In this sense, the British Interior Minister, Priti Patel and her French counterpart, Gérald Darmanin, signed the agreement with the aim of strengthening bilateral cooperation to address the issue.
As part of the agreement, the British authorities reported that the number of police officers patrolling French beaches will double for the second time in a year to prevent small boats from arriving from France.
With UK support, last year France doubled the number of officers deployed daily to its beaches, improved intelligence sharing and bought more cutting-edge technology.
This resulted in the continental European country preventing twice as many crossings so far this year as in the same period in 2020.
However, as French interceptions increased, organized criminal gangs changed their tactics, moving towards the French coast and forcing immigrants to make even longer and riskier journeys, the British Home Office said.
The deal comes as the interior minister’s new immigration plan is debated in Parliament this week.
It’s about the controversial “Nationality and Borders Law Project” that, according to the government of Boris Johnson, will address the flaws in the current asylum system and the criminal activity behind irregular immigration and welcome people through safe and legal routes while preventing abuse of the system with measures that prevent entry and associated crime to these crosses.
“The British people just got tired of illegal immigration and the exploitation of immigrants by criminal gangs. Illegal immigration is driven by organized criminals and human traffickers, “the official stressed.
The minister said the government is tackling the challenge of illegal immigration “for the first time in more than two decades” through a comprehensive reform of the asylum system.
According to their vision, this law will allow them to go after gangs that exploit immigrants, deter illegal entry into the UK and introduce new criminal offenses for those who try to enter illegally.
But for Amnesty International, this bill will only bring further chaos and delays to the UK immigration system, which he described as “dysfunctional”.
“Criminalizing people just for trying to get to safety is morally and legally indefensible,” Steve Valdez-Symonds, director of the NGO’s refugee and immigrant rights program, told the BBC. .
“Instead, it is likely to drive desperate people to avoid the authorities, leaving them vulnerable to further exploitation and slavery,” he concluded.
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