In something of a surprising move for the United Kingdom’s new Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, he announced that all illegal immigrants currently in the United Kingdom would be deported.
He made that vow in a Sunday interview with UK media, likely driven to make it by the steady flow of migrants that are crossing into the UK from Europe. His administration is expected to push legislation that cracks down on illegal immigration and those illegal immigrants this week. The main emphasis of the expected legislation is on those illegal immigrants arriving in boats. They sail across the English Channel and settle in the UK without permission and are a large problem for the British people.
Speaking on the issue of illegal immigration during the interview, PM Sunak said, “Make no mistake, if you come here illegally, you will not be able to stay.”
Continuing, he added, “Illegal migration is not fair on British taxpayers, it is not fair on those who come here legally and it is not right that criminal gangs should be allowed to continue their immoral trade. I am determined to deliver on my promise to stop the boats.”
Part of Britain’s problem is that it, like the United States, has laws that allow illegal immigrants to claim asylum. Thus, when they’re caught in the UK or when they arrive, they claim to be fleeing from some foreign danger and then cannot be deported until the asylum hearing has been conducted. Given the massive number of illegal immigrants calling themselves asylum seekers.
However, unlike the United States, the United Kingdom has a massive moat in the Atlantic Ocean, North Sea, and English Channel. So, though illegal immigration is a serious problem for the island nation, the number of illegals washing up on its shores is far fewer than those migrants rushing across the southern border with Mexico. Fox News Digital, reporting on that aspect of the UK’s migrant crisis, said:
The illegal immigration crackdown from America’s closest ally comes as the U.S. itself faces an unprecedented crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has tracked more than 230,000 migrant encounters each month since October, up from 100,000 per month when President Biden took office.
In comparison, the U.K. tracked just 45,000 migrants crossing the English Channel in 2022, according to Reuters.
This isn’t the first time Sunak has vowed to start deporting illegals. He said much the same thing in an early February interview, telling TalkTV:
“The system that we need, the system that I want to introduce, is one whereby if you come here illegally, you should be swiftly detained and then in a matter of days or weeks we will hear your claim, not months and years, and then we will safely remove you somewhere else. And if we do that, that’s how we’ll break the cycle.”
“I’ll work with the Albanians to put in place a new deal which means for people coming from Albania illegally, we’ll be able to remove them safely back to Albania, and that is already happening.
“But the key thing we need to do is introduce new laws, and very soon we’ll be introducing new laws into parliament which deliver the system that I explained, the system which says if you come here illegally, you’re not really going to be able to stay here.”
“We will hear your claim in a matter of days or weeks, not months or years, and we will have the ability in the vast majority of cases to send you to an alternative safe country, be that where you come from, if it’s safe, like Albania, or, indeed, Rwanda. That is the system.”
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