The United Kingdom has more illegal immigrants than any other European country, with as many as 745,000 people living within British borders without permission.
This is according to a study by academics from the University of Oxford, who found that more than one in 100 people in the U.K. are living in the country illegally – more than double the 300,000 people believed to be living in France illegally and even more than the approximately 700,000 undocumented migrants residing in Germany.
Senior Researcher on Nationhood Guy Dampier of the London-based think tank the Legatum Institute noted that since Britain is an island nation, it should be harder to get there than anywhere else in the continent. Instead, it has achieved the title of "illegal migration capital of Europe" because of, according to Dampier, the country's "permissive job market and the failure of the authorities to guard our borders."
Over 26,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel and entered Britain in 2024
Before the new study was released, nearly 1,000 migrants crossed the English 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 were released, it was revealed that an Albanian migrant who was deported from the U.K. after being freed from a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence later snuck back into the country and was able to win the right to stay – thanks to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which the U.K. is a party of.
The recent arrivals bring the total undocumented arrivals this year to 26,612 compared to 25,330 by the same date last year and 33,611 in 2022, according to figures from the U.K. Home Office.
The Conservative Party has warned that migrants will likely continue coming to the U.K. under the belief that they will be more welcomed, now that the Labour Party is in control of the government.
Furthermore, members of the Conservative Party have warned that scrapping the Rwanda asylum plan removed a key deterrent to migrants thinking that it may be worth it to make the dangerous English Channel crossing into the United Kingdom.
Leaders of the Labour Party said they will invest more in border control to "smash" the human smuggling gangs who organize the crossings. Conservative leadership contenders Shadow Home Secretary James Cleverly and Member of Parliament Robert Jenrick both have called for the Labour government of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to address the issue.
Cleverly said: "We need to deter people from coming here illegally and to root them out of our economy when they are here." Jenrick, a former immigration minister, said: "This is the highest number crossing the Channel in a single day for years."
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has pledged an immediate 75 million British pound ($98 million) investment in border security, with funding made available to the National Crime Agency to pay for covert operation equipment to disrupt people smugglers.
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