How the Blob undermines our borders
Charities which depend on government funding are enabling Channel crossings
KATIE LAM
Since Labour came to power in July 2024, more than 80,000 illegal migrants have broken into Britain by crossing the English Channel on small boats.
Those migrants — the vast majority of whom are young men — are aided by people smugglers, who help them to make the crossing. When they arrive here, almost all of them claim asylum. Many are granted asylum on the thinnest possible pretexts, while many of those who have their asylum claims rejected are allowed to stay here for years, launching legal appeal after legal appeal.
But it isn’t just the people smuggling gangs that enable illegal migrants to break into our country. A network of open borders charities, in this country and in France, play a vital role in helping these illegal migrants to break our laws — and a shocking number of these charities are using taxpayer money to do so.
Nearly 3,000 pro-migration charities have received taxpayer money, by way of direct or indirect government grants, over the past decade. According to data obtained by Cambridge Circus Research, these charities have collectively received over £370 million.
That’s about what it would cost to build 600 new prison places, or to train 5,000 nurses. Instead, that money has been spent funding ideological charities which work to undermine the Government’s efforts to control immigration.
And about £78 million of that has come from the Home Office — the department that many of these charities go on to launch legal action against.
The process begins in Northern France where a network of charities provide aid and support to migrants in tent camps along the coast. Before arriving in France, many of these migrants will have travelled through multiple safe countries; they are almost all young men, immigrating to Britain for economic reasons. The support that these charities provide enables the existence of the camps, and encourages people to attempt the Channel crossing; without them, smuggling gangs would find it much harder to keep people in northern France, for weeks at a time, waiting for the right time to cross.
Then, migrants set off across the Channel in makeshift boats. Some land on the British coast, but many are picked up by Border Force, the Coast Guard, or by the RNLI. Once picked up, they’re taken to Home Office facilities for processing. Already, by their very act of arriving here, these people have broken our laws. They should, of course, be detained, and swiftly removed, either to their home country, or to a safe third country.
But every step of the way, pro-migration charities work to prevent this from happening. These charities provide advice on claiming asylum, and assistance in applying. They source, and pay for, legal representatives. They launch legal challenges against the Government, to try to prevent them from removing people who’ve had their asylum claims rejected. They guide migrants through the endless process of legal appeals, through which they’re allowed to stay here for years. And, if illegal migrants have their asylum applications accepted, they provide accommodation and financial support.
The biggest charity involved in the process is Migrant Help, which receives tens of millions of pounds a year in Government contracts — £54 million in 2024/25. The vast majority of that charity’s income comes from the Government; for every £100 that they receive, £84 comes from the Government. In this regard, Migrant Help is far from unusual.
In other words, many of the charities which aid these criminals, and which work to undermine our borders, could not exist without the money provided to them by the Government, at the taxpayer’s expense.
Even those groups which raise their income privately benefit from the legal structure provided to charities — schemes like Gift Aid, which allow charities to claim an extra 25p from the Government for every pound donated to them.
It is completely insane that the Government is continuing to fund groups which explicitly work against their attempts to secure the border — one of the most fundamental duties of any Government. If these pro-migration charities want to advocate for particular policies on immigration and asylum, then they’re welcome to do so. What they must not be allowed to do is use taxpayer money to fund their activism — and they certainly should not use taxpayer money to help people break our laws and exploit our system.
Despite their claims, there is nothing compassionate about the work that these charities do. Their support encourages migrants to make the Channel crossing, where people often drown, or freeze to death in frigid waters. Their work also puts the British public at risk, as has been made clear by the shocking acts of physical and sexual violence committed by many of the illegal migrants who’ve arrived here in recent years.
We must … unpick and defund the poisonous network of charities which are working to keep our borders open
There’s plenty that we can do to stop the flow of illegal migrants coming over the Channel — most of all, we can leave the ECHR and change our laws, so that people who arrive here illegally can never seek asylum, instead being detained and swiftly deported.
But we must also unpick and defund the poisonous network of charities which are working to keep our borders open. Taxpayers should not be funding political activism — particularly not when the results of that activism put the public in danger, and cost us all millions of pounds every year.
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(UKR)