Immigration: a surge of activity

By Richard North - August 7, 2023

In the middle of the silly season, when it is hard to get a handle on solid political news, we’re suddenly seeing a rash of reports on illegal immigration, starting with an article in The Times last Saturday which had senior Home Office sources revealing that an estimated 21,000 migrants entered the UK undetected last year.

These, it turns out, were the ones who chose routes of entry into the UK other than in dinghies across the Channel, and subsequently went on to submit asylum applications. As to those who entered illegally, and remain unknown to the authorities, numbers can only be estimated.

The BBC tells us that a 2020 study conducted by the Greater London Authority estimated that between 594,000-745,000 undocumented people were living in the country – about one percent of the total population.

The Times revelation has been followed by a number of articles spread across the media heralding the imminent arrival of asylum seekers in Portland, Dorset, where they will be housed in the accommodation barge Bibby Stockholm, after a series of delays.

But pride of place goes to Oliver Dowden, deputy prime minister and secretary of state in the Cabinet Office, writing in the Sunday Telegraph with a piece headed: “Illegal migration undermines the values of the UK”, embracing a sub-heading which tells us: “Our society is built on fairness, so stopping the small boats and people smugglers remains a key priority for us”.

Over half a million people have come to the UK through our safe and legal humanitarian routes, writes Dowden, and yet people are still attempting to make the life-threatening illegal journey across the English Channel. They are doing so in dangerously small boats arranged by the vile people-smuggling gangs who are exploiting them for a quick buck.

Men, women and children have died making this trip, he adds, declaring: “We must end this illegal and pernicious trade, so this government is throwing everything we can at the problem”.

For once, this doesn’t seem to be entirely empty rhetoric – although the bar is set pretty low. The Sunday Times has a report headed: “Britain in talks with Germany to seize lethal migrant boats”, which seems to indicate that positive steps are being taken to interdict the dinghy people.

It turns out that the inflatable dinghies used by the smugglers to transport the Channel migrants are mainly being made in backstreet workshops in Turkey, before being paired with outboard motors shipped in from China and then sent to Germany, where they are stored, before being dispatched on demand to the French or Belgian coastline.

Discussions are now in progress with the German government aimed at disrupting people smugglers by confiscating their inflatables, exploring how existing legislation from the EU or German domestic laws could deal with dangerous goods. The intention is to persuade the Germans to use powers to deal with the dinghies as dangerous vessels and to take them out of circulation.

Good intentions, though, seem to be coming not as single spies but as battalions, with multiple media sources recording that tougher fines are to be imposed on employers of illegal migrants and landlords to supply them with accommodation without making the necessary checks.

The Telegraph carries the detail under the heading: “Bosses who hire illegal migrants ‘face ruin’”, telling us that fines for bosses who employ migrants in the UK illegally will triple to up to £60,000 per employee, making the practice so economically damaging that it can “put them out of business”.

Landlords will also face a ten-fold increase in fines if they let properties to migrants or take them on as lodgers without checking their immigration papers. Fines will rise from £80 per lodger and £1,000 per tenant for a first breach to up to £5,000 per lodger and £10,000 per tenant. Repeat breaches will be up to £10,000 per lodger and £20,000 per tenant, up from £500 and £3,000 respectively. The higher penalties will take effect from the start of 2024.

Addressing the issue is Robert Jenrick, minister of state for immigration, who explains that promising illegal migrants that they can easily work and live in the UK is one of the many lies that people smugglers tell migrants to persuade them to make small boat crossings.

The minority of unscrupulous landlords and employers who allow illegal working and renting are therefore enabling the business model of the people smugglers and are complicit in the harm the small boats crisis is causing communities in the UK.

Thus, it’s only right, he concludes, “that the size of the fine matches the severity of the offence – and that’s why we are increasing them by such significant amounts”.

The shadow immigration minister, Stephen Kinnock, seems less than impressed.

“Employers who are exploiting and illegally employing migrant workers should face the full force of the law”, he says, “but the reality is that, under the Conservatives, the number of penalties issued to firms employing workers illegally has fallen by two-thirds since 2016, arrests have dropped, and illegal working visits are down by over 1,000 on 2019”.

Despite this, the torrent of new measures doesn’t stop there. According to
The Times, in anticipation of the Rwanda policy being blocked by the supreme court, ministers have come up with a “Plan B”, resurrecting proposals to send illegal migrants to Britain’s overseas territories as part of alternative options to tackle the small boats crisis.

One of the options being looked at is Ascension Island, a volcanic island, 4,000 miles from the UK in the middle of the South Atlantic. It has previously been considered as a location to process asylum seekers, with ministers believing its remote location deter migrants planning to cross the Channel in small boats.

The government, it seems, is also in negotiations with at least five other countries over a deportation deal similar to that agreed with Rwanda. Countries such has Ghana, Nigeria, Namibia, Morocco and even Niger have been mentioned, although one presumes that Niger will have been ruled out as it is currently in the throes of a military coup.

However, the proposal to use Ascension Island is not new, and earlier plans were abandoned after a feasibility study carried out by the Foreign Office declared it unviable for various reasons, including inadequate power and water supplies and a lack of a hospital on the island, which has a population of just 900.

It seems that the Falkland Islands have also been considered and had been pushed by some in the Home Office as being more realistic than Ascension Island because it already has sufficiently functioning infrastructure.

Despite that, the idea was dropped after the Falklands were considered too politically sensitive given the British lives that were lost defending the territory against Argentina in the 1980s. Whether South Georgia now gets a look in is anyone’s guess.

So much is happening on the illegal immigration front, though, that one wonders about the motivation. Do ministers know something that we don’t, something nasty in the woodpile which has them preparing pre-emptive strikes which will reduce the political impact?

Or, given the continued flood of legal migrants, the extent of which is disrupting the plans of domestic university applicants, are we seeing a “look Squirrel!” tactic on the part of ministers, seeking to distract us from the much bigger problem?

Either way, Sunak has his own problems as Home Office figures reveal that more than 60,000 asylum claims must be processed to meet his pledge to clear the backlog of applications by the end of the year.

Given that failure is the most likely outcome, affording the opposition yet another stick with which to beat the government, this might be one reason for the surge of activity, although it hardly seems enough.

Yet past experience warns us to take nothing for granted, nor to expect that bold announcements from ministers will actually yield any results. And with that, one can only remain suspicious that they are up to something – which never bodes well.