Irregular Channel Crossings and Asylum: A Legal and Political Breakdown

 It is a common misconception that asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats are committing an illegal act. While entering the UK without prior permission may technically breach immigration controls, Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, to which the UK is a founding signatory, protects refugees who enter a country irregularly if they present themselves to the authorities without delay and have come directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened. In short: the act of claiming asylum is legal, even if the route taken is not pre-authorised.

Many people argue that asylum seekers should apply for protection in the first "safe country" they reach, often suggesting France as an obvious choice. However, there is no international legal requirement that asylum must be claimed in the first safe country. This belief stems from a misreading of protocols like the EU’s now-defunct Dublin Regulation, which the UK participated in before Brexit.

Under Dublin, EU states could return asylum seekers to the first member state they entered. Post-Brexit, the UK no longer participates in this framework, so it has no legal agreement in place with France to return asylum seekers under this logic.

In practice, France and other countries host far more asylum seekers than the UK. According to UNHCR data, France receives significantly more applications per year than Britain.

The UK government often insists that asylum should only be claimed via "safe and legal" routes. But these routes are extremely limited: Most are restricted to specific nationalities (e.g., Ukrainians or Afghans under narrow schemes). There is no general humanitarian visa that allows an asylum seeker to apply from abroad. You cannot apply for asylum at a UK embassy. To claim asylum in the UK, you must be physically present in the country.

Thus, for the vast majority fleeing war or persecution — especially in countries without formal schemes — the only way to reach UK soil is through irregular means, such as crossing the Channel.

The UK government’s Illegal Migration Act 2023 sought to declare those arriving “illegally” via irregular routes ineligible for asylum altogether. It also empowered the Home Secretary to disregard interim rulings from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) — notably Rule 39 orders, which had previously halted deportation flights to Rwanda.

This put the UK on a direct collision course with its international obligations under the Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights — effectively seeking to bypass the very laws designed to protect refugees.

The current political discourse often frames asylum seekers as lawbreakers, when in fact the legal framework was explicitly designed to account for the realities of forced displacement — which often do not allow for orderly queues or safe paperwork.

This rhetoric is weaponised to justify policies of deterrence, detention, and deportation, while avoiding a more honest conversation about international responsibility-sharing, UK foreign policy, and the absence of meaningful legal routes for people in dire need.

Those crossing the Channel are overwhelmingly people from war-torn and politically unstable regions — Syrians, Afghans, Eritreans, and others. Around 93% claim asylum, and most are found to be legitimate refugees. The means of arrival may be irregular, but the act of seeking refuge is not criminal under international law.

What has changed is not the law — but the UK’s political attitude toward it. The solution isn’t scapegoating desperate people. It’s building a fair, functioning, and rights-compliant asylum system 

— rooted in solidarity, not spectacle.