Don't be fooled by the myth of a 'migrant invasion' | Daniel Trilling

The government's authoritarian posturing ignores the facts about asylum seekers coming to Britain

An invasion is what happens when a state uses military force to violently enter another country. It does not look at all like the recent images of small groups of people, many from countries that have themselves been invaded or bombed, crossing an international border in search of asylum. And yet the rhetoric of invasion has returned to British politics amid a growing moral panic over people crossing the Channel in small boats.

What's new is the method of travel, not the fact that people are travelling. Fewer lorries crossing the channel because of the pandemic means fewer vehicles in which to hide - which has pushed more people to attempt journeys in inflatable dinghies. The number of people doing this has risen sharply in 2020: just over 4,000 so far, a figure that can seem alarming when presented without context. (Germany and France each receive more than twice the number of asylum applications per year than the UK.)