Iranians And Iraqis Dominate Attempts To Enter UK Via Perilous Cross-Channel Route

Iranian and Iraqi nationals accounted for almost all the migrants intercepted while trying to cross the English Channel to enter the UK in the first three months of this year, according to statistics from the UK government.

In a written answer to parliament released on May 27, junior Home Office minister Chris Philp revealed that a total of 463 people were caught trying to make the perilous crossing in January, February and March. Of them, 266 came from Iran and a further 119 were from Iraq, meaning that between them these two countries accounted for 83% of all cases.

The English Channel is just 21 miles across at its narrowest point and is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, making any journey in a small boat extremely hazardous.

Among the others attempting to make the crossing, 47 said they had Syrian nationality and 13 came from Afghanistan. Nationals from a further eight countries were intercepted, all numbering less than 10 people per country.

No official figures have been released for the period since March, although there have been a number of occasions in April and May when large numbers were intercepted in a single day.

The issue of migrants attempting to cross the Channel is often a thorny political subject in the UK, where right-wing commentators tend to brand it a “crisis” and refer to everyone making the crossing an illegal migrant, whether or not they have a well-founded asylum claim. In such an environment, politicians often compete to take the most hardline stance. Home Secretary Priti Patel recently said “I am determined to stop this criminal trade.”

Despite the tough rhetoric, the UK government has failed to dissuade more people from trying to cross. In January last year the UK and France signed a joint action plan which aimed to ensure that by Spring 2020 the Channel crossings had become “an infrequent phenomenon”. That ambition is clearly not being met. Earlier this month, Philp blamed “recent good weather and Covid-19 lockdown” for a rise in the number of arrivals in the UK.

In fact, though, the apparent high numbers of attempted crossings this year appears to be a continuation of the trends of the past few years.

Migration trends

The House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee released official data in May 2019 which showed that 297 migrants had crossed the channel using small boats in 2018. A further 265 were intercepted en route and returned to France or aborted their planned journey. Iranians were the dominant group among those who tried to cross – then Home Secretary Sajid Javid said in January 2019 they were “mostly Iranian”.

The numbers appeared to rise rapidly over the course of 2019. In October last year, Sky News reported that 1,456 people had crossed the Channel using small boats since December 2018, citing data collected from police records, local reports of arrivals and elsewhere.

In his statement to parliament in January 2019, Javid gave three reasons for the rise in attempts to cross the Channel, including instability in the Middle East and North Africa which was “driving people out of their homes in search of better lives in Europe”; organised crime groups taking advantage of “vulnerable and often desperate” people; and improved security at the French / UK border which was making it harder for people to enter the UK stowed away on trucks and cars.

Even so, the number of attempted crossings is small compared to overall migration. The UK’s net migration figure was 270,000 last year, with 677,000 moving to the country and 407,000 leaving, according to the Office for National Statistics. Overall, about 14% of the UK’s population of 66 million was born outside the country.

It is not clear just what happens to all the migrants who enter the UK via the English Channel. The UK offered asylum, humanitarian protection, alternative forms of leave or resettlement to 20,703 people last year, a figure which included 12,565 grants of asylum, but it does not break down the figures by how people arrived into the UK.

Asylum system

What is clear is that the asylum process is far from efficient. There were 35,566 asylum applications lodged in the UK last year, with Iran topping the table with 4,853 applications, followed by Albania (3,453) and Iraq (2,971). Applicants often have to wait a long time before a decision is made on their case. Campaigning group Refugee Action points out that 57% of people have to wait more than six months before an initial decision is made on their asylum claim.

Charities have repeatedly called on the government to provide safer options to those wanting to claim asylum, so that would-be migrants are not forced into trying to make the dangerous crossing. Stephen Hale, chief executive of Refugee Action, told the Guardian newspaper earlier this month that “Many people fleeing war and persecution feel forced to put their lives into the hands of criminal smugglers because there are no safe and legal routes to claim asylum in the UK.”

There is little apparent appetite in London to alter its stance on cross-Channel migration, but the other factors which the UK government has previously acknowledged are not going away either. As Javid said last year, the reasons behind the crossings "are diverse and in many cases are outside of our control."