Great Britain: English Channel migrant crossings likely to hit 21,000 within days

More than 20,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year. Some 607 people made the perilous journey on Saturday alone – the third time the total has topped 600 since the start of 2022.

For the whole of 2021, just over 28,500 were detected and processed by the UK Border Force.

With more than four months still left to run this year, the total number of people crossing the Channel is set to more than double last year’s tally.

The proportion of UK residents born overseas has increased by 7 per cent since 2000.

In 2021 there were approximately 6 million people with non-British nationality living in the UK and 9.6m people who were born abroad, according to Government data.