Yes We Can Turn Back the Boats: Principles, Policies and Method
A Force For Good supporters with our vital message at the "Enough is Enough" rally in George Square, Glasgow, Saturday 7 September 2024.
The Labour Government is putting resources into a new "Border Security Command".
The Daily Telegraph (17-9-24) tells us:
Officers from the National Crime Agency are being deployed to Austria and Romania to tackle gangs who are transporting migrants and equipment through the two country from Italy, Greece, the Balkans and eastern Europe to the coast of northern France. The moves are part of a £75 million cash injection to help set up Labour's new Border Security Command, which will co-ordinate hundreds of investigations from the NCA, MI5, Border Force and Crown Prosecution Service. (1)
This all seems good and is certainly necessary.
However, we must close the door and go after the gangs.
PRINCIPLES:
FIRST, CLOSE THE DOOR if you WANT to BEAT THE GANGS
After all, the gangs are only there because this is a profitable business. Stop the profitable business and the gangs will wither away because there will be no money in it.
If we stop the physical viability of the Channel route, then we stop the people traffickers.
Going after people traffickers, but continuing to allow the Small Boats to keep crossing the Channel, is like leaving the door of a bank vault wide open, and putting all our resources into trying to find the people who might try to rob it. Instead, we should just close the door to the bank vault!
Blocking the route is the essential part of the process. Unless the profitable route is stopped, then new people traffickers will emerge to replace the ones we have caught.
SECOND, STOP THEM LANDING ON OUR SHORES
We must do everything we can to keep these people off our shores in the first place, because once they are on our shores, then – like it or not – they do become "our responsibility" in the sense that we have to feed and house them. The alternative would be to let them starve and wander about homeless – and that would surely create all sorts of additional problems!
So we have to remove the incentives to cross.
POLICIES: HOW TO REMOVE THE INCENTIVES TO CROSS
1. Ideally, the common sense law should be that if you come over on a Small Boat, or are smuggled in any other way, then you will absolutely be denied the right to claim asylum. You will be immediately sent to a holding centre where you will be processed. If you have no documents, you will be imprisoned until such time as you remember where you came from. If you have documents, you will be sent back to your home country forthwith.
Countries that do not want to take you back can be persuaded with economic considerations which might hurt them or help them. For example, we could cut their foreign aid, or increase their foreign aid. We could prevent remittances from their citizens in the UK being sent back to their home country, or tax such remittances very highly. We could impose tariffs on their goods and make things economically painful for them, or smooth economic relations to encourage them to cooperate.
We could impose restrictions or outright bans on visas for students, workers and visitors from such countries. We should also declare many more countries "safe" such as Vietnam, Turkey and Brazil to enable faster deportation.
2. In the absence of such a common sense law – and if we are still obliged to examine their claims for "asylum" prior to granting or refusing them "refugee status" – then this should involve processing these people off-shore, in a foreign country with whom we have an agreement. That will dissuade a few from arriving.
3. As part of this effort, we must ensure that "refugee status" will only be a temporary status, for a limited period of time, after which you cannot remain. [The way it works at present is that "asylum seekers" apply for "asylum" and those granted it, are then called "refugees" with "refugee status", and after 5 years they are allowed to apply for "Indefinite Leave to Remain".] After the temporary period ends, then the refugee status will be revoked, and the person will need to go back to his or her country of origin, with perhaps a resettlement grant to help them on their way. This would be on the understanding that benefits, including housing and medical care, will be revoked if they do not return.
This would de-motivate many who thought they could get to the UK, and live here forever at our expense.
4. We must encourage those already here to go home. We're already paying £15 million a day for "asylum support, resettlement and accommodation". We could use that money to give them grants to go home instead! Again this would be on the understanding that benefits, including housing and medical care, will be revoked if they do not return.
5. And central to this approach is that we must physically turn back the boats.
METHOD: HOW to TURN BACK THE BOATS
The Labour Government does not want to do this. The Daily Telegraph reports:
Dame Angela Eagle, the minister for border security, said the UK could not turn back boats without the agreement of France, whose policy is not to intercept the vessels unless migrants ask to be rescued…The French argue that any interception without the permission of the migrants breaches maritime law because to do so would put their safety at risk. By contrast, the Italians have struck a £90 million deal with Tunisia for its border force and coastguard vessels to turn the boats around and return them to the Tunisian coast. (2)
INTERCEPT and RETURN TO FRANCE: The EU ALREADY SUPPORTS THIS in the MEDITERRANEAN
Dame Angela, however, needs to know that there are alternatives which she should explore and act upon.
