INTERNATIONAL: At least 27 people headed for the UK drowned and died yesterday in the ­English Channel near Calais when their lifeboat deflated as they made a perilous crossing of the English Channel. The International Organisation for Migration has claimed it was the biggest single loss of life in the Channel since it began collecting data in 2014.

Many are fleeing danger and persecution in their own countries. But black market jobs are much more readily available in the UK for illegal migrants at places such as shops, car washes and nail bars.Other major pull factors are having family members already in the UK and being able to speak the English language. The number of people trying to reach England on boats from France so far this year is now more than three times that in the whole of 2020. The UK is 14th in Europe on the number of asylum seekers per capita.In 2021 Germany received the highest number of asylum applications, followed by France and Spain.

French President Emmanuel Macros has said on Thursday that France calls to strengthen cooperation with Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany but also the British and the European Commission. A series of meetings will be taken place in the coming hours and days, to better prevent arrivals on French soil from the southern routes, as well as the northern and eastern routes, and to better involve the British in the prevention of those influxes, by dismantling smuggler networks. He has announced that France have dismantled tens of them those past weeks, and the president would like to congratulate its police prefects and the national security units involved, but he says, they need a stronger European cooperation on that matter. They can’t do it alone.

France and Britain traded blame on Thursday after 27 people died trying to cross the Channel in an inflatable dinghy, the worst accident of its kind on record in the waterway separating the two countries.

^{PHOTO: GROUP OF MIGRANTS BOARDING DINGHY HEADED FOR UK / FRENCH PRESIDENT, EMMANUEL MACRON, GIVING STATEMENT ON DROWNING OF MIGRANTS IN CHANNEL CROSSING}