LONDON — The number of illegal immigrants arriving in Britain by small boat in 2023 will be 29,437, provisional government figures show, around 36% lower than the previous year.
In 2022, a record 45,775 people were spotted arriving in small boats on England’s south coast after making the perilous journey across the Channel, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made “stopping the boats” one of his five priorities, and is working to revive a plan to send those who arrived illegally in Britain to Rwanda after it was blocked by a court.
Britain currently spends more than 3 billion pounds a year processing asylum applications, with the cost of housing migrants awaiting decisions in hotels and other accommodation amounting to around 8 million pounds a day.
The backlog of asylum applications awaiting a decision hit a record high of just over 134,000 in the year to June, with the number of those applying the highest in two decades.
The Ministry of Home Affairs, the Home Office, said on Monday that the government had fulfilled the pledge made by Sunak in December 2022 to clear the backlog of 92,000 asylum cases by the end of 2023.
People, believed to be migrants, walk in Dungeness, Britain, on August 16, 2023. REUTERS
More than 112,000 asylum cases were processed in 2023, he said, with a grant rate of 67%, lower than the 2022 rate of 76%.
“By clearing the legacy asylum backlog … we are saving taxpayers millions of pounds in expensive hotel costs, reducing pressure on public services and ensuring the most vulnerable receive the right support,” Sunak said in a statement.
“But we cannot be complacent, which is why I am focused on delivering my commitment to stop the boats and get flights from land to Rwanda.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
