UK urged to follow Australia over migrant policy

UK politicians urged to look at how Australia turns back boats in dealing with its own migrant crisis in the English Channel.

Migrants aboard a rubber boat off the port of Calais. Picture: AP

British politicians have been urged to look at how Australia turns back the boats in dealing with its own migrant crisis in the English Channel.

Yesterday the 100th asylum seeker since Christmas landed on the Kent coast in a rubber dinghy from France. In the past few days scores of other migrants, mainly claiming to be Iranian, have been found in the busy shipping lanes in the Channel and taken to Dover by the British coastguard.

The increasing numbers of boat migrants has been blamed on pressure from people smugglers, who have been telling the migrants that the borders will be tightened after March 29, when the UK leaves the European Union, but also because of calm weather. US sanctions on Iran are also blamed, as is recent French police clampdowns on the thousands of migrants who gather around Calais. But as many as 40,000 Iranians were able to enter Serbia earlier this year without visas and many are believed to be relatively wealthy and paying smugglers to get them into the UK.

Nigel Farage has urged British MPs to follow Australia’s boats policy. Picture: Getty Images.

The former leader of the UK Independence Party, and Member of the European Parliament Nigel Farage wrote in The Daily Telegraph that the country should be looking to Australia and to return the migrants back to France.

He wrote: “At the very start of the Mediterranean migrant crisis in 2015, I told Jean Claude Juncker, the EU Commission President, that he should examine how the (former) Australian prime minister Tony Abbott had dealt with a similar seaborne invasion of Australia. Mr Abbott said that nobody who arrived in Australia by that route would be allowed to qualify as a refugee and stay in his country. Indeed, the Navy forcibly turned around migrant boats to prevent them from landing on the shores of Australia.’’

Mr Farage added: “This crisis demands that our Home Secretary stands up to the EU and to France. Sajid Javid must make it crystal clear that any individual who crosses the Channel by dinghy and illegally enters British waters will not be allowed to stay in our country, just as Tony Abbott did.’’

Mr Farage said the Geneva Convention Declaration on the process of applying for refugee status was clear: a person should make their claim in the first safe country in which they arrive.

He said: “Given that all of the recent arrivals have travelled from France — not a country hampered by war, poverty or persecution the last time I checked — the UK authorities are therefore complicit in ignoring this international humanitarian agreement. I say this because from what I can ascertain from the Home Office, every migrant who has arrived in the UK in recent months is still here.’’

Mr Javid, who has returned to London cutting short an African holiday to deal with what he called “a major incident,” spoke to his French counterpart Christopher Castaner by telephone on Sunday. Mr Castaner tweeted: “In touch with my British counterpart Sajid Javid. We are co-ordinating to strengthen our actions to combat Channel crossings undertaken by certain irregular migrants on small boats, at peril of their lives.”

The two have agreed to step up joint patrols, increasing surveillance and sharing resources to disrupt the organised trafficking groups. They have also agreed to a face-to-face meeting on a day yet to be confirmed in January.