So what can in practical terms fully halt illegal immigration?

I've just googled Leicester in 2016 and funnily enough found this article from January 2016;

Thousands of Indians entered Britain illegally using fake documents bought from criminals exploiting an immigration loophole exposed by The Mail on Sunday last week.

The forged papers entitle holders to obtain EU passports using a bizarre but entirely legitimate back door which gives those living in former Portuguese colonies the right to come to Europe.

An estimated 3,000 Indians have entered the UK in this manner with the help of a gang operating in Lisbon, London and Leicester, paying the criminals up to £22,000 a time.

Under Portuguese law, Indians born in Goa, Diu and Daman before 1961, or their children and grandchildren, can apply for Portuguese passports because these were colonies of Portugal until that year.

As a result, 20,000 Indians [see also a higher figure quoted in the article below] obtained Portuguese passports in India, and came straight to Britain without even setting foot in Portugal.

Now we can reveal that Portuguese police and the UK’s Home Office and National Crime Agency have gathered evidence indicating that 3,000 Indians obtained the passports with false birth and marriage certificates provided by the gang.

In December [2015] Home Office, NCA investigators, Leicestershire Police and Portuguese immigration officers raided seven properties in Leicester and one in London.

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-3413942/How-3-000-Indians-got-UK-fake-papers-sold-Portuguese-gangs-exploiting-immigration-loophole.html

According to this article published in 2022 - 143,018 people born in India applied to the EU Settlement Scheme - 72,921 with EU passports plus 70,097 non-EEA family members.

The most common non-EU country of birth for EU nationals is India. The most common EU nationality for people born in India is Portuguese. This is because Goa, Daman and Diu were Portuguese colonies. 55,788 Portuguese nationals currently resident in the UK were born in India.

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/diversity-eu-national-population-uk/

I know. That’s because the link goes to the HO website, which is updated. If you want the stats that Melissa Macdonald, an assistant research analyst, and Hannah Wilkins, a senior researcher at the House of Commons Library specialising in immigration and asylum research, refer to, then you can find them yourself. I’m not going to all that effort for someone who just makes stuff up to support their point.

You want a screenshot of the link I posted at 20:33? Ok. The date of publishing is in the green bit at the top and the bit I copied and pasted is in the second screenshot.

And that’s your lot from me because I’ve hit my tolerance level for today.

ETA, it says the images are under review and to check back, so if you want them that much, you’ll have to wait.

This paragraph of yours
”According to Home Office figures, between 2015 and 2018, 7,365 incoming requests were made to transfer people into the UK under the Dublin regulation, from which 2,365 people were transferred to the UK (some requests may still be pending)”

The home office figures embedded link goes to figures from 2017 to 2019 in relation to the Dublin Regulation not 2015 to 2018.

Great then post a screenshot.

this is the link embedded in the Home Office figures.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-june-2019/list-of-tables#asylum

Are you telling me you cut and pasted a paragraph and never actually looked at the embedded link to see if the data backed up the paragraph you copied?

we wouldn’t have time to appeal against a refusal, but that’s really not how Dublin works 😂

“Appeals against Dublin decisions are also very common. It is a fundamental right, but it prolongs many Dublin procedures, as the rate of appeal is high in all States, up to 80%.”

that certainly wouldn’t explain the low transfer figures under Dublin in the many years prior to the first hint of holding a referendum.

Always been low, it just got even lower post Brexit for the following reasons:
Admin burden
“The Dublin system therefore generates a considerable administrative, human and financial burden, while only 11% of transfers are actually carried out.”

Member States noncooperation which increased between EU and UK post Brexit:
“Once a transfer decision has been taken, Member States have six months (18 months if the applicant absconds) to carry out the transfer. After that, the issuing State becomes responsible for the request. In practice, this limited period of responsibility can encourage Member States who have been asked to take in asylum seekers to delay transfers. It also prompts asylum seekers to stay out of the procedure, and then to apply in another State.”

Source: European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. Fabienne Keller

Well then I don’t know what to tell you because I’ve just clicked on it and it opened right up to the paras I copied and pasted from.

You have taken fact A, we left the EU, and fact B, the numbers of small boat arrivals have increased, and you have determined that the only possible conclusion is that fact A is the cause of Fact B. You have repeatedly ignored several posters trying to explain to you that there are a number of factors that you haven’t taken into account (one of whom confirms they have over 30 years in the job, whereas you don’t even know what a Deportation Order is) and you have fabricated the most ridiculous scenarios like we could be bothered to make requests for boat arrivals and that EU countries fobbed us off for four years because they knew we’d be going for a hard Brexit. I’m happy to explain, discuss and/ or debate this with anyone, but I’m not prepared to waste my time if you’re refusing to engage your critical thinking skills. At this point, it’s very clear that you’ve just dug your heels in.

low transfer figures under Dublin in the many years prior to the first hint of holding a referendum.

figures you haven’t posted or linked to.

No, I followed your link and opened up the data table under the Dublin Regulation heading,

But not by small channel boats from France. The method was not attractive preBrexit because it involves going from one EU country to another EU country which would meet Dublin III standards.

I said the small boats crisis is a direct consequence of Brexit.

Please do not invent a strawman of all illegal immigration is a consequence of Brexit to deflect from the facts. No one with a modicum of sense would attempt to argue that.

