After years of both Conservative and Labour pledges to get a grip on illegal migration, a new study has found that Britain is home to more illegal migrants than any other European nation.
Just shy of three-quarters of a million (up to 745,000) illegals are in the UK, according to research by Oxford University experts, making up one percent of the population. That’s higher than the upper estimate in Germany of 700,000, and more than double the 300,000 believed to be in France.
Indeed, despite occasional accusations that Britain ‘doesn’t take its fair share,’ the figures suggest that between 23 and 29% of all illegal immigrants in Europe are living there.
Nationhood researcher Guy Dampier responded in The Daily Telegraph that while Britain is an island nation, meaning it should be harder to get here than anywhere else in the continent, it has achieved the title of “illegal migration capital of Europe” because of “our permissive job market and the failure of the authorities to guard our borders.”
As if to prove his point, on the Saturday before this study was released, nearly 1,000 migrants crossed the Channel on small boats in just one day—a record high for this year. There was an average of 57 illegals on each of the 17 boats that crossed, and four migrants lost their lives attempting the perilous journey.
And on the same day these figures hit the press, it was revealed that an Albanian migrant who was deported from the UK after being freed from a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence later snuck back into the country and has won the right to stay thanks to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The previous Conservative government pretended to show an interest in leaving the ECHR to help tackle illegal migration, while the current Labour administration has made it clear that “we will never withdraw.”
In his first speech in Parliament, Reform leader and MP Nigel Farage said the convention had “completely outlived its usefulness” and was preventing Britain from acting decisively on migration, meaning it should leave.
