More than 17,000 migrants have now crossed English Channel

The number of people who have crossed the English Channel in 2021 so far is double compared to 2020, with three months still left in the year.  

At least 17,085 people had made the dangerous journey so far this year in small boats, according to available official Home Office data.

Last year’s total was more than 8,400, meaning this year’s figure to date double the 2020 total.

This comes despite repeated vows from the Government to make such crossings ‘unviable’ and tens of millions of pounds promised to France to help tackle the issue.

Amnesty International UK criticised ‘inhumane policies like pushbacks and the criminalisation of refugees’ and called for urgent action. 

Dan O’Mahoney, clandestine channel threat commander, said: ‘The Government is determined to tackle the unacceptable rise in dangerous Channel crossings using every tool at our disposal, at every stage in the journey.

‘But this is a complicated issue requiring changes to our laws. The Government’s New Plan for Immigration provides the only long term solution to fix the broken system and deliver the change required to tackle criminal gangs and prevent further loss of life.’

Since the start of last year, more than 25,000 people have risked death crossing to the UK aboard dinghies, kayaks and other small boats.

There were even more crossings over the weekend.

On Sunday, a Border Force coastal patrol vessel was seen arriving in Dover full of people as well as a lifeboat with around 40 or 50 people, including families and young children, on board.

From 8am to 12.30pm, it was estimated around 150 people had arrived.

Those who were arriving were seen all wearing blue surgical face masks and orange lifejackets.

Later on, a group of people, thought to be migrants, were escorted by police and Border Force officers away from the beach at St Margaret’s Bay.

They had landed on the beach in a small boat following a number of arrivals from the Channel. 

Despite the sharp rise in small boats arrivals on the south coast, asylum applications in the UK fell in 2020 to 29,456.

This was significantly lower than the 93,475 asylum applications made in France and the 121,955 made in Germany.

The continued crossings come despite the perilous nature of the Dover Strait, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

Since the beginning of 2019, more than a dozen people have died or gone missing while trying to cross to the UK in small boats.

In October last year, a Kurdish-Iranian family, including small children, died when their migrant boat sank off the French coast.

Last month, a 27-year-old man from Eritrea died after he and four others jumped overboard as their boat started to sink.

Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, said: ‘It’s been appalling to see how ministers and others have sought to manipulate these highly visible crossings to give the impression of an emergency situation on the Kent coast.

‘The total number of asylum claims being made in the UK is no greater than it was two years ago, but Channel crossings have become part of the Government’s cynical politicisation of asylum.

‘Every time the Home Secretary talks about ‘people smugglers’, she ignores her own failure to open up safe and legal asylum routes.

‘The people making these dangerous sea crossings are doing so out of desperation, largely because there are no safe and legal routes open to them.

‘We urgently need a new approach to asylum in this country – with inhumane policies like pushbacks and the criminalisation of refugees dropped, and far more done in terms of working with France and others to play a constructive role in assisting people who’ve fled war and persecution.’