Analysis from the Migration Watch UK think tank has found that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘one in, one out’ deportation scheme with France would take nearly three hundred years to remove the migrants who have arrived since the 2024 general election.
Amid a record setting pace of illegal boat migrants landing on British shores under the leftist Labour Party government, with Prime Minister Starmer’s flagship plan of “smashing the gangs” failing to make a dent in arrivals, London and Paris agreed in July to the so-called ‘one in, one out’ scheme to in a bid to disincentivise illegal crossings of the English Channel.
However, the scheme, in which boat migrants are sent back to France in exchange for asylum seekers with supposedly strong claims to obtain refugee status in Britain, has so far failed to meaningfully increase deportations, with just dozens being sent back to France under the framework.
According to calculations from Migration Watch UK, just 42 boat migrants were sent back to France in the first 76 days of the scheme. This is compared to the 59,348 illegal migrants who successfully crossed the English Channel since the July 4th general election last year.
The think tank estimated that based on current trends, it would take the British government 294 years to send back the illegals that arrived under Labour’s watch back to France, provided no more new migrants arrived in Britain for the rest of time.
In comments provided to Breitbart London, Migration Watch Chairman Alp Mehmet said: “This is not a legacy to look back on with pride, Prime Minister. Moreover, if we receive one migrant back for each one we return, we will have the same number, plus new arrivals, to fend for.
“The public have had enough of fibs and bluster, which the gangs lap up as they get smashed on champagne.”
Meanwhile, the Home Office admitted on Wednesday that one of the first illegals sent back to France under the ‘one in, one out’ scheme has already illegally returned to Britain on another small boat launched from the French coast.
Speaking to the left-wing Guardian newspaper, the migrant said that he wants to be granted asylum in the UK, while claiming that he has been a victim of modern slavery by people smuggling gangs operating in northern France and was therefore afraid for his life upon being sent back to the country.
He claimed to have fallen “into the trap of a human trafficking network in the forests of France before I crossed to the UK from France the first time.”
The unnamed migrant claimed that the traffickers forced him to work, abused him, and threatened to kill him with a gun if he protested.
However, he said that he did not reveal his alleged mistreatment to the UK Home Office when he first arrived illegally in the country out of “shame”.
The French Interior Ministry rejected the notion that returned migrants under the scheme would be in any danger upon being sent back to France, given that they are provided with state-funded accommodation while it is being decided whether to send them back to their native countries.
A spokesman for the UK Home Office said: “We will not accept any abuse of our borders, and we will do everything in our power to remove those without the legal right to be here. Individuals who are returned under the pilot and subsequently attempt to re-enter the UK illegally will be removed.”
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