300 migrants dead in the Channel but bleeding hearts say ‘keep coming’

Encouraging migrants to come to Britain on small boats is causing death (Image: GETTY) When six more Channel migrants died this weekend, after their leaky overloaded boat sank, I assumed that some of our bleeding-heart liberals would finally get the message. I assumed they’d finally realise that encouraging migrants to come to Britain on small boats is causing death. I assumed that assorted human-rights lawyers, Match of the Day presenters and lefty commentators who tell the world’s migrants that if they can only reach British shores, they’ll be able to stay, would at last admit that they have blood on their hands. But not a bit of it. Far from the mea culpa they owe the families of the dead, they either kept silent (like that Match of the Day presenter) or blamed the Tories. Their rationale? The Government hasn’t set up enough safe and legal asylum routes. What a load of baloney. You can argue till the sun sets over the White Cliffs about whether Britain should open more legal routes. You can argue that providing haven for 180,000 people from Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Ukraine is not enough. You can argue that, despite giving a home to over quarter of a million refugees, Britain should do even more. You could say that France, for example, accepts more asylum seekers than we do. But please don’t pretend that more legal routes will somehow stop the boats. Because however many asylum seekers are welcomed to Britain legally, there will always be millions more. There is good reason to believe that 100 million people around the world, and probably many more, would come to Britain and legitimately claim asylum if they had the chance, citing persecution, war or violence in their own country. Obviously, we cannot possibly house that number. So, we and other western countries must set a limit. Of the many millions who miss the cut, there will be plenty willing to go for illegal routes instead. And that’s why there will always be people smugglers. However many we find and lock up there will be loads of others chasing the staggering amount of cash on offer. Consider this: the going rate for crossing the Channel on one of those floating death traps is £4,000 per person. This year, 85,000 people are expected to make the journey. So, the Channel smuggling business in 2023 is worth a staggering £340 million. With that kind of bounty on offer, a steady supply of new smugglers will be ready to replace any we manage to put behind bars. There is therefore only one way to stop the boats: to disincentivise the paying customer. If the customer knows their cash will be wasted because their boat will be turned straight back, or because they’ll immediately be on a one-way ticket to Rwanda, they won’t bother. So, that must be the strategy. There is no other way. And that’s why there are plenty suggesting that the UK should actually do far more to disincentivise the migrants, not less, and damn the legal consequences. Yet bleeding-heart liberals, in their virtue-signalling self-righteousness, do everything possible to frustrate this – with fatal consequences. They actively encourage the migrants to come. Evil lawyers help them falsify documents. Campaigners protest against shared rooms on a barge. Others demand an asylum amnesty. Gary Lineker ludicrously declares that the government’s language is like that of Nazi Germany. The courts, of course, block the Rwanda scheme. The message to the migrants? Keep coming. Because once you get here, we’ll make sure you can stay. Not surprisingly, then, since 2018, 100,000 have indeed made that journey, with more every year. Our stretched public services must cater for them, and the impoverished taxpayer foots the bill. But there’s something far worse. Upwards of 300 migrants, including children, have lost their lives in foolhardy attempts to cross the Channel over the last 25 years. Many of them have drowned – a death that involves desperate, freezing panic followed by the agony of suffocation lasting about ten minutes. If the bleeding-heart liberals get their way, there will be many more.