'Net Migration Is Falling But The Small Boats Keep Coming'

Writing for HuffPost UK, Sanctuary Foundation founder Dr Krish Kandiah explains why the government is "not asking the right question" when it comes to asylum seekers.

The net migration figures released this week make for extraordinary reading. Net migration to the UK has fallen dramatically. Work visa applications have plummeted. Study visas no longer bring family members automatically. And emigration is accelerating – not just British people leaving, but large numbers of immigrants departing too.

For years, the political right has spoken of invasion. On the evidence of this week’s data, that invasion has gone into reverse. It is beginning to look like an exodus.

There is one exception. In one category of arrival there have been no government measures, no bilateral deals, no ministerial announcements, and no number of press conferences on the docks of Dover tarmac that have made any lasting difference. Channel crossings continue. Month after month. Parliament after parliament. Home secretary after home secretary.

That’s because we are not asking the right question.

Instead of asking how we stop the boats, we need to consider the question why, when every other category of migration has fallen sharply, do the crossings persist?

This question is not comfortable for any government. That’s because the answer is disturbing. The reality of the implications of war and terror and threat are disturbing.

“These refugees cross the Channel in dinghies, not because they want to, but because they have no choice.”

“These refugees cross the Channel in dinghies, not because they want to, but because they have no choice.”

Nearly two thirds of people who arrived in the UK by small boat between 2018 and 2025 were subsequently granted asylum. They were not gaming the system. They were not queue jumpers. They were not an army of “fighting-aged men.” After rigorous and extensive investigation by the Home Office they were found to be legitimate refugees, refugees in the strict legal sense that this country helped define in 1951, or, in other words, legal refugees.

These refugees cross the Channel in dinghies, not because they want to, but because they have no........

© HuffPost