Patrick Christys: There’s a magic money tree for illegal immigration, but not for social care

There’s something a bit fishy going on in the Channel. Another day, another record number of arrivals. Sources claim 1,000 illegal migrants set foot on British soil yesterday, beating the previous record of 828 in one day set just a couple of weeks ago. That takes the grand total of arrivals this year to 12,500 – almost the same number as the amount of Afghan refugees we’ve accepted.

Priti Patel has done what she always does – talk tough but do precious little. She told Tory MPs yesterday that she was considering withholding the £54m she promised to give the French because they’ve proven to be about as effective at protecting their own borders as they were during World War 2.

This government appears to be all out of ideas, well, I’ve got a few. Start with £54m, tell the French you’ll give it to them at the end of the year, and then deduct an amount for every migrant that makes it across the Channel.

I think I’ve figured out why France isn’t really bothered about the money – reports suggest that it will cost us around £70m this year alone to keep all the illegal migrants in hotels, some of them four star. In fact, some of the hotels have been block booked until January 2022. So I think the French have worked out that it will actually cost them more money in the long run to stop the migrants making their way across the Channel – so they’re not bothered. They wave them through.

So we have several more options here – the fact is that record numbers of people are trying to enter Britain illegally. This poses a monumental security risk. Whilst I’m sure the vast majority of people making the trip across the busiest shipping lane in the world are decent people, we realistically have no idea who most of them are or where they’ve come from.

If the French aren’t going to police the situation, surely we are justified in sending our navy in to French waters and stopping them ourselves? I’m sure this would cause somewhat of an international incident but surely any country is well within its rights to stop a potential terror threat from arriving on its shores – the French would just have to suck it up, or, you know, do their job.

Another option is that now our military is back from Afghanistan, why can’t we use those troops to go and track down and nullify the people smuggling gangs? Failing that, what is so wrong with an offshore processing centre? I can’t understand why we haven’t done this already. I refuse to believe that we can be this soft and this inept when it comes to preventing people from crossing the channel and landing in Britain. To me, it almost looks deliberate.

I can’t help but wonder if there’s been a secret deal done with the EU as a condition of our departure to take a certain number of migrants. I don’t want to get my tin foil hat on or anything, but it looks a bit suspect doesn’t it. Not least because official figures show that we haven’t sent a single illegal migrant back, even to safe third countries where they should have claimed asylum, I find that a bit strange.

I’m for one am sick and tired of being told how cash strapped we are, how we all have to tighten our belts. It sticks in the craw that we are all potentially about to face tax hikes to help fund social care, when the government can find 70m quid a year to put illegal immigrants in hotels and it can find another £54m to give to the French to do absolutely naf all.

There’s a magic money tree when it comes to illegal immigration, but for everything else, you and I have to pay through the nose for it.