More than 1,100 arrivals on small boats in past three days
Nearly 2,900 people are reported to have arrived between June 10 and 18.
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Your support makes all the difference.Channel crossings by people in small boats continued on Sunday, with a further 333 arrivals, figures have shown.
There were 374 people reported on Saturday and 486 on Friday, meaning 1,193 people have arrived in the past three days.
The cumulative number of arrivals in 2023 now stands at a provisional total of 10,472, according to the latest data from the Home Office.
Some 45,755 people were detected making the crossing in 2022.
Crossings have picked up in recent days after a quiet period earlier in the month, with 2,862 people reported to have arrived between June 10 and 18.
This includes 549 crossings on Sunday June 11, the highest number on a single day so far this year.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made stopping crossings by small boats one of his priorities for the year, along with cutting NHS waiting lists, growing the economy, halving inflation and reducing the national debt.
Seven boats were detected on Sunday, which suggests an average of around 48 people crossed the Channel per boat.
The total number of small-boat arrivals so far this year remains below the equivalent number at this point last year.
More than 11,600 people had made the crossing by June 18 2022 – over 1,000 higher than the 10,472 detected so far in 2023.
Dover Town councillor Rebecca Sawbridge said there were mixed responses in the Kent port town to the new arrival of migrants by small boats, but that Dover has always been a transient and multicultural town because of the docks.
The former seafarer said some residents have raised concerns about services, housing and poverty in relation to migrants arriving on the shoreline.
But on the increase of people arriving over the last few years, Ms Sawbridge said: “I don’t think more people have noticed it but there has definitely been more attention and publicity around it.”
She added: “Unless you live next to a hostel that houses migrants, you don’t have that face-to-face contact.”
One Dover resident, who wished not to be named, told the PA news agency she has sometimes seen boats arriving while walking her dog and reported it to the coastguard who arrive too late.
The 56-year-old said she was “fed up with it”, particularly on how she felt it was straining public services supporting new arrivals and wanted the Government to do more to tackle the small boat crossings.
But the teacher added: “It’s a really tricky one. Not all of those are genuine asylum seekers, some are… but they could go through appropriate channels.”
Meanwhile, Ibo Jamal said for people coming to the UK via small boats, it was a “bad idea” due to the dangerous journey.
However the 30-year-old barber said: “If they have a good life, they don’t come here… Definitely (for) some of them their lives are not safe.”
Also speaking in the town centre, Barbara Steger said while she does not come across many migrants in Dover, there has been a larger quantity of people coming in recent years.
The 86-year-old said: “I feel sorry for them in a way, because migrant (crossings) have been going on for years and years…
“It’s those traffickers I would like to see get caught.”