@LoremIpsumCici I don’t have a typo at all, I copied and pasted directly from the link I posted at 20:33 which was a report published on Monday, 04 November, 2019. It says very clearly which period it’s referring to, so I can only think you’re looking at a different link.

And I don’t know where you’re getting these ideas about the EU refusing applications four years before we left on the basis that we wouldn’t have time to appeal against a refusal, but that’s really not how Dublin works 😂 There are strict timescales for dealing with dispute resolution because the country making the request wouldn’t consider the person’s claim until a definitive no had been received from the third country. And even if they did, that certainly wouldn’t explain the low transfer figures under Dublin in the many years prior to the first hint of holding a referendum.

Oh, so we ask them nicely to leave with a removal order and they just go? Pull the other one mate. The people we are talking about are forcibly removed which is deportation If you don’t understand enough about immigration to know the difference between admin removal and deportation, then you could have just said so nicely and I’d have explained it to you. https://immigrationbarrister.co.uk/deportation-vs-removal-key-differences-uk-immigration-law/ Here you go, this sets it all out very clearly.

No, but it sends a huge signal to labour to start to do something about it while they can.

Those posts are clear, I’m not sure why it’s hard to say ok it makes senses

Oh, so we ask them nicely to leave with a removal order and they just go? Pull the other one mate. The people we are talking about are forcibly removed which is deportation.

You have a typo, your Home Office figures link is not from 2015-2018 but from 2017-2020. Post Brexit vote.

(They are still coming by lorry, the Chunnel, I am pleased to inform you, has been operational the entire time.)

In addition, once we had the Brexit vote (2016), it was clear we would be leaving the Dublin III agreement so the rest of the EU now had an excuse to reject applications knowing we wouldn’t have time to appeal before the transition period ended in 2020.

That imho accounts for the dismal success rate post 2016.

And we don’t deport them. We administratively remove them. Deportation is something completely different.

We could, we just didn’t bother because it was only handfuls 😂 What?! You think we just didn’t make the relevant requests because we couldn’t be bothered? 😂 Where have you got that daft idea from? If a request to return someone under the Dublin Agreement wasn’t made, it was because they didn’t meet the very strict criteria. Or a request was made and it was refused.

Taken from the link I posted above, According to Home Office figures, between 2015 and 2018, 7,365 incoming requests were made to transfer people into the UK under the Dublin regulation, from which 2,365 people were transferred to the UK (some requests may still be pending)

This means that the UK accepted around 33% of requests. During the same period, the UK made 18,953 outgoing requests to transfer people to other Member States, from which 1,395 people were transferred abroad. This amounts to around 7% of outgoing requests by the UK resulting in a transfer.

In 2018, the UK received a total of 37,453 asylum applications, and made 5,510 outgoing transfer requests under Dublin III. Of these 5,510 requests, 209 migrants were transferred out of the UK under Dublin III, whilst 1,215 came in, making the UK a net recipient in 2018

And may I just point out that, pre Brexit, the vast majority of illegal and irregular entrants to the UK were arriving by lorry. Funnily enough, Dublin wasn’t acting as much of a deterrent there either, even before the first rumblings of the referendum. And yes, numbers are increasing year on year. Because the UK has pull factors that don’t exist in the EU and because the situation in the countries these people are coming from is pretty awful. Migrant movement numbers are increasing throughout the world. As you’ll be aware, we take far less than some other EU countries, and as others have pointed out, Dublin has done sod all to deter those applicants, has it?

Yes exactly this.

@LoremIpsumCiciin 2002 pre Brexit near highest-ever annual number of asylum applications, with approximately 84,100 to 103,081 applications made. There was no deterrent.

It doesn’t work as a deterrent anywhere else now.

I have worked in immigration for over 30 years. Brexit is nothing to do with the boats. The Dublin agreement was never a deterrent. Small boats are just an MO that was proven in a couple of years then adopted quickly by the traffickers due to measures taken to strengthen the border elsewhere.
The boats would also be much more dangerous if BF and RNLI hadn’t adapted to being prepared to intercept at the halfway point. Neither of those parties had a choice if they wanted to avoid mass drownings. Now it’s a standard daily routine to pick up hundreds a day but this wasn’t something traffickers could be confident about until it was well tested.

It really wasn’t a powerful deterrent at all. That is just not correct.

In fact the dip in numbers in these years coincided with the we will deport anyone arriving after April 2022, almost immediately delayed to June 2022 to Rwanda announcement & scheme:
2022-45,774
2023-29,437 (the year it was battled through the High Court)
2024-36,816 (found legal & then cancelled when Labour won the GE)
2025-41,472

The perceived and actual ability to deport asylum seekers is a deterrent, even if it doesn’t actually get used..,

The latest poster clarifies it.

Or anywhere in the EU.

The boats crisis is a direct consequence of Brexit.

We could, we just didn’t bother because it was only handfuls.
The fact we could was a powerful deterrent.

Even during the Syrian migration crisis of 2014 and 2015, we were left mostly untouched unlike Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Greece, Romania, Malta and Italy.

That’s because in 2013, the EU set up a migration coordination agency where the EU nations jointly process asylum applications and agree on quotas.
https://www.coe.int/en/web/migration-and-refugees

The UK refused to be a part of it from the start.