of people at once, that would be commendable.
Boarding asylum seekers on planes bound for Rwanda has sold out in legal challenges. But I believe that if the thefts take place, it will strongly deter migrants from coming here.
People won’t shell out thousands of dollars for a place on a canoe if there’s a chance they’ll end up in Central Africa instead.
The cramped conditions at the Manston center near Ramsgate, where eight people are believed to have contracted diphtheria, have also been proposed to have a deterrent effect.
Refusal français
But many of those crossing the Channel have already experienced similar living conditions in camps around Calais, so I don’t think that deters migrants from coming here.
There is one surefire way to stop the boats – and that is to persuade the French to stop or turn back the dinghies in the English Channel.
The Gendarmerie Maritime has a huge base in Boulogne-Sur-Mer. If they put all their boats in the water and intercepted the dinghies, it would immediately stop the trade.
But they refuse. They will not intercept dinghies unless they are sinking.
This is the French interpretation of the law of the sea, a body of international law governing the rights and duties of States in the maritime environment.
French officials are just watching the boats until they enter UK waters, so that’s our problem.
And unless we take drastic measures – like using cruise ships as storage bays – then that will be our problem for the foreseeable future.