![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0_Migrant-Channel-crossing-incidents.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWriting for Belfast Live, the Alliance Party MLA Kate Nicholl argues that the number of unlawful small boat crossings which are now happening on a scale that simply hadn\u2019t been seen before Brexit.<\/p>\n
A small boat collecting migrants along the French coast before an attempt to cross the English Channel(Image: PA)<\/p>\n
The number of small boat crossings has increased since Brexit<\/a>. It\u2019s an inconvenient truth for those who championed us leaving the EU and whose rhetoric often includes the idea of the UK \u201ctaking back control.\u201d<\/p>\n But the reality is, since Brexit, control of our borders has weakened.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t vote for Brexit, and I have worked with asylum seekers<\/a> for long enough to know the vast majority are just normal people who have arrived frightened, exhausted and hoping for something better. So, while I find it hard to watch the DUP head into this election talking tough on migration for many reasons, what\u2019s most galling is that it was their project that made things worse for everyone.<\/p>\n \u201cTake back control of our borders\u201d was the promise. Nine years later, the reality is that net migration hasn\u2019t fallen, it\u2019s risen. Legally, through the Ukraine Scheme, the Hong Kong BNO route, or care workers on visas filling the gap left by EEA workers who no longer come here. What really exposes the hypocrisy, however, is the number of unlawful small boat crossings which are now happening on a scale that simply hadn\u2019t been seen before Brexit.<\/p>\n In 2018, just 299 people arrived in the UK by small boat. So few that the Home Office<\/a> didn\u2019t even bother recording it as a category before then. By 2022, that number had skyrocketed to 46,000. By March 2026, nine out of every ten unauthorised arrivals now come this way.<\/p>\n These crossings, in this number, exist because there is now no legal route left for most people to take instead, which is exactly why people are dying in the Channel and are being exploited by the smugglers who profit from that gap. Before Brexit, this route barely registered. After Brexit, it became the story.<\/p>\n Why is this the case? Because leaving the EU also meant leaving the Dublin III Regulation, which is the system that decided which European country was responsible for an asylum claim and let people be transferred between states accordingly.<\/p>\n Brexit<\/a> has robbed us of the certainty that this system provided.<\/p>\n Before Brexit, someone arriving here knew there was a real, working legal route that could send them back to wherever they\u2019d first claimed asylum in Europe. That knowledge mattered. It\u2019s gone now, and people know it\u2019s gone. We\u2019ve seen the consequences directly \u2013 fears that Denmark would send Syrian refugees back to Syria pushed some who already had protection there to come to the UK instead \u2013 a move that Dublin III would once have stopped in its tracks. If we can see that gap, so can the smugglers selling the crossing.<\/p>\n And here\u2019s the part that the \u2018take-back-control\u2019 Brexiteers don\u2019t talk about. We\u2019re now paying, in hard cash, for what EU membership once gave us for free. The new UK-France deal costs \u00a3662 million over three years, just for cooperation on crossings. Meanwhile, the \u201creturns agreement\u201d with Dublin, the one intended to send people in Northern Ireland<\/a> back to the Republic of Ireland, has resulted in precisely one person being returned. One.<\/p>\n Do the maths on it. More entirely lawful migration, plus a whole new unlawful route that simply didn\u2019t exist before \u2013 one that exists because the legal alternative was taken away, costing lives and handing profit to people smugglers \u2013 and the collapse of the one system that gave people, and the state, some certainty about where an asylum claim would actually be decided.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not control. That\u2019s the opposite of control.<\/p>\n I believe in an asylum system that\u2019s fair, compassionate and well-run, and in having a discussion around migration that\u2019s grounded in reality and humanity, not fear mongering.<\/p>\n So if the DUP and TUV want to fight this election on border control, I have one question for them \u2013 which part of this looks like control to you?<\/p>\n Sign up here for our Party Lines newsletter<\/a> and get the latest political analysis and headlines from Belfast Live’s Political Reporter James McCarthy direct to your inbox twice a week.<\/p>\n For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage<\/strong> here<\/a> and sign up to our daily newsletter<\/a> here.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writing for Belfast Live, the Alliance Party MLA Kate Nicholl argues that the number of unlawful small boat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1085076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5226],"tags":[6416,296763,802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,40,285,133077,11191,16,15],"class_list":["post-1085075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brexit","tag-alliance-party","tag-belfast-south-and-mid-down-constituency","tag-brexit","tag-britain","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-great-britain","tag-immigration","tag-politics","tag-south-belfast","tag-stormont","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116908541185310030","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1085075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1085075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1085075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1085076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1085075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1085075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1085075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0_JS343541892-1.jpg\")
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