Almost 30,000 migrants reached English shores illegally in 2023 by crossing the English Channel in makeshift boats, a figure far below that of 2022, when arrivals immigrants had reached record levels.

Successive Tory governments have promised to “take back control of the border” after Brexit. Immigration is one of the main issues of the pre-election campaign ahead of the parliamentary elections to be held in the country in 2024.

The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised to stop irregular migrants crossing the Channel.

In 2023, 29,437 migrants arrived in Britain, compared to 45,774 in 2022, according to UK Home Office figures. This 2023 number, however, remains the second highest ever recorded, higher than that of 2021 (28,526).

About 20% of immigrants arriving in 2023 came from Afghanistan, according to the British ministry’s data collected up to November 29. Next are Iranian nationals, about 12% of the total, then Turks (11%), Eritrean nationals (9%) and Iraqis (9%).

On the other hand, the number of Albanianswho were among most of the emigrants who crossed it English Channel in 2022 (12,658), down more than 90%.

London and Tirana have reached an agreement to prevent Albanians from crossing illegally to United Kingdom.

The British government has many times hailed the success of this agreement, as well as the one it concluded with France. In March, Sunak and the French president Emmanuel Macron they reached an agreement that sees London contribute more than 500 million euros over three years to strengthen surveillance on French shores and fight smuggling gangs.

Britain’s Conservative government, which has adopted tough restrictive asylum laws, is still pushing ahead with a controversial deportation plan in Rwanda migrants who arrived illegally in the UK.

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in fact, he ruled that this plan of the government is illegal. However, London proceeded to a new agreement with Kigali. The new bill “is the toughest immigration legislation ever tabled in Parliament,” the British prime minister told Parliament in December.