The visibility of small boat crossings of the English Channel should not prevent our remembering that migrants also use ferries, planes, trains and vehicles to enter the United Kingdom irregularly and by clandestine means. The rapid increase in the proportion of people making the dangerous journey across the Channel may suggest, however, that security improvements made by the French and UK authorities in northern France is displacing traffic from those routes into small boats. We agree with t...

The visibility of small boat crossings of the English Channel should not prevent our remembering that migrants also use ferries, planes, trains and vehicles to enter the United Kingdom irregularly and by clandestine means. The rapid increase in the proportion of people making the dangerous journey across the Channel may suggest, however, that security improvements made by the French and UK authorities in northern France is displacing traffic from those routes into small boats. We agree with the Permanent Secretary that any policy that closes down small boat immigration by inadvertently creating something even more dangerous would be a pyrrhic Type: conclusion | Number: 5 | Paragraph: 21 | Response status: under_consideration Government response: The Government monitors closely all forms of illegal migration and is alert to the potential for displacement across different types of entry. Most preventative activity is threat-agnostic and will target criminal facilitators involved in dif