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The Sun
3 days ago
- Business
- The Sun
Shameful pic of French cops watching migrants sail to Britain proves we've got to take action to stop small boats
SOMETIMES it takes a photograph to shift political debate. Hopefully, one such image will be that of French border guards standing on a beach watching on as yet another boat-load of migrants set sail across the Channel in a dinghy, heading for sanctuary in soft-touch Britain. 2 2 One of them seems even to be filming the occasion on his phone. The boat load they were watching was just one of 19 which made it across the Channel on Saturday. Between them, they carried 1,195 migrants, more than enough to fill yet one more migrant hotel. In case anyone had forgotten, we British taxpayers have handed £480million over the past year to the French authorities supposedly to police the shores and prevent boats from setting off. That was under a deal negotiated by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in 2023, in which Britain agreed to fund a doubling in the number of French border control guards from 400 to 800. Go through the motions A more expensive and pointless job-creation scheme would be hard to imagine. Since Britain agreed to cough up the money, the proportion of would-be migrants being intercepted before they reach UK waters has fallen from 46.9 percent in 2023 to 38 percent so far in 2025. People-smugglers have got around the extra patrols by finding a new way to play the system: Rather than launch a boat- load of migrants directly from the beach they push the boats a few yards offshore and ask their clients to wade into the waters. That, apparently, confounds the French border guards ' rules of engagement, hence they just stand and watch. But let's be frank and ask: Do the French really have any intention of stopping these boats? Starmer 'loses control' as over 1,000 migrants cross Channel in biggest daily total of 2025 – as French cops watch on Needless to say, every migrant who leaves French territory is one fewer the French authorities have to worry about. It makes perfect sense for the French to take our money and then go through the motions of pretending to stop migrants, while in practice letting them go. If Emmanuel Macron 's government really wanted to stop the boats it could do so in an instant by doing a deal with Britain in which it agreed to the systematic return of every migrant who made it across the Channel. If asylum seekers were obliged to do as international treaties supposedly insist they do, and make their claim in the first safe country in which they arrive, Channel crossings would all but cease. Let's be frank and ask: Do the French really have any intention of stopping these boats? There would no longer be any point in making a dangerous journey only to be shipped back immediately to France. But of course France won't do that sort of deal because it doesn't want the burden of thousands of extra asylum seekers to process. Meanwhile, our own government has thrown away the one tool which Sunak had painstakingly added to Britain's feeble border force armoury: The Rwanda scheme. How foolish Labour's rejection of the scheme looks now. Keir Starmer is now talking about a similar plan to process asylum claims in the Balkans, but sorry, it is too late. Labour tries to claim the credit for a fall in overall net migration, which was entirely the result of visa changes by the Conservatives, while hoping we will somehow fail to notice the sharp rise in small- boat crossings since it came to power 11 months ago. The Border Command which was supposed to tackle people-smugglers has proved to be a farce. Since the election, 38,054 migrants have arrived by small boat, with numbers this year running ahead of any previous year. The Rwanda scheme might have been expensive in terms of the cost per migrant, but that misses the point. In practice, we may have ended up having to send rather few asylum seekers to Rwanda because migrants would have had such a disincentive to travel to Britain in the first place. In the end we have the worst of all worlds. We have more and more migrant arrivals while we are still picking up the tab for the abortive Rwanda scheme. Paying dearly Accommodation funded by us to house our asylum seekers now looks like being used by migrants sent there from other countries. Nor has Starmer made use of another obvious piece of leverage. Two weeks ago he renegotiated Britain's Brexit agreement, extending French fishing boats' access to UK waters without making it dependent on France putting a genuine effort into stopping the boats. Why didn't he at least say: You can fish in British waters only if you agree to take back every single migrant who makes it illegally across the Channel? As Kemi Badenoch said last week, every time Labour negotiates, Britain loses. But then the previous Tory government hardly set an example, either, in handing France nearly half a billion a year to pretend to tackle illegal migration. Truth is that we are all paying dearly for French border guards to stand around photographing the flotilla of migrant boats setting sail for Britain — and then again to feed and house the migrants once they arrive on our shores.
The Sun
3 days ago
- General
- The Sun
Labour slammed as ‘pathetic' for trying to blame weather for record numbers of Channel crossings
THE Government was last night accused of a 'pathetic attempt' to blame the weather for record numbers of Channel crossings. Data on how conditions have affected small boat migration over the past three years will be published today for the first time. 3 3 It is expected to show a higher number of 'red days' — where calm seas and sunshine make for smoother crossings — on Sir Keir Starmer's watch as PM. Anger over relentless arrivals has intensified after almost 1,200 migrants made the journey in a single day on Saturday. More than 14,811 have crossed from France this year already — the most in the first five months of any year since the crisis erupted in 2018. Projections show up to 50,000 could arrive by the end of 2025 in what would be a record year. Earlier this year Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said smuggling gangs' operations mean 'our border security ends up being dependent on the weather '. The 20,000 illegal migrants that arrived between Labour's election win last July and December is expected to feature a high number of red days. But ahead of the publication, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp slammed it as a 'pathetic attempt to blame the weather for their total loss of border control'. The PM's spokesman said: 'As the Home Secretary has said before, we have to get to a position where the level of crossings is not reliant on the weather. 'That means breaking the hold that these criminal gangs have established over this trade, and breaking the link between crossings and the weather.' Addressing the mounting fury at the record rate of illegal migration, Sir Keir said: 'You have every right to be angry about small boat crossings. I'm angry too. Starmer 'loses control' as over 1,000 migrants cross Channel in biggest daily total of 2025 – as French cops watch on 'We are ramping up our efforts to smash the people-smuggling gangs at source.' Yesterday The Sun told how Defence Secretary John Healey had admitted that Britain has 'lost control of its borders'.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Britain has 'lost control' of its borders, defence secretary tells Sky News
Britain has "lost control" of its borders over the last five years, the defence secretary told Sky News after hundreds of migrants crossed the Channel.
