It has been revealed that so far this year, nearly 30,000 migrants have arrived in the UK on small boats that have crossed the English Channel from France.
The number of migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats in 2024 has already surpassed 2023’s total for the year, figures show.
On Friday, 424 migrants crossed the channel to bring 2024’s total up to 29,578 – compared to 29,437 arrivals in 2023.
The total in 2023 was down 36% on the record 45,774 arrivals in 2022.
The Home Office said it would “stop at nothing” to dismantle people-smuggling gangs and bring them to justice.
A Home Office spokesperson added: “Our new border security command will strengthen our global partnerships and enhance our efforts to investigate, arrest, and prosecute these evil criminals.”
“Small boat Channel crossings pass total for 2023” – BBC News, 26th October 2024
So, 29.5k so far this year, 29.5k last year, and 45.5k in 2022.
That’s 104,789 new arrivals to our country in just three years. It looks like the Home Office aren’t doing very well.
The big question I’d like to see investigated and answered is what on earth happens to all these people?
Yes, it’s already very well known that these migrants get rounded up and sent off to detention centres or put up in hotels, but beyond that, what happens to them? Because it is very rare that any ever actually get deported, even if their claim for asylum is rejected.
And who are these people? There’s a narrative that continues to be spun that these arrivals are all ‘refugees fleeing war-torn countries’.
According to the charity Refugee Council, 2024 has already become the deadliest for migrant crossings in the English Channel.
Charity CEO Enver Solomon said: “We must not forget that those making the perilous journeys across the Channel are desperate men, women and children fleeing persecution and war, in countries such as Afghanistan and Sudan, simply seeking safety and a future free from fear.”
He added that it was “vital” the government did “everything possible” to ensure refugees no longer had to put their lives in danger.
While I don’t doubt that there is a percentage of these people who are Afghani or Sudanese, one cannot overlook the fact that a majority of these boat arrivals are actually from other African countries, and Albania. And it would also seem that the vast majority are men, there seems to be very few women and children in comparison.
I still maintain to this day my belief that ‘genuine refugees’ would (should?) be seeking asylum in the first ‘safe’ country that they arrive in. So it still beggars belief that so many are travelling through numerous ‘safe’ countries in Europe and the EU in order to reach the UK. And last time I checked, France was part of the EU and very much a ‘safe’ country.
To save me repeating myself too much, I refer you to two previous articles I published on this website.
These people arriving in small boats, it is my belief that most of them are being smuggled into the country illegally, in order to fulfil some requirement for ‘cheap slave labour’. In the first article above, I explained how it is relatively easy for someone to create a ‘legal’ delivery app rider account, and then loan/rent it out for anyone else to use.
In the second article, I looked at comments made by the ex-immigration minster of the previous Conservative government, and in particular what he said about ‘importing crime’. I reiterate a quote from that article as it leads nicely into the next part of this article.
Mr Jenrick told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that in his role as immigration minister he encountered “significant and growing evidence that we [the UK] were importing crime.”
He said: “In the field of drug production, the National Crime Agency have been very clear that a significant proportion of the UK’s drug trade is being fuelled by Albanian drug production.”
“Ex-immigration minister Robert Jenrick proposes migrant crime data is published” – BBC News, 30th March 2024
So these ‘small boat arrivals’ are being rounded up and sent to hotels around the UK, where they are given accommodation, food & drink, as well as money to spend. Some might choose to just laze around, but it seems that others are quite keen to leave this life of luxury, and just ‘disappear’ without a trace, and officials have no idea what happens to them.
In recent years, there has become a common theme in the UK, where “Albanians”, “drugs” and “crime” are all interconnected. So I found the following story yesterday quite unsurprising.
Man who came to UK in small boat found hiding in loft at £150k cannabis farm
A man was found hiding under loft insulation inside a four-bedroom house which had been converted into a cannabis factory. Mustafa Likalla had travelled to the UK on a small boat before he was taken into the care of immigration officers.
The 24-year-old Albanian had been put into a hotel but he was then taken to Millbridge Close in Meir by other parties. He claimed he was locked in there with food and water and was left to look after around 154 cannabis plants, which are thought to have a street value of around £1,000 each.
Police later raided the address on August 20 this year, and the plants were seized, with 79 being mature enough to yield buds. Likalla was arrested after officers found him hiding in the loft.
Likalla had received threats to his family over a large debt that was owed, Mr Barry White told Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court. He added that Likalla didn’t play a significant role, nor did he have any awareness or any understanding of the scale of the operation. The court heard he was ‘pressured, coerced, intimidated’. At the time of the offending, his mother, back in Albania, was very ill.
“Man who came to UK in small boat found hiding in loft at £150k cannabis farm” – Birmingham Mail, 25th October 2024
You have to have a little sympathy for these people, because after all they often have no idea what they’re getting themselves involved with, and while they might be promised huge sums of money as a ‘reward’, they’re often given a pittance. In this chap’s case, no doubt his ‘work’ would have helped ‘alleviate’ any debt that he owed to these Albanian gangsters back in his home country.
The recorder’s closing comments were quite telling really:
“I am told you travelled to this country on a small boat from France, resulting in you having run away from your home in Albania following debt problems you say originated in your mother’s healthcare treatment. I am slightly cynical in relation to that statement, but provided there is no evidence to conflict with it.”
He added: “You were placed in an immigration hotel when you arrived in the country and I’m told you almost immediately left that hotel and travelled to Stoke where the exploitation, you say, began.”
This is no doubt a proverbial “tip of the iceberg” with regards to the migrants who come to this country on small-boats. You will no doubt find a huge number of them do the same – get put up in immigration hotels and centres and then leave ‘of their own accord’, to go and do whatever it was they were coerced into coming to this country to do.
The small-boat crossings are – in my opinion – an organised criminal racket, and by their failure to take action and deal with this, both the UK and French governments are complicit, and by escorting and helping these boats, they are also facilitating this human-trafficking operation.
Which makes you wonder who is really behind all this?
On a final note, with regards to the above Birmingham Mail article I quoted, it is becoming increasingly difficult to comment on articles and say what you really think, due to draconian moderation policies that filter out certain words and phrases.
I never took the time to work out what the “bad words” were, but it seems to me that ‘comment sections’ are restricting use of vocabulary and certain words, in order to restrict what people can say. (Of course they say it is because of ‘community guidelines’ or because they don’t want people to be offended etc)
All very much Orwellian-style “newspeak” if you ask me.
In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published 1949), by George Orwell, Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. To meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania, the Party created Newspeak, which is a controlled language of simplified grammar and limited vocabulary designed to limit a person’s ability for critical thinking. The Newspeak language thus limits the person’s ability to articulate and communicate abstract concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will,[1][2] which are thoughtcrimes, acts of personal independence that contradict the ideological orthodoxy of Ingsoc collectivism.[3][4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
It’s another way of restricting or limiting ‘freedom of speech’ and freedom of expression, by reducing the amount of vocabulary that people can use.
“Oooh you can’t say THAT!!” – Sadly, that’s increasingly becoming the case!
