The number of migrants arriving illegally in the United Kingdom by crossing the Channel on small boats has started to rise again in 2024, a particularly deadly year with around twenty shipwrecks and dozens of deaths.
This increase increases the pressure on Keir Starmer's Labor government, while the reduction in immigration, both legal and illegal, was one of the major issues of the electoral campaign that brought him to power in July, which also seen the breakthrough of Nigel Farage's anti-immigration Reform UK party.
Over the whole of 2024, 36,816 migrants managed to cross the Channel from France, or 25% more than in 2023, according to figures from the British Interior Ministry published on Wednesday.
However, this is less than the record reached in 2022 with 45,774 arrivals. Migrants pay thousands of euros to smugglers to be able to pile onto increasingly loaded inflatable boats.
With at least 76 deaths in around twenty shipwrecks, the year 2024 was the deadliest for migrants who are taking ever more risks to evade the surveillance of the authorities on this ultra-secure border.
According to the Pas-de-Calais prefecture, at least 5,800 people were rescued at sea in 2024 and more than 870 crossing attempts were prevented by the police.
– More Vietnamese –
Difficult to explain the “specific” reasons for this resurgence, explains Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory, a research center at the University of Oxford, to AFP. But she particularly highlights “the increase observed during the first half of the year”, as well as in “October, November and December, a period when the figures usually decrease because the weather is no longer as favorable”.
In the month of December alone, more than 3,200 migrants made the crossing, with for example 322 people arriving on December 28 or 451 on Christmas Day, and more than 400 again the next day.
In total, since 2018 and the appearance of the phenomenon of these crossings in the wake of the strengthening of controls on trucks using the Channel Tunnel, more than 150,000 migrants have arrived in the United Kingdom through this means.
In 2022, a massive arrival of people from Albania had inflated the figures. At the start of 2024, arrivals of Vietnamese were particularly significant.
Full data on the nationality of migrants arriving in the UK will be published later, but between September 2023 and September 2024 their main countries of origin were Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Vietnam and Eritrea.
– “Terrorist” smugglers –
Since coming to power, Keir Starmer has returned to the controversial plan of previous conservative governments to deport migrants to Rwanda, and has promised to strengthen the fight against smuggling networks, which he intends to treat “like terrorists” .
The government has set up a new command center dedicated to “border security” and has strengthened its cooperation with its European partners, including Europol, to track down these groups with often transnational activities.
In particular, he signed joint action plans with Iraq and Germany in December, after cooperation agreements with other countries signed under the conservatives, including that with France last March. The latter provides for a contribution from London of more than 500 million euros over three years to strengthen surveillance on French beaches and fight against smuggler gangs.
The Starmer government also highlights the increase in returns of illegal migrants to their country of origin, with 29,000 people returned between January and early December, around 25% more than in 2023 and a level not seen since 2017, according to the Migration Observatory.
The British are “really concerned” about this subject and “want a solution”, but “it is too early to say whether this approach has an impact” on the number of crossings, estimates Madeleine Sumption, who emphasizes that the fight against smugglers is difficult, with “very decentralized” networks.
