Stopping the boats Part 3: Automatic prison sentences

In the third part of our “Stopping the boats” series, we consider the mandating of automatic custodial prison sentences for anyone entering the UK illegally as part of our package of potential deterrents to channel migrants.

Some people on the left have severe difficulty with the notion of “illegal” immigration. They prefer the term Irregular Migration, as they consider the use of the word “illegal” to suppose some kind of unfair inference of criminality on the actions of those crossing the channel in small boats. They consider these individuals to be genuine asylum seekers, driven by desperation and need, who have a right to seek safety and protection from war and persecution.

They are happy to ignore the fact that these people have invariably passed through multiple safe countries, in any of which they could have claimed asylum and lived a happy and safe existence. They parrot the pretence that the boats are filled with women and children, a view inconsistent with official Home Office data which states that over ¾ of small boat migrants are men.

They are so deeply wedded to the notion that all illegal migrants are legitimate refugees, they cannot even accept the concept of an economic migrant, or that the boats may even contain foreign criminals or terrorists. This drives them to repel at the use of the term “illegal immigrant”, and to brand anyone expressing concerns about small boat crossings and the potential risk to the safety of people in this country, as “far-right”, “racist”, or even “Nazis”.

Whilst these views aren’t shared by all on the left, they are indicative of our champagne-socialist media classes. The so-called “Refugees Welcome” brand of liberal have no idea how detached from reality, and from the widespread sentiment of the majority of the British public, they really are.

The truth is, anyone arriving here on a small boat has committed a criminal offence under UK law. Consistent with the laws of virtually every other country on earth, it is not legal to enter a foreign country without permission and without holding the appropriate documentation. We have a multitude of safe and legal routes into the UK from foreign nations, and a long-established and well documented pathway to claim asylum in this country.

If a foreign national chooses to circumvent these processes, for whatever reason, and to attempt to gain entry to this country through unofficial (and therefore illegal) routes, then they have broken our laws the minute they set foot on British soil. There is no debating that notion, it is fact.

How this can be lost on the leftie “refugees welcome” brigade is beyond me. It seems pretty simple. As a citizen of the UK, if I choose to break the law, I expect to be arrested and face prosecution in a UK court. The fact that we have a severe problem with prison overcrowding and a weak justice system which means I may avoid a custodial sentence for an act that otherwise might warrant it, is neither here nor there. These are other issues that need dealing with, but are not part of the conversation here. We are dealing with matters of principle, and the basic premise that I would propose is this:

Anyone who enters the country illegally by crossing the channel in a boat is given an automatic 1-year prison sentence.

Not a suspended sentence, to expire after 2 years of good behaviour. Not a ruling subject to appeal, further clogging up our already backlogged criminal justice system, and costing the British taxpayer to fund legal aid. An unequivocal and unavoidable 1 year prison sentence, to be carried out immediately following arrest and detention once you set foot on our shores.

Let’s make no bones about it… every single individual who has made the conscious choice to pass through multiple safe countries, then pay thousands of pounds to a criminal people-smuggling gang to board a boat and attempt to cross the channel into Britain, has acted illegally under UK law and should be subject to punishment under our criminal justice system. Some of these people may have been lied to and exploited by the immoral people smugglers, that is true. But ignorance of the law is not a valid defence for us, so it should not be for them either.

PRISON OVERCROWDING

“But we don’t have space in our prisons!” I hear you say. And you would be correct… our prisons are desperately overcrowded. To suddenly expect them to find room for 50,000 illegal immigrants per year would be impossible.

However, three key points to make here:

First, we could free up significant space overnight by releasing a large number of non-violent criminals who pose no danger to society. I include within this group, individuals such as Lucy Connelly, and anyone else incarcerated for social media posts, incitement, and “hurty words”. I would also include certain individuals serving sentences for crimes like tax evasion, low level fraud etc. Certainly these individuals should be punished for their crimes, but there are other ways of doing so (financial penalties, community service, house arrest etc.) that could free up spaces in our prisons for legitimately dangerous criminals, as well as for illegal immigrants.

Second, the number of prison spaces required would actually be relatively low. The threat of an immediate and automatic prison sentence, with no right to appeal, coupled with the measures that we outlined in parts 1 and 2 of this series (removing all pull factors, and putting illegal migrants into gated and supervised “nightingale” detention centres, rather than hotels) would all act to significantly reduce the number of small boat crossings. These measures are intended to act as a deterrent, to eradicate the problem in the first place. The numbers that would actually still attempt the crossing despite these deterrents being in place would be a fraction of the numbers we have seen crossing the channel in 2025.

Thirdly, the prison sentence does not necessarily have to be carried out in the UK. Where our prisons lack the capacity to fulfil such a policy, we could engage in arrangements with other countries to provide prison spaces for us. El Salvador, for example, has expressed a willingness to work with Western nations in such an arrangement. I am sure that the prospect of spending a year in an El Salvadorian jail would make even the most determined migrant think twice before boarding a boat from France.

And before any bleeding-heart liberals try to claim that what we are proposing would be inhumane and propagate a perception of the UK as a bigoted and impassionate nation on the world stage, let me remind you what the current punishments for illegal entry are in some other countries around the world:

India	Imprisonment for 2 to 8 years and a fine
China	Imprisonment, criminal detention, and a fine
Indonesia	Fine and/or imprisonment for up to one year or five years
Pakistan	Imprisonment for up to 10 years and fine
Bangladesh	Imprisonment for up to 5 years and fine
Russia	Imprisonment or correctional labor of up to 2 years
Japan	Imprisonment up to 3 years and/or fine, and deportation
Germany	Imprisonment of up to 1 year or fine
Thailand	Imprisonment up to 2 years, fine, and deportation
France	1 year of imprisonment and/or fine; 3 years’ imprisonment for illegal re-entry
Canada	Fine and imprisonment for 6 months or 2 years
Ukraine	Imprisonment of up to 3 years
Poland	Imprisonment of up to 2 years or fine
Sri Lanka	Imprisonment for 1 to 5 years and fine
UAE	Imprisonment and deportation
North Korea	Detention, torture, forced labour, and potentially execution

Amongst the above list are countries such as France, Germany and Canada, socialist-led nations with a record for being far more liberal than the UK. If it is good enough for them, why shouldn’t it be for us? Why is the UK such a soft touch?

We must align ourselves with other nations in terms of the punishment we issue for illegal entry, if we want to deter people from attempting it.

No doubt the leftie human rights lawyers that blocked virtually every attempt the previous Tory administration made to curtail the flood of illegal immigration through the channel will try their best to do the same again. But we would have more than sufficient moral and legal grounds to pass such a legislative act, which would be well within keeping of a host of other countries, many of whom we consider both political and ideological allies and whom we look to as humanitarian trailblazers.

UP NEXT: Part 4 - Permanently remove the right to claim asylum