The UK Border Force has returned a group of migrants to France after their small boat got into trouble in the English Channel.
This appears to be a departure from past policy, at a crucial time.
Channel crossings are rising again as the weather gets warmer, and remain a controversial part of migration discussions.
The Conversation’s Avery Anapol asked Alex Balch, who researches migration and human rights at the University of Liverpool, what this episode means for the future of collaboration between the two countries on crossings. This article is the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the UK Defence Journal. If you would like to submit your own article on this topic or any other, please see our submission guidelines.
On the afternoon of July 17, a small boat in French waters near Calais with over 70 people on board was reported as being in difficulty. Tragically, one person lost their life.
British ships (a Border Force vessel and RNLI lifeboat) joined the French coastguard in rescuing some of the people in the water, who were then returned to France. It has been reported this was “at the request of local authorities” (the French coastguard), and it is likely that emergency medical services were required.
UK reports have suggested this is significant because France normally refuses to allow the return of rescued migrants once they are on board UK vessels.
The Home Office has officially denied there has been a change in policy. But they appear to be briefing journalists that this signals a more cooperative approach from the French authorities.
Who is responsible for rescuing migrants in the Channel?
Because the Channel is between the UK and France, both countries have jurisdiction over their own borders and water. But when people need to be rescued, it can be confusing to determine which country is responsible.
Typically, vessels getting into difficulty in French territorial waters would be attended to by French authorities. It is less usual for British ships to be involved in such operations, but it can happen.
In 2021, it was reported that a Border Force vessel entered French waters to pick up migrants in distress. In that case, the rescued migrants were brought to Dover.
There is a long history of cooperation between France and the UK on search and rescue operations in the Channel. This is backed up by various agreements between the two countries, and the duty to rescue if people are in danger of being lost at sea, which is enshrined in several international laws.
Under these agreements, those who rescue assume primary responsibility. So, if a UK vessel picks up people in the Channel, they would normally bring them to the UK’s shores, not to France.
There is still some uncertainty about what happened in this situation, but in my view there may be some opportunism here on the part of the new government, which is keen to indicate there is already improved cooperation with France on migrant returns.
Is this the UK’s new policy for small boat crossings?
It seems unlikely this represents a new policy or was anything more than an example of cooperation in response to an emergency. Keir Starmer’s statements on small boat crossings during the election clearly signalled a continuation of policies focused on border security.
There has certainly been a change of rhetoric around cooperation with the EU over returns and respect for international human rights. But it is not clear yet what this will yield in terms of policy.
One of the first things the new government did was set up a new border security command, with “counter terror-style powers” to crack down on smuggling gangs.
The main difference is the decision to scale down the deterrence method favoured by the previous government, by dropping the Rwanda plan and the blanket ban on asylum applications in the UK for irregular migrants. Starmer has indicated an openness to offshore processing, although this has yet to be announced.
What is the current state of UK-France relations on asylum?
Recent years have seen a series of deals between the two countries, with the UK paying hundreds of millions of pounds to bolster border security in France. French president Emmanuel Macron has tried to put a positive spin on these recent agreements, claiming “we did our best”, but tensions remain.
The French government has repeatedly made clear its position that the UK should open a legal route for asylum seekers in France who wish to seek sanctuary in the UK, to avoid the build up of people on the French coast.
Number 10/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND
France processes considerably more asylum seekers than the UK (in 2023 167,230 compared to 93,296 in the UK). Due to its geography as a transit country, France’s government argues that it ends up shouldering the consequences of the UK’s unwillingness to take its fair share of refugees who want to cross the Channel.
Meeting at Blenheim Palace in the UK on Thursday for the European Political Community summit, Macron and Starmer agreed to “strengthen their cooperation on irregular migration”.
How many people have crossed the Channel in small boats this year?
Roughly 46,000 people were recorded crossing the English Channel in small boats in 2022. This dropped to 29,000 in 2023.
