Fleeing France, record number of migrants cross the Channel towards Britain

The British Ministry of Defense said that about 1,295 migrants were detected crossing the Channel on Monday, more than the last record recorded in a single day.

The number of migrants crossing the English Channel from northern France to the UK on small boats on Monday set a new record of 1,300 in one day, despite successive plans by the conservative British government to tackle the problem.

As the United Kingdom prepares to appoint a new prime minister, this new record is a reminder of the high number of very dangerous crossings on one of the world's busiest sea routes, a level that has been stable since 2018 with tighter controls over the port of Calais in France and the Channel Tunnel.

The British Ministry of Defense reported that about 1,295 people were monitored on Monday, a number that exceeds the last record recorded in a single day, which amounted to 1,185 migrants on November 11, 2021.

British media broadcast pictures of many migrants who were rescued and returned to the port of Dover, including children, in good weather.

Pierre Roques, an activist with L'Auberge des Migrants, a non-governmental organization that helps migrants in Calais, said the record that was set on Monday "is due to the weather conditions that are ideal for crossing at the moment."

Jean-Claude Lenoir, head of the migrant aid organization SALAM, said that the number of migrants crossing the Channel would rise "when the air is cut off" and "it will be this week."

Juliette Delablas, project manager for Caritas' Secours Catholique in France, said migrants "do not stay in France because the living conditions are miserable."

"There is always a seasonal increase in the summer because it is very difficult to stay on the streets of Calais in the winter," she said.

So far, 22,670 people have crossed this year, nearly double the number recorded in the same period in 2021.

Last year, UK authorities intercepted and took to land 28,526 people trying to cross the sea.

A recent British parliamentary report said the total could reach 60,000 people this year, despite repeated promises from the British Conservative government, which has made the issue a priority since Britain's exit from the European Union and is paying millions of pounds to France to help it strengthen coastal control and increase measures to tighten the reception of migrants. .

"Provide safe ways"

"The increase in dangerous crossings across the Channel is unacceptable," a government spokesman said, arguing that the phenomenon justifies the tightening of immigration policy.

Laws targeting the people-smuggling gangs behind the crossings had previously been tightened.

But controversial plans to send some migrants to Rwanda for resettlement have met with a series of legal challenges.

The two candidates to succeed Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, have promised to continue this famous policy among the Conservative Party who must vote.

The government has just abandoned its plan to convert a former air base in northern England into a center for asylum seekers, as is the case in Greece.

The Mail on Sunday said recently, based on leaks from military intelligence, that most asylum seekers come from Albania, even though it is currently not at war.

Amnesty International condemned the "humiliating attitudes of the government", considering it necessary to "provide safe routes" for migrants, in order to put an end to these dangerous crossings.

Since 2014, at least 203 people have gone missing or died, at sea or on land, trying to reach England from the northern coast of France, including 27 drowned in one day at the end of 2021, according to the International Organization for Migration.