Rishi Sunak reports on the plans to stop illegal migration
Today, the Prime Minister will deliver a speech in Dover, giving an update on how our tough stance to stop the boats is working.
- The people who run illegal migration rackets sending people over the Channel in dangerous small boats are putting the lives of their victims at risk and causing deaths. They also puts too much pressure on our public services and causes delays to handling genuine asylum claims. - which is why stopping the boats is one of the Prime Minister’s top priorities.
- Last year net inward migration - that is, people who arrived here by safe and legal routes, less those who left the country, was over 600,000 people. And in the past few years we have given immigration visas to hundreds of thousands of genuine refugees, including more than a hundred thousand from Ukraine and tens of thousands from Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran.
- Those numbers should demolish the ridiculous but often repeated narrative that this government is not willing for Britain to play our fair part in providing a home for genuine refugees, or that there are no safe and legal routes. But the priority should go to those in greatest need, not those who are brought over by people smugglers.
- Albanian small boat arrivals are down 90 per cent year on year and the government has set up a 400-strong team of case workers to fast-track the backlog of 16,683 asylum applications by Albanians. Today the Prime Minister will give a further update on this progress.
- These figures show our tough stance on deportation and illegal migration will further deter people from making the dangerous crossing as we stop the boats.
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