Tents will be set up on the southern coast of England to accommodate 2,000 migrants that arrive on small boats from France. According to The Daily Mail, the Home Office has purchased marquees and will set them up at disused military sites by the end of August.
Small boats carrying migrants most frequently land on Britain’s shores in August, September, and October. According to Migration Watch UK, a think tank campaigning for significant reductions in immigration, 45,755 people arrived on small boats in 2022 via the English Channel, which was a record high. 51% of these arrivals took place in August, September and October. This means that this year’s current number of 14,732 arrivals is expected to grow exponentially.
Another reason for buying the tents is that the UK government wishes to reduce the hotel bill to house migrants, which costs taxpayers £6 million a day. This is not the first time, however, that the government has used marquees to house migrants. Last autumn the Manston processing centre, a former military base in Kent, was used to deal with a surge of arrivals. Charity groups and Home Office employees say that conditions there were inhumane, people slept on mats on the floor in overcrowded conditions without access to fresh air. However, the government has asserted that those were makeshift tents not designed to be used for more than a few days. The new ones will be erected alongside portable toilets and showers. Migrants will be housed there for several weeks and moved out before the weather gets colder in the winter.
Initially, 50 people will also move into the UK’s first floating barge for asylum seekers on Tuesday. The Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, Dorset, will be able to accommodate up to 500 migrants.
Small boat arrivals accounted for about 45% of asylum applications made in 2022. Last year more than 89,000 people requested asylum in the UK. The highest number of applications came from Albania—nearly 16,000 people—despite Albania being considered a safe country. Two-thirds of its asylum-seeking citizens arrived on small boats. Alarmingly, a recent report by the United Nations claims that Albanian gangs “exert considerable control” of the UK drug market.
The huge wave of migrants illegally arriving in the UK has put a strain on the country’s asylum system. According to government data, the asylum backlog stood at 74,410 cases on May 28th. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised to clear that backlog by the end of the year. The government hopes to deter small boats, launched by people smugglers, and criminal networks, from coming to Britain through the Illegal Migration Bill, which is designed to hand the government further powers to detain and remove individuals who enter the country unlawfully.
