‘Net Migration Is Falling But The Small Boats Keep Coming’

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.

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 choice. They come in small boats because it is their last resort option. They come in small boats because we have closed almost every other route.

That is the policy failure that sits beneath all the noise. We have made it nearly impossible for someone who meets the legal definition of a refugee to reach the United Kingdom through legal means. We express outrage that they turn to criminal smugglers instead, when turning to criminal smugglers is the only option they have. The smugglers who profit from the misery and desperation of people fleeing war and terror did not create the demand. It was created by those who refuse to supply legal alternatives.

Deterrence matters. Disrupting criminal networks matters. Working with international partners on the root causes of displacement matters enormously. But deterrence without a legal alternative is not a serious asylum policy. It is theatre, and expensive theatre at that.

Instead of creating safe and legal routes, the government is paying out billions of pounds to private companies involved in the business of bordering – coastal enforcement, surveillance and interception. Despite the desperate need for investment in health care, education and housing, the spending priority seems to be to stop the small boats. But the boats keep coming.

The home secretary Shabana Mahmood has quadrupled down on restriction. The tough language has not moved opinion. The draconian measures have not moved the numbers. And the boats keep coming.

Despite anti-immigration rhetoric contributing heavily to the downfall of the Conservative Party, and despite immigration being the issue on which the public rates this Labour government worst of all, there is still the same vocabulary of deterrence, crackdowns and outrage. And the boats keep coming.

There is only one policy that works. For decades it has worked successfully in Canada. Even the US is beginning to recognise it. We have seen it work in its limited form in the UK too. It is a policy with cross-party support in principle and it is one the home secretary has publicly committed to. It is a low-cost policy, and a hidden gem set within the very harsh immigration policy. It could have served the government well to have highlighted it when they were being outflanked on the left by the Green Party in recent local elections. But instead, nobody mentioned it. There has been near radio silence.

Named community sponsorship allows local churches, charities, sports clubs, and civic groups to work with the government to sponsor named, pre-vetted refugees. Communities are not presented with a fait accompli. They choose who and how many they welcome. Sponsors arrange housing and access to services in advance. Integration begins from arrival. Language acquisition is faster. Employment rates are higher. It has such enormous benefits over small boat crossings that refugees are willing to queue and wait until someone chooses them to be offered sanctuary. Because the community has said yes, this changes everything about how the arrival is received. Because the refugee has an option, they no longer need the services of the criminal underworld.

Much of the public anxiety around immigration is not simply about numbers. It is about agency, about the feeling that decisions are made elsewhere and communities are left to simply absorb the consequences. Too often central government has filled asylum hotels or created mass sites in communities without their knowledge, understanding or consent. This has enraged local people and led, sadly, to ugly protests that disturbs the community more as well as further traumatises vulnerable asylum seekers and refugees.

Sponsorship inverts that entirely. It says to a congregation, a street, a town: here is a family, assessed and approved, who need a home. Will you help? It is a different conversation. It leads to a different outcome.

A great example of the success of community sponsorship is the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Ukrainians didn’t need to pay a smuggler and risk their lives crossing the world’s biggest shipping lane in a tiny inflatable craft. Ukrainians didn’t get into small boats because they could apply for a visa while they were in Ukraine or neighbouring safe countries like Romania and Poland. In fact, they can still do that.

Once a sponsor has been found and the visa has been issued, the refugee can get a flight to the UK and walk through border control with no fear. Some Ukrainians have even reported the overwhelming welcome they felt when met by the kindness and compassion of the Border Force agents. Sadly, those fleeing the horrors of war in Sudan or Eritrea are not given that opportunity, even when they have a family member in the UK. Outstanding Afghan young women who have earned scholarships to some of the UK’s top universities are not given that opportunity. Because of the current visa bans, the Taliban’s prohibition on women and girls studying is effectively being enforced by the UK.

When legal, structured route exists for pre-vetted refugees to reach the UK, some of those currently boarding dinghies will take it instead. The smugglers’ business model depends on having no competition. Genuine safe and legal routes provide competition.

Our government faces a defining choice. They can choose to follow their current trajectory, adopting ever harsher language about people whom the courts subsequently recognise, in the majority of cases, as genuine refugees. That approach has failed electorally. It has failed practically. It has damaged Britain’s international reputation as a country committed to humanitarian obligations and the rule of law. And while the political debate fixates on stopping arrivals, a quieter departure is already underway: nurses, doctors, care workers, teachers, hospitality staff and delivery drivers leaving a country that has become increasingly hostile to the very people on whom large parts of everyday life and public services depend.

Or they can make a harder and more honest argument: that the way to reduce Channel crossings is not only to punish those who make them, but to build a credible legal alternative that communities own, that the public can understand, that doesn’t waste precious funds, and that upholds the 1951 Refugee Convention that we helped to write 75 years ago this week.

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