Suella Braverman sparked a backlash last November when she described the number of small boats crossing the Channel as an ‘invasion’. The chattering classes objected to the ‘inflammatory language’ of the Home Secretary rather than the fact that 45,756 people entered Britain illegally in 2022.
The provocative word this month is ‘infinite’, used by a government source in admitting that even if Britain did stem the flow of Albanians crossing the Channel there are many thousands more migrants desperate to make it to Britain. ‘Their places on the boats would be filled by Somalis, Eritreans or Afghans who can’t afford to pay as much as the Albanians,’ they explained.
The source is not wrong. Frontex, the EU’s Border agency, recorded 308,000 irregular entries at the EU’s external borders between January and November 2022. This is a 68 per cent increase on the same period the previous year. Not since 2016 have so many migrants entered Europe.
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