UK Govt Warned 65,000 Illegal Boat Migrants May Land This Year

DUNGENESS, ENGLAND - JANUARY 18: Migrants await immigration officers after arriving at Dun
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The British government has reportedly been warned that up to 65,000 illegal boat migrants will land on English soil this year, nearly double the record numbers seen last year.

At a planning meeting following the military taking over as a coordinating entity on the migrant crisis in the English Channel, Home Secretary was informed that a “worst-case scenario” would see 65,000 illegals travel to Britain in small boats from French beaches compared to over 28,000 last year.

A source within Whitehall told The Telegraph that the figure is not an “estimate or forecast” but rather a “planning assumption”.

“It’s about how things work out on the other side of the Channel. If nothing happened and there was mass migration, what are the sort of numbers that we could look at?”

This week, the Home Secretary announced that the Royal Navy would be taking control of the migrant situation. However, reports have indicated that they will not be conducting turn back missions of migrant boats, with Brexit leader Nigel Farage declaring that the navy will become just another “taxi service” for illegal aliens.

According to a report from The Times, the navy will be tasked with bringing migrants ashore for processing in new reception centres in order to ensure that “no one gets to the UK on their own terms”.

Even if the Royal Navy were to attempt to conduct a ‘turn back the boats’ approach, the situation would remain complicated by the fact that since leaving the European Union, the UK has yet to come to an agreement with France on migrant returns, meaning the French Navy would likely refuse to take the boats back to their beaches.

Commenting on the 65,000 potential crossings, chairman of Migration Watch UK, Alp Mehmet told Breitbart London: “The 2021 number was treble that of the year before. If there is another tripling this year of the 2021 figure then the number who cross illegally by the end of the year could well exceed 65,000.

“As things stand, there is little to inspire confidence in the government’s ability to stem the flow of illegal crossings.

“The people smugglers, who are making millions of pounds from their burgeoning illicit trade, know they are onto a winner and will milk it till the cows come home.”

Already this month, over 750 illegals have been brought ashore at the Port of Dover, with another 197 landing on English soil on Saturday.

Writing for The Telegraph, Tony Smith, a former Border Force director-general, said projections of more than 60,000 people crossing were “not unreasonable”.

“As air and ferry traffic return to pre-Covid levels, we can expect more attempts to enter illegally and claim asylum on other routes,” he wrote. “Potentially, annual asylum intake [combined] could challenge the previous record of over 100,000 per year in 2002.”

Others, including Brexit’s Nigel Farage, who nearly perfectly predicted last year’s migrant crossings, has warned that at least 60,000 will arrive but that the figure could jump as high as 80,000 if the government fails to act.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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