AIBU to not understand why people will vote Reform when Brexit is the reason for the migrant boats.

[LIGHTSNACKER]

We did not have a boat problem before Brexit due to the rules/agreements, so why do people want to vote for the man who had a big part in causing this and his company party?

People have been coming across the channel from way before Brexit, may not have been on boats, but in lorries and through the channel tunnel.

Well, that'll do! We don't necessarily have to debate how big a factor it is - that's more a politics issue.

Current issues include:

(1) now that we have a separate immigration system from the EU, rejected applicants accross Europe have more incentive to "give it another go" in the UK. We might be able to negotiate access to EURODAC data, though (of course) the EU are unlikely to facilitate that if it means we are able to make more applicants their problem.

(2) We don't have meaningful, robust agreements with other countries, allowing us to deport to countries of origin.

(3) Even if we leave the ECHR (which I dont support), we remain party to other international treaties that our courts are showing deference to.

The issue may not be unsolveable, but I think people would do well to understand that it isn’t simple.

We left the club, we left influence, we left authority.

We became a 3rd country.

When Blair had all the issues with migrants & lorries etc, he negotiated with France/EU and pretty much stopped it.

We don't have that now, many in the EU are happy to see migrants go to a NON EU country.

Nothing like the numbers now and it dramatically reduced after agreements with France, not least having a UK border in France.

A lot easier to Police a handful of ferry ports than a 400 mile coast line.

Well, unless they recently left the European Union, how could they? My "argument" is that Brexit has resulted in existing difficulties becoming more acute - as clearly borne out by the data and acknowledged by one of the government's immigration ministers.

The fact that the Conservatives also put a lot of effort into seeking to negotiate return agreements (to facilitate deportations) to replace those which we could no longer access via the EU should also tell its own story.

I question the utility of listing the countries with the most effective policies because we cannot necessarily implement the same solutions. Austalia is undoubtedly one of the most effective and we are not likely to be able to adopt it, for legal, diplomatic and geographic reasons. I'd expect the US's recent change in laws may prove highly effective but, again, it isn't going to happen here.

Well, the EU has a successful return rate that fluctuates between about 30 and 40%

Only 20% here - European Commission (March 2025);

Return rates across the EU stand today at around 20 percent.

https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/migration-commission-proposes-new-european-approach-returns-2025-03-11_en

our return rate was 30-35%

Can you link to that, say for 2018/2019?

Now, post Brexit, our return rate is 6-8%

How many asylum applications have we actually completed the process for - i.e. refused asylum/ordered to leave the country, not pending appeal?

I've often wondered if we are deliberately slow here.

I don't know about the past, but if it's difficult to send them back, what actually is the benefit of completing the process and reaching refusal?

As, if you were that person, what would you do on hearing you are refused?

You would disappear immediately. So you need to be ready to deport immediately which I imagine is a pretty intensive process.

It wouldn't be beneficial for government to share figures of how many claims are refused, before they've been communicated, either, as you could (depending on figures) whip up a degree of panic with people planning to disappear. Although I suppose it may be available as a FOI request.

When Blair had all the issues with migrants & lorries etc. he negotiated with France/EU and pretty much stopped it.

We had several thousand migrants storming the Channel Tunnel in 2015 - some of them electrocuting themselves, falling off lorries and being hit by trains. France had to bring in the riot police. Angela Merkel helped out by letting a million asylum seekers go to Germany.

I don't really see how deporting people to Europe is much of a deterrent. It would likely have to be deporting them back to their country of origin, where they are citizens.

That certainly is a meaningful decrease in the EU's return rate - presumably also impacted by bandwidth for processing being strained recently - as is likely a contributor to the UK's drop.

"The EU's return rate was 38 %
in 2015, rising to 47 % in 2016, and
then falling to 36 % in 2018, 33 %
in 2019 and to 25 % in both 2020
and 2021." - taken from "Data on returns of irregular migrants - European Parliament" (I'd give a link but it goes straight to PDF download, which might not be welcomed - googling the phrase will take you right there, though).

The report flags that the drop to 25% in 2020 and 2021 was connected to control measures for the pandemic.

I don't think 2018/19s figures for the UK are a good point of reference (infact, all years post-referendum were likely impacted to some extent). One would expect countries to whom the UK is trying to deport asylum seekers to would reduce cooperation in an attempt to "run down the clock" until the effective date of leaving the EU.

