The Unitede Kingdom Ministry of Defence has reported that over 25,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel to Kent so far in 2022.

Just last Saturday 27 August, 915 people arrived in Kent in 19 small boats. There have been around 8,750 crossings in August alone, and the record was recently reached with 1,295 people in one single day.

Controversial policy

The migration crisis in the United Kingdom has worsened in the last 4 months, after Home Secretary Priti Patel announced her controversial plans to try to discourage people from crossing the Channel by sending migrants to Rwanda to claim asylum there.

Charities, human rights gruops and the head of the Anglican Church, Archbishop Justin Welby, were among those who questioned the legality of the policy. There will be court hearings in September and October.

The first flight due to take asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda was cancelled on 15 June 15, minutes before take-off, after a late intervention from the European Court of Human Rights (EctHR).

The Strasbourg court said the UN had raised concerns that UK asylum seekers transferred to Rwanda “would not have access to fair and efficient procedures to determine their refugee status”.

Exponential growth

Since the Home Secretary announcement, over 19,800 migrants have arrived in the UK in boats.

“This may be attributed to scaremongering from people traffickers that because of new regulations coming in across the Channel it will be much harder to access the UK in future, so they had better get on with it”, says a report by MPs from the Home Affairs Committee.

The number of people arriving in the UK in small boats from France has increasingly grown in recent years. Official data show that there were around 299 in 2018; 1,843 in 2019; 8,466 in 2020 and a record of 28,526 last year.

Moreover, according to the UN's refugee agency, at least 120,441 people arrived in mainland Europe via the Mediterranean by land and sea last year.