Britain’s black economy will continue to be a magnet for illegal immigrants, the Government was warned on Wednesday - as more migrants were spotted attempting to reach the UK a day after 12 people drowned in the Channel.
Migrants will cross for as long as they know they can disappear into the UK system, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said after a dinghy crammed with dozens of people from Eritrea ripped in two during a crossing on Tuesday.
Ten of the fatalities were female and two were male, with six children among the dead, while another 65 people were rescued by the French coastguard off the town of Wimereux.
French prosecutors opened a manslaughter investigation as it emerged that the 65 had continued their crossing, despite 15 others on the doomed boat phoning through a mayday appeal and getting taken off by a Normandy-based rescue vessel.
Visiting the area, Mr Darmanin condemned the people-smuggling gangs behind such operations but also said the UK is a country “where you can work without papers and where you have little chance of being expelled”.
The minister called on the Government to lessen the economic appeal for migrants and to negotiate a post-Brexit migration treaty with the European Union.
He said: “These people want to go to Great Britain. And it is not the tens of millions of euros that we negotiate each year with our British friends, and who only pay a third of what we spend, that will put an end to illegal departures.”
The Labour Government has ditched the Conservatives’ Rwanda deportation scheme and is prioritising law enforcement to deal with the illegal crossings, which have seen more than 21,000 people make the perilous journey this year including 351 on Monday alone.
Another crossing appeared to be underway on Wednesday with several dozen people aboard a dinghy, TV footage showed.
The latest tragedy means more than 30 people have died in Channel crossings so far this year. Calling it “horrifying and deeply tragic”, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said efforts to dismantle “dangerous and criminal smuggler gangs” and to boost border security “must proceed apace”.
But Lucy Moreton of the Immigration Services Union said: “No government anywhere has ever been successful in completely stopping organised crime. The only thing that we can control - and even this will not stop it completely, but we can control - is what it is that draws people to the UK in the first place.”
She told Times Radio that many migrants have cultural or family links already to Britain. “But there are undeniable pulls for the UK that don't really exist elsewhere in Europe,” the union official said.
“We're not an ID card-driven country. You can access healthcare free at point of need. And certainly, I don't think that the British people would countenance any change to that.”
Meanwhile it can take eight to 10 years for people’s asylum claims to be processed, Ms Moreton said. “And of course, during that time, you're fed, you're housed, you're educated, you have the opportunity to put down roots, roots which might give you another avenue of claim,” she said.
“And if you're unsuccessful, you can always just cross a European border, come back and try again.”
