If you set out with thirty boats at once, the Coast Guard can’t stop them all. Smugglers transporting migrants from Calais or Dunkirk in France to the United Kingdom have discovered a new method. In recent weeks, coast guards on both sides have reported that boats carrying large numbers of migrants have been discovered and stopped on certain nights.

In the last two days of March, the French and British Coast Guard registered 19 inflatable boats trying to cross the dangerous Pas de Calais. It was a treacherous journey. In those days when the weather was pleasant, there was a strong current in the strait between France and British territorial waters.

Often the travelers are young

British patrol boats pulled 371 people out of the water earlier this week, while 73 were picked up from the French side. This is a fixed point. Police in Dover report a few ‘incidents’ every day, as it is called, whereby one ‘incident’ is the equivalent of a canoe, from which, in most cases, the people on board have been rescued and the boat is towed. has been confiscated. The passengers are often young men, but they are regularly accompanied by children.

If things continue in recent months, a record number of migrants will reach the UK’s south coast by 2021. There are 602 in this quarter, three times more than in the first quarter of last year, when 187 people visited. Throughout 2020, more than 8,000 people arrived in the UK via the Channel Route, four times more than in 2019. It looks like the number is set to rise even more this year. Last Tuesday, 183 people arrived in one day.

The British government has done everything possible to reduce the influx. patrolling by boat, using drones and planes, and consulting with France.

Control does not reduce the number of migrants

The large number of migrants arriving in Dover is an embarrassment to the British government: a major reason for leaving the European Union was that the country would regain control of its borders. Now this control does not lead to fewer migrants, at least not by sea.

British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced last week that she would like to differentiate between legally arriving migrants and those suddenly arriving at the beach in a new asylum law. The latter should be given fewer opportunities to apply for asylum and are more likely to be deported back to the last safe country where they applied. Lawyers wonder how this should work, because after Brexit, the United Kingdom will have fewer options to send migrants back to their country of arrival.

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With favorable weather conditions, migrants are reaching the UK by boat. Home Secretary Priti Patel felt very sad.