Editorial: Deterrence is essential in the attempts to control the UK's borders

The ​Greek coast guard picked up 147 migrants trying to reach the island of Lesbos from Greece in a 24-hour period this week.

Lesbos is within relatively easy crossing distance from Turkey, and was the epicentre of a massive movement of migrants in 2015, when a wave of immigration hit Europe in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war.

In the UK on Monday, more than 200 migrants crossed English Channel in three boats, a similar level of arrivals to that being seen in Greece. The number of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats has surpassed 19,000 this year so far.

Yet still a host of people insist that there is no problem. Amnesty International has criticised the Labour government for adopting a “securitised” approach to controlling immigration, saying it could put off genuine asylum seekers from coming here. Such criticism of the new government is almost the opposite of the truth. Sir Keir Starmer rejected the former Tory government’s Rwanda scheme to process people who had arrived in the UK by small boats in East Africa, yet they paid no heed to the fact that such a scheme, if seen to be implemented, would have far greater impact in terms of deterring people from even trying to make the dangerous illegal sea journey than in terms of numbers processed.

Critics of any attempt to clampdown on the small boats point out that it is only a small proportion of immigration into the UK. Yes, it is, but that only shows the overall scale of the influx. And while 19,000 people is a small number, it is means an even larger number of homes is needed in a country that already has a major housing shortage. This is why hotels are having to be taken over across Northern Ireland, yet if any concerns are raised at all about the strain caused by accommodation demands when, as we report on P8, NI is already in need of social housing, they are dismissed as​ racist.