For example, Tony Smith, the former Director General of the UK's Border Force wrote in the Daily Telegraph (16-9-24):
We now learn that Tunisia was paid €105 million to boost its border security and to train up its coastguard to improve migrant detection in its waters, after Meloni and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, flew to Tunis to strike the deal.
Italy has also supplied patrol vessels to enable the Tunisian coastguard to pick up migrants who set off in the Mediterranean and return them there, well before they enter international or Italian waters.
Meanwhile, Italy and the EU have for years been paying Libya to clamp down on migrant boats; it is not just a Meloni initiative. In August 2017, Italy and the EU put in place a deal whereby they train the Libyan coastguard to intercept boats and return migrants to Libya.
He points out the hypocrisy of the EU when it comes to Italy and North Africa, compared to the UK and France:
As far as the EU is concerned, it's OK to intercept migrant boats heading for the EU from North Africa and return them immediately whence they came, whether they like it or not. But it's not OK to intercept migrant boats heading to the UK from France and return them there.
Even though the relative 'safety' of returns to France pales into insignificance, when compared with returns to Tunisia and Libya…The plain fact is that the EU should stop pretending that maritime interdiction and returns of UK-bound migrant boats to France is not an option.
Rather, they should enter into immediate negotiations with us on joint patrols in the Channel – and the immediate safe return of all the migrants to France, regardless of who rescues them and where.
Then – and only then – will we be able to break the smugglers' business model and, ultimately, save lives. (3)
Italy and the EU works to return the Small Boats back to North Africa. We should be able to do that with France!
We need to work with France to ensure safe return, and if France won't work with us, then we need to find economic ways to incentivise France in order to ensure that it does!
All that is lacking is the political will.
STOP THE BOATS, and SAVE LIVES in the ATLANTIC
Effective interception-and-return [pick-up-and-return] will also save lives in the long-run.
Richard Tice MP pointed out in an interview of 24-9-24, that 45 people had died in the Channel so far in 2024. He said, quite rightly, that the lawyers and media who support the continuation of the Channel crossings "have blood on your hands". (4)
We would add that this death toll actually ignores the thousands who are dying in the Atlantic trying to get to Calais, in order to get to the UK!
Consider this article from the Sunday Telegraph (15-9-24). It examines the people trying to get to the Canary Islands (which is part of the EU because it is part of Spain). It describes one boat, and says:
126 people were pushed so closely together on a wooden fishing boat that they could barely move. Eating, sleeping and responding to nature's calls all had to happen where they sat.
It goes on:
They were lucky. The journey from West Africa to the Canary Islands is becoming one of the deadliest migrant routes to Europe. Every 45 minutes, a person fleeing some of the world's poorest and most dangerous countries loses their life along this passage attempting to reach the Spanish archipelago…Some 47 boats like the one Kebbeh travelled on vanished without a trace in the first five months of this year, with every single passenger missing. (5)
Therefore, if these 47 boats were like the first one described, with 126 people, then that would be 5,922 people dead – basically 6,000 dead – in the Atlantic in "the first 5 months of 2024"; many of them trying to get, ultimately, to Calais in order to get to the UK!
Physically stopping the boats, sending them back, and ending the Channel route might be chaotic in the initial stages, but it would certainly save more lives in the long run.
We need politicians who have the moral stamina to make this case, act upon it, and see it through to its successful conclusion.
WHAT WE CAN DO
In the absence of a government which will do this, the rest of us can, at least:
a) normalise this conversation, and
b) as we said at the "Enough is Enough" rally, only vote for politicians who will protect this country!
REFERENCES
1. Charles Hymas, "Border agents to head off migrants in Austria", Daily Telegraph, 17-9-24.
2. Charles Hymas, "Forcing back migrant boats not an option, says minister", Daily Telegraph, 18-9-24.
3. Tony Smith, "European Union is pushing its mass migration problem in our direction", Daily Telegraph, 16-9-24.
4. Posted on X/Twitter on 24-9-24.
5. Eir Nolsøe, "The British Pensioner Paradise becoming a Graveyard for Small Boat Migrants", Sunday Telegraph, 15-9-24.
For more articles on this subject see our Territorial Sovereignty: Article Index
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