LONDON: The number of irregular migrants arriving in Britain on small boats soared in 2024, data showed Wednesday, piling pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to stem the dangerous Channel crossings.
Immigration, both irregular and regular, was a major issue at July’s general election, which brought Labour to power but also saw a breakthrough for Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK party.
Some 36,816 people were detected in the Channel last year, a 25 percent increase from the 29,437 who arrived in 2023, provisional figures from the interior ministry showed.
The 2024 total, however, was still well below the record 45,774 undocumented migrants who arrived on the UK’s shores in flimsy inflatable boats in 2022.
At least 76 deaths were recorded in about 20 accidents last year, making it the deadliest year for migrants who are taking ever greater risks to evade Britain’s border control.
According to French officials, at least 5,800 people were rescued at sea last year and authorities prevented more than 870 attempted crossings.
Starmer has pledged to crack down on the crossings after his election win returned Labour to government after 14 years in opposition. Upon entering office, he scrapped the previous Conservative government’s controversial scheme to send irregular migrants to Rwanda, branding it a “gimmick.”
Instead, he has promised to “smash the gangs” of people traffickers running the crossings and has signed a number of agreements with foreign countries to co-operate on law enforcement.
He has described the smuggling networks as a “global security threat similar to terrorism.”
The latest figures mean last year had the second highest number of annual arrivals since data on the crossings began to be collected in 2018. More than 150,000 people have arrived by boat in the last seven years in total.
In the first nine months of last year, Afghan migrants accounted for the single largest group of arrivals, making up 17 percent of the total. People from Vietnam, Iran and Syria were the next largest groups.
Vietnamese migrants appeared to fuel the surge in crossings in 2024. They made up just 5 percent of arrivals in 2023, well below the January-September 2024 figure of 13 percent.
“It’s often not possible to pin down a specific reason,” for why the numbers fluctuate, Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University told AFP.
“The reason that brought numbers a bit higher this year is partly there was some increase in the first half of the year, and then we’ve seen this kind of sustained increase from October, November, December, which is usually when the numbers start to settle down because the weather’s not as good.”
More than 3,200 arrived in December alone, including several hundred over Christmas.
Starmer has also set up a new Border Security Command and strengthened cooperation with European partners, including Europol.
Britain has signed joint action plans with Germany and Iraq aimed at tackling the smuggling gangs. They build on earlier agreements signed under the previous Conservative government, including with France and Albania.
Starmer’s government also points to an increase in the return of irregular migrants to their countries of origin.
Some 29,000 people were returned between January and early December, a quarter more than in 2023, and a level not seen since 2017, according to the Migration Observatory.
“In terms of what the current government is doing, it’s too early to tell you know whether their approach is having an impact on the numbers,” said Sumption.
Starmer is also under pressure to reduce legal migration as he tries to fend off growing support for arch-Euroskeptic Farage’s hard-right Reform UK, which won roughly four million votes during the July 4 poll — an unprecedented haul for a far-right party.
Net legal migration is running at historically high levels, and was estimated at 728,000 for the year to June 2024.
The surge has come despite Britons being told during the 2016 Brexit referendum that leaving the European Union would allow the country to “take back control” of its borders.
