LONDON: Nearly 30,000 migrants crossed the British Channel from mainland Europe to enter into the UK, according to the government figures released on Monday.
According to the figures from the Home Office, in a latest incident 55 people were detected in one boat by the interior ministry on December 16.
The risky journeys across one of the world’s busiest shipping routes have become a political headache for UK government, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowing last year to stop the boats.
He promised to reduce persistently high numbers of migrant arrivals as he attempts to win a general election this year.
The Prime Minister’s office responding to Monday’s statistics, pointed to a 36-percent reduction in small-boat arrivals last year, after a record 45,000 migrants arrived in 2022.
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His government claims that a $610 million agreement with France to boost efforts to stop the migrants is starting to pay off.
The Conservatives earlier hoped to deter the crossings by stopping all migrants arriving without prior authorization from applying for asylum and sending back some to Rwanda.
The UK Supreme Court later ruled that deporting migrants to the east African country was illegal under international law.
The Channel journeys on small inflatable boats prove deadly
The British Channel journeys on small inflatable boats which are often overloaded have proved deadly.
In November 2021, at least 27 people drowned when their boat capsized.
The British government is also under pressure to decrease the higher level of immigration via pre-authorized arrivals.
Meanwhile country’s interior minister James Cleverly has termed the previous practice of permitting dependents to come with foreign students unreasonable.
He added that the new British rules will see rapid fall in migration by the tens of thousands and contribute to our overall strategy to prevent 300,000 people from coming to the UK.
