After years of refusals from Paris to consider a migrant returns deal with post-Brexit Britain, the French Interior Ministry has said that it is in talks with Britain over a “pilot” bi-lateral scheme as a step towards a broader UK-EU deal, the Financial Times reported.
Under the terms of the tentative deal, a one-for-one framework would be established in which illegal migrants who crossed the Channel from the beaches of France could be sent back, if the UK agrees in turn to take in an equal number of migrants who would qualify for asylum in Britain, such as those who have family members already living in the country.
While the deal would mean that the same exact number of migrants would arrive, it would perhaps serve to take the migrant crisis off the front pages of British newspapers and therefore serve as a reprieve for the Labour government of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who has been dogged over his failure to meaningfully stem the tide of illegals.
Despite having promised to end the crisis by “smashing” the people smuggling gangs ahead of last year’s election, the number of illegal aliens brought ashore in Britain so far this year has hit an all time high of nearly 9,000 since the beginning of January. According to calculations from GB News, this is aproximately 40 per cent higher than last year when 6,265 had illegally crossed the waterway at this point of the year.
Just this week, the year’s record for daily arrivals was set on Tuesday when 705 boat migrants landed on England’s beaches in 24 hours.
This grinding betrayal of the instruction of voters has coincided with the rise of Brexit leader Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which has consistently been polling either on par or above the Labour Party in recent months.
Unlike the Labour government, and indeed successive so-called Conservative governments before it, Reform has called for a turn back the boats approach to the crisis similar to the extremely successful ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ policy of former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, which all but eliminated illegal boat migration to the former British Dominion from countries like Indonesia.
In contrast, the Tories and Labour have been content with sending hundreds of millions of pounds sterling to Paris to pay for — allegedly — increased police presence along the French coastline and the targeting of people smuggling networks that facilitate the transport of migrants across the Channel to Britain.
France had previously been resistant to coming to a returns deal after the UK left the European Union, claiming that any agreement should be made with the European Union as a whole, although this is as much anything likely using the European Union as a fig leaf for France not wanting to stop the flow of migrants heading north. Regardless there would likely be much resistance within the bloc, given that many member states already refuse to accept returns from fellow member states under the Dublin agreement.
The French Interior Ministry, which is under increasing pressure from its own citizens to combat illegal migration, said that it would be willing to work on a one-for-one exchange ‘pilot’ scheme with Britain in the hopes that prompt returns of illegals would deter further illegal migrants and the people smuggling networks.
In a statement, the ministry said: “France’s interest is to discourage migrants (and smuggling networks) from attempting to reach the UK from France.
“It’s a pilot scheme that anticipates a future European agreement, which France strongly supports,” it said. “It is based on a one-for-one principle: for each legal admission under family reunification, there would be a corresponding readmission of undocumented migrants who managed to cross [the Channel].”
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