Why people smuggling means profits
People smuggling is one of the few functioning markets left in the UK
Readers of The Critic will be painfully aware that the British economy is fake. As Chris Bayliss has written, “a range of caps, cross-subsidies, means-based pricing and interlocking entitlements via the universal credit system are making prices, and to some extent incomes, irrelevant”, and that’s before we consider the vast array of regulations and requirements loaded on every business in the land.
Every legal business that is, for just as British citizens experience anarcho-tyranny, so do its companies. Our high streets are full of organised-crime controlled enterprises which, as I wrote earlier this month, “often deal drugs from the premises, employ people who don’t have a right to work in the UK or who have been trafficked and forced to work as slaves, sell illegal or unsafe products, evade tax and have even been linked to child sexual abuse and exploitation”. Unsurprisingly, those businesses also ignore other laws, such as the requirement to pay business rates, file their accounts or abide by health and safety rules. The result is that they’re operating at a vast advantage to those traditional businesses which do obey the law.
Despite all the noise about enforcement and “smashing the gangs” … people smuggling prices have collapsed over the last decade
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And now, courtesy of the BBC, we have learned that a network of UK-registered businesses has been integrated into the people smuggling industry. According to their report, “people smugglers are directing migrants to pay for illegal Channel crossings using a network” of British companies including a car wash in Cambridgeshire and a phone shop in south-east London. When investigators went to the phone shop they were told that it would cost £2,700 for two people to enter the country via small boat. I found this detail particularly interesting, because it reveals the extent to which, despite all the noise about enforcement and “smashing the gangs” that people smuggling prices have collapsed over the last decade.
The small boats route to the UK began in around 2016. Contrary to popular belief amongst certain communities, this was not because of Brexit (the Dublin Convention is often mentioned). Rather, it was because of a great policing success — French and British authorities had finally managed to shut down the ferry and Channel Tunnel routes, by securing the terminals and aggressively searching lorries and cars making the trip to the UK. The people smugglers needed a new route. I know. I met some in prison. One, an Englishman named Bill (not his real name) had been a prolific smuggler via the ferry route, bringing dozens of illegal migrants to the UK before being caught by the French, and serving six months in one of their jails.
After his release, Bill decided to innovate. He knew how to sail, so he bought a small yacht, and began running an illegal migrant taxi service from French ports like Gravelines, Grand-Fort-Philippe or Les Hemmes d’Oye to nondescript leisure marinas on England’s south coast. Bill was caught by British police in 2018, and jailed for eight years. He wasn’t the only one. In 2016 it was reported that a Ukrainian-operated smuggling network had brought “up to 200” migrants to the UK, each of them paying around £5,400 for the journey. That would be almost £7,000 today, compared with the £1,350 per person the BBC journalists were offered. So despite a decade of deals with the French, tough rhetoric and promises to “smash the gangs”, the price in 2026 has fallen to a fifth of what it was in 2016, a feat not to the best of my knowledge achieved by any other British transport operator.
People smugglers have achieved this because they exist in a remorselessly competitive market with very high demand, and vast profits to be made. Since 2018 over 200,000 migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats. Even at the much cheaper 2026 prices that would represent over a quarter of a billion pounds of business to the smuggling gangs. The run-rate now is about 50,000 migrants, or £67.5m a year. So, operating in a lucrative market, and free to set their own prices unlike many legitimate, lawful British businesses, people smugglers have innovated and competed.
The principal innovation they have arrived on is using much cheaper boats. Instead of the yachts used by Bill and the Ukrainians which would transport migrants safely to English marinas, the gangs now rely on sending those migrants out into the Channel in much lighter, inflatable boats which aren’t realistically capable of making the crossing. They are able to do this because they know that the UK’s Border Force will intercept these boats and ensure their passengers are safely transported to the UK. Thus these illegal businesses are unbound by the UK’s fake markets, while also being able to offload costs onto the state. This approach also significantly reduces risk for the smuggling gangs as they no longer have to worry about their sailors being arrested or their boats seized.
So, operating outside of price caps, subsidies and means-based pricing, they have been able to slash their prices while transporting 200,000 people across the Channel, even though this has supposedly been opposed by both the UK and France. For all the notional costs imposed on people smugglers’ illegal activities by intelligence gathering and policing, it seems that being outside of the UK’s regulatory framework, and free to innovate has a greater downward impact on prices. In a very real, very bleak sense then, people smuggling is one of the few functioning markets left in the UK. No wonder even mobile phone shops and car washes are getting in on the game.
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