Monday saw a record number of migrants across the channel
Sky News reports that Mondays saw 430 migrants cross the channel, which sets the record for the highest crossover in recent history. Monday’s figure includes around fifty men, women, and children who were seen walking ashore after landing near Dungeness in Kent.
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The immigrants are thought to have left northern France or Belgium by boat Monday morning. It is said that the Royal National Lifeboat Institution watched the boat arrive, where some passangers then sat on the beach, while others celebrated their arrival.
Monday’s figure passes the previous daily high of 416 set in September 2020, despite Priti Patel saying she would make immigration routes ‘unviable’.
This comes as the Government are discussing plans to revitalise immigration laws. Home Secretary Priti Patel said the following about her new legislation:
“The Nationality and Borders Bill contains vital measures to fix the UK’s broken asylum system.
“Our new plan for immigration is fair but firm.
“We will welcome people through safe and legal routes whilst preventing abuse of the system, cracking down on illegal entry and the criminality associated with it.”
She proposed that smugglers receive life in prison, while the migrants themselves could face up to four years behind bars. Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, Steve Valdez-Symonds, said:
“While the Home Office continues to make no safe and legal routes to the UK available for those claiming asylum, some people will continue to be forced to risk their lives to do so – including in small boats across the Channel.
“Instead of peddling deliberately misleading myths and untruths about asylum and migration, the Home Office should be establishing safe routes for those few people escaping persecution who wish to seek asylum here.”
In other news, former Prime Minister Theresa May criticised the motion to send illegal immigrants to Australia-style offshore processing centres.
