MIGRATION

Britain on Tuesday said it planned to bring in new legislation to prevent migrants who cross the English Channel from remaining in the country, as the government tries to control a surge in people arriving in small boats on its southern coast.

Kurdish criminal groups control the increasingly lucrative cross-Channel illegal migration routes using both lorries and, more recently, small boats, according to the NCA.

Europe overall has taken a harder stance against migration after a massive inflow of asylum-seekers in 2015-2016.

Germany is becoming a key destination for disillusioned young Tunisians despite a language barrier and the North African nation's long history of ties with France.

The UK's asylum system remains more overwhelmed than ever.

French prosecutors have so far charged 10 people for their alleged role in the disaster on November 24 last year.

French police stopped close to 50 migrants on Tuesday from attempting to cross the English Channel to Britain after mild weather and calm waters led a growing number of people to undertake the dangerous journey in recent days.

The number of migrants crossing the Channel from France to England has soared over the last five years from almost none to 42,000 this year.

The United Kingdom faced a barrage of questions and criticism of its migration and poverty policies in a United Nations review of its human rights record on Thursday amid allegations that it is backsliding on freedoms.

The facility in the busy town processes migrants who have crossed the Channel from northern Europe in small boats.

Migrant rescue group SOS Mediterranee said Thursday that it had called on the governments of France, Greece and Spain to help find a port for 234 people rescued while trying to reach Europe, after Italy and Malta failed to respond.

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman has landed herself in another controversy by revealing her plans for child refugees to undergo X-rays to verify their age.

Albania's prime minister accused Britain on Wednesday of using his country's citizens as scapegoats for its failed immigration policies after derogatory comments by British ministers about a rise in the number of Albanian asylum-seekers.

Homemade incendiary devices were thrown at the Western Jet Foil Border Force centre in Dover on Sunday, leaving two staff with minor injuries.

The European Union signed an agreement with Egypt on Sunday for the first phase of an 80 million-euro border management programme, a statement from the EU delegation in Cairo said, at a time when Egyptian migration to Europe has been rising.

A man threw petrol bombs attached to fireworks at a centre for processing migrants in the southern English port of Dover on Sunday and then killed himself, a Reuters photographer said.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday said he was "ashamed" of problems at the country's centre for processing asylum requests as humanitarian group Medecins sans Frontieres sent in a team to assist with migrants' medical needs.

Teenager Munasar Muhidin says he fled Somalia in 2020 after Islamist militants killed most of his family and that his brother died trying to get to Europe.

Britain recorded its biggest rise in foreign workers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the year to June, driven overwhelmingly by workers from outside the European Union, official figures showed on Tuesday.

Housed in a detention centre in southern England, Aladeen says he risked his life to travel thousands of miles from his homeland of Syria to escape being forced to fight in the military of President Bashar al-Assad.

An air and sea rescue operation was underway Wednesday after around 50 people went missing when a migrant boat sank in the Aegean Sea.

More than 28,500 -- most of them young men -- arrived on British shores last year. The all-time daily record of 853 was set in November 2021.

Mexican authorities rescued nearly 100 migrants who escaped from a stifling trailer being driven by a people smuggler in the coastal state of Veracruz.

Seventeen people died after a boat carrying dozens of Haitian migrants capsized off the coast of The Bahamas, authorities said on Sunday, as more Haitians attempt to reach the United States to flee gang violence and poverty at home.

British officials repeatedly warned the government not to pursue its plan to send migrants to Rwanda and the country was initially excluded from the shortlist of partner countries because of human rights concerns, London's High Court was told on Tuesday.

More than 28,500 people -- most of them young men -- arrived in 2021

Police had arrested 15 suspects in an overnight operation Sunday to Monday as part of their months-long investigation into the disaster, releasing five of them without charges.

Commonwealth leaders meet in Kigali on Friday to discuss cooperation on topics from trade to health to climate, against a backdrop of criticism of the host Rwanda's human rights record and of a British policy to deport asylum seekers there.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moved away from a confrontation with Prince Charles over the government's immigration deal with Rwanda after his spokesman said the matter would not likely be raised in talks with the heir to the throne.