Labour must prove it has a migrant policy

Group Of Up To Fifty Migrants Are Seen Making The Journey By A Large Dinghy Across The English Channel
Group Of Up To Fifty Migrants Are Seen Making The Journey By A Large Dinghy Across The English Channel

How is it possible for an island nation to have the highest number of illegal immigrants in Europe? Research by Oxford University experts indicate we may have up to 745,000, equivalent to a city the size of Leeds.

For a long time the Channel was a barrier to entry. The tunnel that opened in 1994 became an easier way of entering the UK illegally by train or in the back of a lorry. Still the most common form of illegal entry, however, was to arrive as a tourist and then overstay, either disappearing into the black economy or claiming asylum.

With tighter controls elsewhere, the sea is now the main thoroughfare, despite the dangers. Thousands of migrants are making the crossing, aided by the British state, as they know they will be picked up once outside French territorial waters and taken to England. Nearly 1,000 made the journey on Saturday, a record.

The fact that few people are ever removed, whatever they do, has become one of the most magnetic “pull factors”. The story we tell today of an Albanian criminal who was deported to his homeland after serving a jail sentence and then returned clandestinely to the UK in breach of the deportation order illustrates this precisely.

He re-entered Britain to be with his Lithuanian girlfriend who had been granted leave to remain in the UK under the Government’s EU settlement scheme. They subsequently had a baby and married, enabling him to lodge his successful claim that an attempt by the Home Office to deport him again would breach his Article 8 rights to a family life under the European Convention on Human Rights.

For a country to be unable to remove a foreign criminal – one, moreover, who did not benefit from free movement since Albania is outside the EU – is a an affront to national sovereignty.

It is questionable how much difference it would make to the general problem, however. Mass deportations are not something any government would consider and, in any case, there has been a substantial increase in the numbers being granted asylum or leave to remain.

Yvette Cooper has set a target of removing some 14,500 illegal migrants and foreign criminals from the UK in six months, but this is a drop in the ocean, assuming it is even achieved. The Government abandoned the Rwanda policy which was supposed to act as a deterrent. Is anything being put in its place?