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from: JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press
Posted: 9/8/2021 / 9:45 AM CDT
Updated: 09/08/2021 / 11:37 AM CDT
A group of people believed to be migrants are transferred to Dover following a small boat incident in the English Channel in Kent, England on Wednesday 8 September 2021. (Steve Parsons / PA via AP)
LONDON (AP) – The British Home Secretary met with his French counterpart on Wednesday when Britain urged France to do more to stop a flood of migrants trying to cross the English Channel in small boats.
Dozens of women, men and children wrapped in blankets were brought ashore on Wednesday in the south-east English port of Dover by British border troop boats after being picked up by dinghies in the canal.
Thousands of migrants have landed on beaches in south east England in calm, summery weather in recent days, with 785 arriving on Monday alone, according to the UK Home Office. More than 12,000 made the crossing this year, according to the British news agency Press Association. In 2020, around 8,500 people set out on the trip, several died in the attempt.
Migrants have long used northern France as a starting point to reach the UK, either by stowing themselves in trucks or ferries, or – increasingly since the coronavirus pandemic hit international travel – in rubber dinghies and other small boats organized by smugglers.
The British and French governments have worked for years to stop travel without much success. Earlier this year, the UK agreed to give France £ 54 million ($ 74 million) to fund a doubling of the number of police patrolling French beaches.
But the channel crossings continue to increase. According to the French Maritime Prefecture, which is responsible for the canal, 556 “operations” had been carried out this year until July, during which 12,148 migrants attempted to cross or cross the canal by boat. That is 868 such events with 9,551 migrants in all of 2020.
Britain has not yet paid the promised money and UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has proposed withholding it if France stops doing more to prevent the smugglers’ departure. She will speak to French Home Secretary Gerald Darmanin during a two-day G-7 Home Affairs Ministers meeting in London, starting on Wednesday.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said stopping the crossings was largely up to the French authorities.
“We depend to a large extent on what the French do, but as time goes on and this problem evolves we have to make sure that we use every tactic we can to stop what I think is an abomination. “Trading and manipulating people’s hopes,” he told the House of Commons lawmakers.
Refugee agencies said the UK government’s tough talks were pointless and called on the government to make it easier for asylum seekers to enter the UK safely
Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, said Patel should “reach an agreement with her French counterpart to develop a humanitarian visa that would allow safe passage for those likely to be recognized as refugees in the UK”.
French lawmaker Pierre-Henri Dumont, who represents the Calais region in northern France, said the authorities there would do everything they could.
“The fact is we have 300 to 400 kilometers of coastline to watch every day and night, and it is quite impossible to have police officers every 100 meters (330 feet) because of the length of the lake,” he told the BBC.
“We can’t stop all transitions,” he added. “We have to tackle the root causes of migration.”
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Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed to this story.
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Follow AP’s global migration reporting at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
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