I worked for Border Force in Calais for 15 years – here’s what the government must do to fix the immigration crisis
OUR asylum system is broken — the worst I’ve ever known it.
Border Force is simply running a collection service in the English Channel, bringing migrants safely ashore to the overcrowded Manston migrant processing centre in Kent.
As we have now learnt, Manston is already full to bursting, now holding some 4,000 people when it’s meant to hold up to 1,600.
Fights are breaking out and disease is spreading among those housed there. The whole system is an absolute disaster. But is doesn’t have to be this way.
As Border Force’s former Chief Immigration Officer, working for 15 years in Calais, I’ve seen how Britain and France have managed to make crossing the Channel illicitly by lorry almost impossible.
The fencing that you see at Calais port — which has done so much to deter migrants getting on lorries — is actually British fencing.
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Britain ‘a magnet’
It was used as a security measure at one of the big G7-type conferences in the UK and when that was over the Home Office brought the fencing out to Calais.
The success in blocking the lorry method of entry has seen the small boats provided by smugglers turn into a lucrative industry.
Last year 28,526 people crossed the Channel. This year the figure is already at around 40,000 and it is likely to rise to around 50,000.
To put that figure into perspective, 65,572 migrants crossed from North Africa to Europe using the so-called Central Mediterranean route between January and September this year.
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There are, of course, other routes taken by asylum seekers into Europe but the figures suggest that Britain remains a significant magnet for illicit migration.
Some 12,000 of those who have crossed the Channel this year are from Albania — a country which wants to join the EU — up from just 50 in 2020. All but 2,000 of them were young men.
Border Force’s Dan O’Mahoney said recently that the figure represents up to two per cent of Albania’s male population aged 18 to 40.
O’Mahoney admitted that a huge number were “deliberately gaming the system”.
Albanians have learned they can remain in the UK by using the Modern Slavery Act, introduced by then Home Secretary Theresa May in 2015.
She brought in the legislation for all the right reasons but it has now become a loophole for Albanians claiming that they were trafficked into the UK — that is, forced or tricked into taking a boat.
It is a ridiculous situation. No one pays up to £5,000 for a place on a dinghy if they are being trafficked against their will.
The Home Affairs Committee heard last week that only four per cent of asylum claims by migrants who crossed the Channel last year had been processed.
This crazy backlog means that it is costing more than £6MILLION A DAY to put them up in hotels.
We can’t afford to carry on like this during a cost-of-living crisis. So how do we solve Britain’s small boats situation?
In 2020 Rear Admiral Chris Parry suggested using cruise ships as floating holding bays for migrants.
It was deemed ridiculous and was poo-pooed, but I believe the former Director-General of the Ministry Of Defence was on to something.
So you hire a non British-flagged liner and position it in a part of the English Channel, which is international waters. Instead of taking migrants ashore at Dover they would be taken to the liner, which would have decent facilities. And — not having set foot in Britain — they would be unable to claim asylum. You then process them and find out who they are.
I believe that many of the Albanians wouldn’t be eligible for asylum. They could then be taken back to Albania on the cruise ship.
It sounds expensive, but look at the eye-watering bills we are already shelling out on hotel accommodation. If you removed hundreds of people in one go it would be cost effective.
Putting asylum seekers on planes to Rwanda has been mired in legal challenges. But I believe that if the flights do happen it will be a strong disincentive to migrants to come here.
People won’t shell out thousands for a place on a dinghy if there is a risk they may end up in central Africa instead.
It has been suggested that the cramped conditions at the Manston centre near Ramsgate, where eight people are reported to have contracted diphtheria, also acts as a deterrent.
French refusals
But many of those crossing the Channel have already experienced similarly poor living conditions in camps around Calais, so I don’t think it puts off migrants from coming here.
There is one sure-fire way of stopping the boats — and that’s to persuade the French to stop, or turn back, the dinghies in the Channel.
The Gendarmerie Maritime has a huge base down in Boulogne-Sur-Mer. If they put all their boats on to the water and intercepted the dinghies then it would stop the trade immediately.
But they refuse. They won’t intercept the dinghies unless they are sinking.
It’s the French interpretation of the Law of the Sea, a body of international law governing the rights and duties of states in maritime environments.
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The French officials simply monitor the boats until they get into British waters, then it is our problem.
And unless we take radical action — such as using cruise ships as holding bays — then it is going to be our problem for the foreseeable future.
