The number of migrants crossing the English Channel from northern France to the United Kingdom on small boats on Monday set a new record of 1,300 in a single day, despite successful British Conservative government plans to tackle the problem.
As the United Kingdom prepares for a new prime minister, the new record is a reminder of an increase in the number of very dangerous crossings on one of the world´s busiest sea routes, a level that has been stable since 2018 with tighter controls over the port of Calais in France and the Channel Tunnel.
The British Ministry of Defense reported that about 1,295 people were monitored on Monday, which exceeds the last record recorded in a single day, which amounted to 1,185 migrants on November 11, 2021.
British media broadcast pictures of many migrants who were rescued and returned to the port of Dover, including children, in good weather.
Pierre Roques, an activist with L´Auberge des Migrants, a non-governmental organization that helps migrants in Calais, said the record that was set on Monday "is due to the weather conditions that are ideal for crossing at the moment."
Jean-Claude Lenoir, head of the migrant aid organization SALAM, said that the number of migrants crossing the Channel would rise "when the air is cut off" and "it will be this week."
Juliette Delablas, project manager for Caritas´ Secours Catholique in France, said migrants "do not stay in France because the living conditions are miserable."
"There is always a seasonal increase in the summer because it is very difficult to stay on the streets of Calais in the winter," she said.
So far, 22,670 people have crossed this year, nearly double the number recorded in the same period in 2021.
Last year, UK authorities intercepted and took to land 28,526 people trying to cross the sea.
A recent British report said the total could reach 60,000 people this year, despite repeated promises from the British Conservative government that it has made the issue a priority since Brexit, and is paying millions of pounds to France to help it strengthen coastal controls and step up measures to tighten the reception of migrants.
"The increase in dangerouss across the Channel is unacceptable," a government spokesman said, arguing that the phenomenon justifies the tightening of immigration policy.
Laws have been tightened to target the people-smuggling gangs behind the crossings.
But controversial plans to send some migrants to Rwanda for resettlement have met with a series of legal challenges.
The two candidates to succeed Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, have promised to continue this famous policy among the Conservative Party who must vote.
The government has just abandoned its plan to convert a former air base in northern England into a center for asylum seekers, as is the case in Greece.
The Mail on Sunday said recently, based on leaks from military intelligence, that most asylum seekers come from Albania, even though it is not currently at war.
Amnesty International condemned the "humiliating attitudes of the government", considering it necessary to "provide safe routes" for migrants, in order to put an end to these perilous crossings.
Since 2014, at least 203 people have gone missing or died, at northern sea or on land, trying to reach England from the coast of France, including 27 drowned in one day at the end of 2021, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Record number of English migrants crossed in one day towards Britain