The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump's border intimidation is coming for US citizens too – ask streamer Hasan Piker
Where are all the free speech warriors on the right now? Hasan Piker, a popular streamer with 4.5 million followers across YouTube and Twitch, who has been hailed by mainstream publications such as the New Yorker and New York Times as the left's answer to the deluge of rightwing internet influencers, says he was detained and questioned for hours by border control agents as he re-entered the US (Piker is a US citizen). It is an instructive moment. Countries that behave like this towards political commentators and dissenting voices who are their own citizens are either nakedly authoritarian, or well on the way. Piker was reportedly interrogated at length not just about Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah, but his views on Donald Trump. The 33-year-old pundit – an unapologetic champion of the Palestinian cause – stuck to a message of opposing 'endless bloodshed' and siding with civilians. That the biggest progressive streamer in the US was subjected to this experience is emblematic of a phenomenon that requires an accurate and insistent description: it is the biggest assault on free speech in the west since the height of McCarthyism seven decades ago. When foreign-born citizens – including green card holders – began to be detained by US authorities over their opposition to Israel's genocide, it should have been clear that this was just phase one: US citizens would be next. Sure, Piker wasn't arrested, but the authorities are pushing the boundaries bit by bit. The numbers of foreign visitors entering the US are falling as it is, undoubtedly driven by fears of a punitive border regime. But Piker's detention sends a message to Americans with dissenting opinions – not least opponents of Israel's genocide. The threat of being stopped at the border and subjected to lengthy interrogation simply because of what you think is straightforward political intimidation. It won't stop there. That the vice-president, JD Vance, railed against Europe for a supposed war on free speech underlines what a sham this favoured narrative of the right always was. Weeks later, his boss announced that universities allowing 'illegal' protests would be starved of federal cash – with Columbia University losing $400m despite having clamped down on pro-Palestinian protests – and dissenting students would be variously expelled, arrested, imprisoned or deported. Alas, it was under the Biden administration that the McCarthyite blacklisting-style campaign began, with defenders of Palestinian rights being variously deplatformed, fired and threatened. Indeed, Vance could have noted how European countries such as Germany have assaulted free speech by silencing pro-Palestinian activists: from imposing crippling restrictions on protests and violently assaulting demonstrators to shutting down conferences, sacking people who speak out and now seeking to deport activists, too. Alas, it's not really free speech that Vance is interested in, but rather advancing far-right politics. If we're going to discuss who is being stopped at the border, let's discuss the astonishing 23,380 US citizens who serve in the IDF, according to figures quoted in the Washington Post a year ago. Many of them are undoubtedly committing unspeakable war crimes in Israel's genocidal onslaught. Yet they are being waved through the border. And that really sums it up. If like Piker, you speak out against genocide, you are liable to be treated as a criminal as you enter your own country. If you're a US citizen serving in a foreign army committing heinous atrocities, you're more likely to be treated as a hero. The world is turned on its head. Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Al Jazeera
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Germany to reject undocumented migrants at border: Report
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt plans to send up to 3,000 additional officers to Germany's borders, Bild reports. Germany's new interior minister has issued orders to reject undocumented refugees and migrants and wants to deploy thousands more police officers at the country's borders, according to the Bild newspaper. The publication reported the development on Wednesday, the first day of work for the country's new conservative-led government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has taken a hardline stance on irregular migration. The report said Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, a member of Merz's conservative bloc, which has formed a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), has lifted an order from 2015 that allowed entry to undocumented third-country nationals. There was no immediate comment from the ministry. Dobrindt is scheduled to give a statement to reporters later on Wednesday. Dobrindt also plans to send up to 3,000 additional officers to Germany's borders to curb irregular migration, which would raise the number of border police to up to 14,000, the report said, citing unnamed government sources. Advertisement The chairman of the GdP police union, Andreas Rosskopf, told the Rheinische Post newspaper that police have begun to increase the number of officers deployed to the country's land borders after receiving verbal instruction to do so. The border force has been instructed to reorganise rosters where necessary 'in order to achieve greater availability', he said. News outlet Der Spiegel reported that Dobrindt had ordered that extra police be deployed and that they would have to work shifts of up to 12 hours a day to enforce the new regime. The 2015 instruction was given under then-chancellor Angela Merkel, whose term was defined by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers in Germany, many fleeing war in Syria. Sign up for Al Jazeera Breaking News Alert Get real-time breaking news alerts and stay up-to-date with the most important headlines from around the globe. Subscribe Your subscription failed. Please try again. Please check your email to confirm your subscription By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy protected by reCAPTCHA Before the German election in February, Merz promised a crackdown on migration after a spate of violent crimes blamed on foreign nationals amid rising support for the far right. His coalition has since agreed to reject asylum seekers at borders, enable deportations to Syria and suspend family reunions. Migration has been a contentious issue in Germany, the third largest refugee-hosting country in the world, with 2.5 million refugees, including more than one million refugees from Ukraine. A growing number of German voters say they want the country to accept fewer migrants. Immigration and asylum were hotly discussed before February's elections in which the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) doubled its vote share. In April, the country suspended the admission of refugees through a United Nations programme, as the outgoing centre-left SDU formed a new coalition with Merz's centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU). Advertisement Since 2016, Germany had participated in a European Union resettlement scheme that accepts refugees selected by the UNHCR. Most come from Turkiye, Egypt, Jordan or Kenya.