The numbers so far this year have been slightly higher than the same period in 2022, coming in at just under 15,000. Small boat arrivals make up a fraction of all immigration to the UK.
Alex Balch,The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
I’ve read that many migrants on dinghies refuse to be rescued by the French and threaten to sink their own boat leaving France no recourse but to allow British ships to enter and take them. Of course these are 1 in 100 instances, i’m not well versed in maritime laws to know who needs to rescue who and when. The border though being at calais for me makes no sense as it should be, in my opinion, at Dover ( but the touquet agreement is what it is)
Charity workers have been caught instructing migrants on how to exploit asylum law in Greece before. Its an entire industry of corruption posing as virtue.
Get baptised by C of E. unbelievably cynical by the church. Understand individuals who want to improve their lives by moving to another country but migration has significantly increased and has not got the consent of the nation nor has it been asked for. Migration maybe here to stay and it maybe we have ID cards and guest worker status. See what happens.
If countries don’t have effective borders the they cease to be countries.
If the volume of illegal immigration is too great for the current legislation and immigration processes to deal with then the laws have to be changed to meet the requirements of the increased demand.
Border Force has to be an agency which protects our borders and it should stop facilitating people smuggling. Boats should be seized and occupants offloaded back to French shores. Even if means dragging them out of the sea with hooks and throwing off the boat back onto French shores.
The long term conclusion of unlimited immigration is nothing short of the ethnic cleansing of the native population being targeted. The UK Government knows what its doing is wrong which is why it refuses to discuss it and continues to impose this policy without the democratic consent of the people. After all, what population would give consent to displace itself from its own settlements.
The exception that proves the rule. So the French and UK Governments will continue to facilitate organised crime, human traffickers and people smuggler networks across Europe and Africa under the pretext of human rights which are being selectively and inconsistently applied by racist lawyers in a corrupt judiciary.
So if we are going to rebadge these illegal migrants as asylum seekers then how is aiding the transportation of them to their chosen destination illegal? Smuggling is the transportation of goods or people across a boundary illegally.
Perhaps we’ll see gang members arguing their conviction at the ECHR if the person brought to the UK isn’t entering illegally the they have not been smuggled. 😀.
Heck if they’re clever they’ll rebadge as a charity.
There have been cases where the UK has tried to deport extremists, only to be blocked by the individual appealing to the ECHR. It is strange how you can preach religious hatred in which the narrative includes subjugation or harm to others, yet a non-violent deportation is considered a violation of human rights.
I wonder if the individual who earlier stabbed a soldier near Brompton Barracks is another they’d fight to prevent deportation?
BBC saying it might be mental health, par the course, but would not surprise me one bit that the perpetrator is another asylum seeker/refugee/economic migrant. Delete as your ideology, bias dictates.
So far, not another Lee Rigby fortunately.
I see we no longer have illegal immigration just irregular immigration so if entering the country by small boat isn’t illegal then people smuggling no longer exists by definition.
We take a percentage of legit asylum seekers from French in expectation and evidence they will return and stop boats. UK can take an agreed no of legit asylum seekers each year but not infinite no. If we allowed people drowning in the Irish Sea for the promise land of Ireland imagine the international condemnation.
But surely once these people have entered the first safe country on their journey, they cannot enter the next country as asylum seekers. To reach France they have crossed many safe countries.
Eu has open borders, they wave them on to channel beaches. When COVID came, borders got maned.
I understand it is easy to cross borders in the EU.
But my point is that claiming to be an asylum seeker or being labeled as such by a do-gooder charity is bogus.
Once they have reached the first safe country, asylum should be claimed there if they travel on they become migrants.
“Once they have reached the first safe country, asylum should be claimed there if they travel on they become migrants.”
Asylum applications in country [Embassy] for those in peril and unable to safely travel to the first safe country is required to brake the grip of the people smugglers.
