Migrants who cross the Channel into the UK 'are 24 times more likely to go to prison than Brits'
A whopping 3.4 per cent - one in 30 - small boat migrants end up behind bars, according to official data for nationalities who make up the largest portion of arrivals, including Somalians, Afghans, Iraqis, Albanians and Iranians.
This is a dramatically larger share than the average for Brits, which comes to just 0.14 per cent.
It is also 18 times higher than the ratio of the total migrant population that is in prison, which is 0.18 per cent.
As the number of channel migrants who have arrived in the country this year soars past 20,000, the Conservatives have used these findings to suggest an alarmingly high portion of them will end up in custody, The Times reports.
When the statistics are applied to this year's arrivals, it is estimated that 700 of the 20,422 who have entered the UK so far will go to prison.
The data is based on 10,838 foreign criminals held in prisons in England and Wales at the end of March.
Those with dual British nationality are not included in the Ministry of Justice numbers, which recorded 5.9 million people as living in the UK with a foreign passport as of the last census in 2021.
Some 12 per cent of Somalians living in the UK were behind bars at the end of March, a total of 258 prisoners in total.
For Albanians, the figure is 6 per cent, among Iraqis it is 2.7 per cent, while 1.6 per cent of Iranians are in prison.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: 'This data shows the government's loss of border control is putting the public at risk. Those from the main nationalities arriving are far more likely to commit crime and end up in prison than the general population.
'The illegal immigrants crossing the Channel are unvetted, unknown and uncontrolled. And now it is clear they are much more likely to commit serious crime. They are therefore a danger to the public.
'The government must remove those arriving immediately and without court process to a location outside Europe. The crossings would then soon end. This flood of illegal immigration has to stop.'
The Home Office suggested the data was skewed given that the majority of those arriving on small boats were young men in their 20s and 30s, a demographic more likely to commit crime.
The analysis also did not include foreigners who had committed crimes while in the UK on holiday.
A spokesman for the Home Office said: 'The comparison of these two data sets is completely unfounded. It is inappropriate to apply foreign imprisonment rates to small boat arrival data as these consist of very different groups of people.'
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