More migrants crossing the Channel are from Vietnam than anywhere else
More Channel migrants have come from Vietnam this year than any other country as the Government urged the Lords to drop its opposition to the Rwanda Bill.
The surge in Vietnamese migrants has been blamed by Downing Street for contributing to the record numbers crossing this year. Some 534 people reached the UK on Sunday, the highest in a single day this year. It brought the total this year to 6,265, up 28 per cent on the same point last year and seven per cent up on 2022.
On Monday, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman cited the “increasing number of Vietnamese” as one reason why the Safety of Rwanda Bill needed to be passed by Parliament to “save the lives of those being exploited by people-smuggling gangs”.
“It’s an unacceptable number of people who continue to cross the Channel and that demonstrates exactly why we must pass this Bill and get flights off the ground as soon as possible and provide the important deterrent that the Bill will provide,” he said.
On Monday night, MPs rejected Lords’ seven changes to the Bill by majorities of between 59 and 74 votes.
That sent the legislation back to the Upper House where Labour and crossbench peers will mount a fresh attempt on Tuesday to defeat the Government and send the legislation back to the Commons in a further round of parliamentary “ping pong”.
The number of Vietnamese crossing the Channel more than doubled last year from 505 in 2022 to 1,323. The rise has continued this year to make them the biggest cohort of Channel migrants, with Border Force reporting small boats packed with up to 20 Vietnamese migrants
Tougher security on lorries and the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants in a lorry trailer in Essex in 2019 has seen them divert away from road routes to small boats.
Vietnamese migrants tend to be trafficked by gangs into nail bars, cannabis farms, restaurants and the sex trade in the UK, which is why crime bosses have preferred lorries rather than small boats, where migrants are likely to be detained by Border Force.
Some have entered Europe via Serbia or Romania on work visas, only to find jobs badly paid with poor conditions.
“Many then travel onwards through Europe, again under the false premise of better conditions elsewhere,” said Nusrat Uddin, a trafficking specialist from Wilson Solicitors LLP.
Mimi Vu, an anti-trafficking and modern slavery expert based in Vietnam, said some of the migrants would have paid £15,000 to £20,000 to trafficking gangs.
She said sky-high interest rates of 700 to 1,000 per cent meant that migrants trafficked to Europe had just three objectives: to repay the debt, send remittances to their families (which account for nearly seven per cent of Vietnam’s GDP) and earn enough to live off.
James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, spoke with his Vietnamese counterpart on Monday as officials from both countries put the finishing touches to a new agreement with Vietnam to curb the flow of migrants from the southeast Asian country.
The Home Office launched a social media campaign in Vietnam last month to highlight the risks of crossing the Channel in a small boat.
Yesterday, Sir Matthew Rycroft, the top civil servant in the Home Office, told MPs that the Rwanda scheme – costing at least £370 million – would only deliver “value for money” if it succeeded in reducing the number of migrants crossing by a third. That would mean 10,000 fewer than the 29,437 last year.
In a tense appearance before the public accounts committee, he also admitted there had been “optimism bias” by officials when they estimated they could convert two RAF bases into asylum camps for £5 million apiece. The camp at RAF Wethersfield will cost £49 million, while RAF Scampton will be £27 million.
Officials admitted there were currently 40,000 Channel migrants “in limbo” whose asylum claims had been declared inadmissible under the Illegal Migration Act and should have been removed to Rwanda but had not been.
Tory MP Tim Loughton warned there would be no option but to grant them an amnesty because of the likely limits on flights to Rwanda.