• However - it is reasonable for flag that the largest drop (20% drop, from 59% to 39%) occurred in 2015, pre-referendum, and I don't think that can be reasonably attributed to a then-potential Brexit.

Ultimately though, its hard to say the extent and timing of reduced cooperation as a consequence of Brexit, but it does pollute the data.

Re. How many asylum applications have we actually completed the process for - i.e. refused asylum/ordered to leave the country, not pending appeal? you tell me, but obviously leaving EURODAC is a contributor to increased processing times.

Edit - that's @Clavinova

FairHazelMentor
Re. How many asylum applications have we actually completed the process for - i.e. refused asylum/ordered to leave the country, not pending appeal? you tell me

I was trying to establish where you got the 6-8% return rate from.

I don't think Brexit increased the number of people arriving, it is a problem all over Europe, Ireland has had vast immigration, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, France,Germany, Greece.
Italy has a problem the last decade.
Spain and the Canaries have regular boats, it's a European problem.

Ah, sure - thought you had a distinction already in mind. From, or extrapolated from:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2024/how-many-people-are-returned-from-the-uk

I tried to ballpark the calculations earlier, but clearly needed a coffee - with AI (and double checking) 8% for 2023 and 9.2% for 2024 is more accurate. And yes, its total applications over total returns.

I've also now used AI to run the same calc for earlier years, asking it to use the Home Office's published datasets.

I've spot-checked a few years for accuracy and saw some very minor inconsistencies (the table shows 32,244 applications for 2015 but the correct, final number looks to be 32,414) but the variances I saw were significant less than 1%, so it's probably down to Q4 estimates and later reconciliations, or something along those lines. Feel free to take it wish as large a pinch of salt as you deem appropriate.

Give people a vote on whether to stop the boats or not and I am sure "yes" will win quite easily.

Indeed they did, why? couldn't get in by any other method and as you say, sopped by the French Police.

By 2020, we had given them another far more easier way to get here.

Well done Farage!

What is Reforms plan?

They must have one seeing as Farage caused this crisis.

Europe are dealing with this more than most other areas now.

For everyone? Greece is stopping asylum as they’re overwhelmed, that too

How many came to the UK from France by any means, in 2019? compared to the years after we officially left the EU in 2020?

I think the reluctance to acknowledge the role of Brexit is because we don't want to take responsibility for our own decisions, not least Johnsons terrible Withdrawal agreement.

Plenty of people in 2016 said irregular migration would increase if we left the EU, & so it has proven to be so.

We lost our seat at the table of influence, but even if Brexit has had no affect, if we were still in the EU, we'd have many levers to pull to get the French/EU to Police their borders better.

It was high pre Brexit. Early 2000s was peak asylum just by lorries.

I think people overlook that because the way entry happens changed due to deaths.

Yes it was, we were in the EU and negotiated deal with France to end it, no least a UK border in France.

Like i said, as an EU member, we had influence to do this.

If you re right, why did it take over 15 years for the entry method to change to Boats? which occurred right on when we left the EU?

Because it takes time to establish new routes, market them and get supply chains going. It’s a massive business after all.

Bigger in scope than so much other stuff and more profitable.

If the leaving the EU issue is as you say why is Greece, who is still in, struggling so much? They’ve had to stop claims, it’s too much for them.

15 years? i don't think so, we had a handful of boats in 2020, by 2022 45k people crossed by this method.

BTW Chris Philp, ex Tory Home Office minister says Brexit made the matter worse, its not me saying Brexit.

We may have still had boats crossing, even IN the EU but we would have had influence and France wouldn't have seen us as a quick fix to pass migrants too, i think they are now fed up seeing their northern border become a hot spot for migration, hence the recent agreements.

Greece is taking migrants from a non EU country - Turkey, which is not policing its borders anymore.

Totally different.

Well yeh it takes time. You get here and tell people back home, it snowballs and you can even be asked to put up posts on how successful you were to aid business.

We do work with France btw, you may have noticed attempts to use tear gas on the beaches?

Starmer and co hailed slashing the boats as the answer too.

What else did you want to see on the beach or done that isn’t?

As for outside the EU the most effective country has been Italy, which goes back to specific policies they implemented- illegal pull backs and change to maritime laws.

Why do the ruling class want to impose mass immigration on the people of this country?