Facing an increase in migration across the English Channel, the UK agreed to fund additional policing and new migrant detention center in northern France on Friday, to the tune of $576 million over three years. The deal, which builds on previous agreements between the UK and France, is the latest step by Britain’s right-wing government to combat immigration, and a sign of the Conservative Party’s increasing desperation on the issue.
After the number of migrants entering the UK by crossing the channel exploded in 2020, climbing from just 300 people to 8,500 in just two years, it reached new heights in 2022 with 45,000 new arrivals. In response, not only is the UK stepping up cooperation with France on immigration, but British Home Secretary Suella Braverman this week introduced a draconian new bill that would refuse the right to asylum to people arriving via irregular migration.
Under the terms of the new agreement, announced Friday at a UK-France summit in Paris, the UK will not only fund a new migrant detention center in France, but an increased French police presence in the English Channel to intercept attempted crossings via boat. France is expected to contribute funding to the enforcement efforts as well, but the French government has not yet released those details.
“The level of ambition of this plan is exactly what we need,” French President Emmanuel Macron said of the deal, emphasizing that “this is not an agreement between UK and France but between UK and EU.”
Braverman’s bill, meanwhile, which was introduced in the House of Commons on March 7 and has yet to face a vote, would deport people who arrive to the UK via irregular migration channels — primarily small boats crossing the English Channel — and bar them from seeking asylum in the UK. The bill has been widely criticized as racist and legally fraught, and both the UN’s refugee agency and the European court of human rights have objected on human rights grounds.
As described…
Read the full article here
