Just three per cent of small boat migrants have been deported in six years, damning stats reveal

JUST three per cent of small boat migrants have been deported in six years, damning stats show.

However, legal arrivals into Britain were drastically cut by around 200,000 following a package of visa curbs implemented by the Tories.

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It gives Labour a decent springboard to fulfil their pledge to slash visa numbers, but lays bare the huge struggle to return illegal Channel crossers.

Home Office figures revealed just 2,336 of last year’s 31,493 small boat migrants have been removed.

And since 2018, only 3,788 of the 125,474 total have been sent home, with Albanians making up the vast majority since a returns deal was signed by ex-PM Rishi Sunak.

But Afghans and Iranians were the most common illegal migrants crossing from France last year, with virtually no chance of a similar agreement with the Taliban or Tehran.

Annual asylum costs to taxpayers are £4billion, compared to £500million in 2010.

The number being granted refugee status in the UK has also soared, with a total of 67,978 in the year to June 2024, more than treble the 21,436 in the previous 12 months.

Migration and Citizenship Minister Seema Malhotra said the stats “show the chaos the Tories left in our immigration and asylum system”.

Shadow Home Secretary James Cleverly said: “The actions I took as Home Secretary are working.

“I reformed visas and cut net migration. I was tackling the people smugglers and deterring the crossings, leading to fewer small boat arrivals and fewer asylum applications.”

Dr Ben Brindle, researcher at the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, said: “Visa numbers dropped in the last few months of the Conservative government and emigration has also been rising. In theory, this should mean a decline in net migration over the coming year.