Surge in Channel crossings as one in five small boats migrants are now from ... trends now

A ten-fold increase in Vietnamese migrants has driven a surge in illegal Channel crossings this year, the Government has revealed.

Some 6,265 people have arrived in Britain by dinghy since January, the Home Office said yesterday – a 24 per cent rise on the same period of 2023.

And migrants from Vietnam made up one in five of the arrivals (1,266), up from just 3 per cent (125) a year earlier.

'This represents a ten-fold year-on-year increase in Vietnamese arrivals,' the Home Office said.

Afghans (1,216) accounted for another fifth of the total, marginally up from 1,098, while there were 3,783 from the rest of the world – similar to the 3,826 recorded a year earlier.

No arrivals have been detected in the past week, since the record 534 who came ashore in ten boats on April 15.

However the figures are a major blow to Rishi Sunak's crucial pledge to 'stop the boats', reversing the progress made in 2023 when numbers fell by 36 per cent.

The Prime Minister acknowledged the 'changing tactics' of the 'sophisticated' people-smuggling gangs in his press conference on the Rwanda deportation scheme yesterday morning.

'As well as piling twice as many people into small dinghies and increasing violence against French police, they have shifted their attentions towards vulnerable Vietnamese migrants,' he told reporters. 'Vietnamese arrivals have increased ten-fold and account for almost all of the increase in small-boat numbers we have seen this year.'

But he said work was already under way to tackle the trend, including an agreement with French president Emmanuel Macron on 'closing loopholes to enter Europe in the first place'.

An agreement has also been reached with Vietnam on closer working, and last week Vietnamese officials visited the Western Jet Foil and Manston asylum processing centres in Kent to observe Border Force operations.

Officials believe a new migrant worker visa agreement

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