Why would Syrians be choosing to come to a country that has no cultural association with them, unless it suited other organisation to enable that.
For example Syrians being delivered to the RF-Finland border as part of an FSB attempt to destabilise the new NATO member nation.
Not all people smugglers are just organised criminals, some are state sponsored criminals working to damage democratic nations.
So, my understanding is that the ‘first safe country’ policy is not the first safe place you reach. Rather it is the first country in which grants you asylum.
If you travel as a refugee, bound for the UK for whatever reason (family connection, language skills, free health care, life-long yearning to pick fruit; whatever…) and you do not claim asylum until you enter the UK, then the UK would be the first country to process your claim and potentially become your ‘first safe country’. If you claimed asylum in every country you travelled through (which often comes with shelter, benefits, emergency cash) en route to the UK, then the UK would be obligated to return you to whichever country first grants you asylum as that place would become the ‘first safe country’.
A lot of conflicting voices on here (quietly rightly, it is tagged as an opinion article) but I feel the situation is a huge mess of blurred lines: between refugee & asylum seeker; international obligations and national politics; illegality and do-gooding; economic growth and workforce sustainability. I have no concept of how complex the situation is and what the easy answer is, but we can’t continue to let people drown off the coast of a seemingly civilized country.
There’s some legit stats (Major refugee-hosting countries worldwide 2023 | Statista) here. Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Russia are taking huge numbers in excess of the UK, I would imagine mainly Middle Eastern refugees. Equally, Uganda, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Chad and Kenya all taking far more, again I would imagine Sudanese refugees. I would probably conclude that most people do just want to be safe.
I suppose there are two truths, we are a small country and taking 350K people a year is feeling unsustainable to some, equally, a lot of countries who are much less developed are doing far more despite having less influence on global instability.
No, first safe country literally means what it says, impacted by the subsequent EU free movement of people through the member states.
It’s not the first country that you choose because that’s not asylum, it’s economic migration..
We need to be clear to have a rational discussion.
Lonpfrb, thanks for the reply.
Completely agree for the need for accuracy for rational discourse. I’ve just had a quick read and the whole ‘first safe country’ is clearly a lively issue across the internal legal scene. Very much influenced by the political bias of the interpreter. As I say above, it’s a very blurred picture. Some countries do not recognize international laws as other do; some charities only wish to apply their interpretation of the law to all international standards whilst ignoring others; and – as you rightly point out – what happens when international agreements change an individual countries obligations? Your interpretation is the argument used by many governments to return people to other safe countries; mine more similar to the one used by human rights organisations, that individual choice is also a factor. I’m not convinced binary definitions are as simple as X is an economic migrant or X is an asylum seeker. There are far too many factors and far too little information to make sweeping generalizations. If it was that simple then minds far greater than ours would have agreed this already and the world would be a simpler place.
Cheers, NDG
Misery for legit workers coming here too, picking crops, story of seasonal workers paying gang masters £ 1000’s to get bonafide work crop picking and then being dismissed after a couple of months. Misery for all except for employers of low paid workers. Labour have cited nail bars and car washes as area of interest now. Tory’s have interest in keeping low pay workers and labour were too virtuous to believe that were difficulties with migration. I’m having a cup of tea now.
The situation in the English Channel is the result of negligence. The issue arises far from the coastline of western Europe and needs to be dealt with at land borders not on the water. People in distress on the seas must be rescued.
Illegal immigration is easily out paced by legal entry, running at annual rates of multiples of those in small boats.
I am not surprised,all in Whitehall working against the last government wishes,they didn’t like the last government.
Down here in Australia, boat turn backs has proved very successful…..
from what I understand when a migrant boat is intercepted, the migrants are taken off, quickly checked on the boat, then they are then placed into a sea worthy lifeboat, with sufficient food and water, which has a built in automatic gps navigation system which then takes them back to indosnesia, the country where they have departed from….
the life boats are unable to be manually steered, so are basically one way vessels….