Banning people smugglers from social media will not stop the boats

“I want to go to Britain no matter what. There we can LIVE and HAVE RIGHTS.”

HENRY HILL

These are the words of ‘Imran’, the pseudonymous poster-boy for this extraordinary campaign from Médecins Sans Frontières which is not, despite all appearances to the contrary, a false flag operation by Nigel Farage, and which kindly spells out why Labour’s current strategy for stopping Channel crossings is doomed.

Imran left Kuwait after he was released from prison after taking part in some protests, making his way to Europe via Turkey. He settled in Germany, but…

“I lived and worked for 2 years in Germany. But I was expelled OVERNIGHT. Now, I want to go to the UK.”

(‘Overnight’ expulsions of illegal residents sound like the sort of thing British politicians claim we cannot do, although if Germany has been deemed an international pariah recently no-one has mentioned it.)

But why Britain? It isn’t exactly the easiest target, given that there is an entire continent of countries Imran could just walk to. He has apparently tried and failed to cross the Channel “at least 20 times”; there have been plenty of violent confrontations with the police and he was apparently put in a coma for over a week after nearly drowning.

Well, have another read of that quote at the top. “In Europe”, Imran says, “WE HAVE NO RIGHTS”. MSF take the time to clarify that he means the EU, which leaves an alpine trek to Switzerland on the table.

But no, Imran is set on Britain – and quite explicitly because of what are called “pull factors”. There is no mention of his having family here; he wants to get here so he can “LIVE” (in government-funded accommodation) and “HAVE RIGHTS” (that stop us deporting him). He might have added ‘WORK’ (in an unpoliced black economy, on someone else’s Deliveroo driver account).

Had this MSF campaign been instead drafted by an anti-immigration campaign, it would look very heavy handed. As it is, it’s a frank admission of reality that spells out very clearly what needs to happen if any government is to ‘stop the boats’. To whit, ‘Imran’ needs to talk about the UK in the same forlorn tones as he does Europe; the pull factors need to be systematically dismantled.

What Labour is doing instead: “new curbs to target people smugglers, including travel bans and social media blackouts”, per the FT. Does anybody seriously believe, at this point, that such measures are going to cut it?

By all means, let the forces of law and order off the leash against people smugglers. It’s a vile and criminal trade, and its practitioners deserve whatever they get. But like the war on drugs, the police are being set an impossible task. As long as demand persists, there will be people prepared to reap the rewards of facilitating it. Crackdowns can deliver activity and expense, but only limited results.

Without tackling pull factors, there is no way to get this issue under control. Open borders types tout ‘safe and legal routes’, but that is a wilful misinterpretation of what ‘stop the boats’ stands for. If we literally just wanted to stop people crossing on boats, the easiest way to do that would be to stop searching the lorries.

Voters want our border under control, and that means that the state is willing and able to stop people coming here. Simply liberalising legal entry and pretending that’s control will not convince; ministers cannot simply turn their back to the abyss and declare that they’ve crossed it.

So what could ministers do? Perhaps there is more to be had out of inter-governmental deals like the one struck with Albania, which has had great results:

“The number of Albanian migrants crossing the Channel in small boats has plummeted since 2022, when 12,658 arrived, accounting for 28 per cent of the arrivals. In 2023 there were 927 arrivals and in the first nine months of last year there were 497, 2 per cent of all arrivals.”

Such programmes only work, however, when entrants are a) from a country to which we are currently happy to return them and b) can be proven to be citizens of that country. (One of the cases for the Rwanda Scheme put to me by Home Office officials was that it created a strong incentive for illegal entrants to keep their passports; if they did, they could be deported from here.)

Absent that, there is just getting much more muscular and much less granular about deportations (Germany does not appear to have expelled Imran anywhere in particular) and trying to make Britain a less appealing prospect for illegal migrants by sharply restricting access to black-economy employment and state benefits, including housing.

The longer ministers takes to accept that, the bigger the headache they will create for themselves. Crossings were up a quarter in 2024 compared to the previous year – and by a third in the six months since Labour took office.

If the Government establishes itself as a soft touch, that number will only go up. Take Imran’s word for it.

This article (Banning people smugglers from social media will not stop the boats) was created and published by Conservative Home and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Henry Hill

Featured image sources: wikimedia.org, luxurygold.com, suffolknews.co.uk

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