Daily Times

British border agents brought ashore migrants in the port of Dover on Monday after picking them up from an inflatable boat as they crossed the Channel, the latest in a surge of crossings that is causing political tensions with France.

Taking advantage of hot weather and calm sea conditions, more than 500 migrants have reached England since Thursday, many in overloaded rubber dinghies.

A Reuters photographer in Dover saw a Border Force boat arrive carrying a group of migrants wearing life jackets. A blue inflatable dinghy was towed in by a separate vessel.

“What is going on is the activity of cruel and criminal gangs who are risking the lives of these people, taking them across the Channel…in potentially unseaworthy vessels,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson told broadcasters.

“We want to stop that, working with the French.”

The Home Office, or interior ministry, has said it would return as many migrants as possible to France. Immigration minister Chris Philp is due to meet his French counterpart in Paris this week. France says it has already deployed extra resources and that many boats are being intercepted before they cross. Stephen Hale, chief executive of the charity Refugee Action, said the numbers crossing the sea to Britain – about 4,000 so far this year – were tiny in the context of what he described as a global refugee crisis.

“This is serious for the people concerned, but it’s a modest movement by international standards and it’s certainly something that Britain can cope with,” he told Reuters, contrasting the situation with that of Lebanon, which has a million Syrian refugees. France received 138,000 asylum applications last year, more than three times the 44,200 that were received by Britain, according to Eurostat.

Many of the migrants seeking to reach Britain come from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and countries in Africa, fleeing poverty, persecution or war. Some stand a chance of being granted asylum, while others, considered illegal economic migrants, are unlikely to be allowed to remain in Britain.

SEND OUT THE NAVY?

?Britain’s interior ministry has asked the military to help deal with the migrant boats, although it has not explained what it wanted them to do.

French lawmaker Pierre-Henri Dumont, who represents the Calais area across the Channel from Dover, dismissed the idea as an attempt by British ministers “to show some kind of muscle”.