Why do Channel migrants want to come to the UK?

BBC

London: Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have agreed that “new and innovative solutions” are needed to tackle small boat crossings.

The UK is paying France hundreds of millions of pounds to stop the boats leaving the French coast but, so far this year, the numbers of migrants arriving in the UK this way – most of whom go on to claim asylum – have reached record levels.

France has claimed that one factor attracting them is the ability to “work without papers” in the UK economy.

BBC Verify looks at the evidence for this and other “pull factors” cited as reasons for asylum seekers to choose the UK as a destination.

The French government has argued that asylum seekers come to the UK because they believe they will be able to work in its informal economy – where tax is not paid and people are employed without legal status and proper documentation.

Estimating the size of the informal economy is not simple for obvious reasons.

Nevertheless, one recent study from researchers at the European Parliament, suggests the size of the UK’s was about 11% of the total economy in 2022.

This was actually lower than their estimate for France’s at 14% and lower than the average of 31 European countries at 17%.

By its nature the UK’s informal economy provides potential opportunities for asylum seekers – and other irregular migrants – to work illegally – and the UK government has accepted the need for more enforcement in this area.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described this as a potential “pull factor” earlier this week.

The Home Office has increased the number of visits to employers suspected of hiring unauthorised workers.

There were 10,031 visits and 7,130 arrests in the year since the July election, compared with 6,797 visits and 4,734 arrests in the same period last year.

The volume and value of fines issued has also increased.

In the year to March 2025, 2,171 fines were issued to employers worth a total of £111m. In the same period last year, there were 1,676 fines worth £31m.

There is no data on the type of businesses targeted but recent Home Office press releases have mentioned restaurants, nail bars and construction sites.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair – and a number of Labour MPs – have called for the introduction of UK-wide digital identification to help the government tackle “illegal ‘off-the-books’ employment”.

Digital ID, which exists in many EU countries, could be used as a tool to check an individual’s right to work and to clamp down on illegal working.

But given some of these countries also appear to have sizeable informal economies, it is unclear about how much impact digital IDs have in this area.

Access to the legal labour market for asylum seekers, while they wait for their claims to be processed, is more restrictive in the UK than in many major European countries.

In the UK, they can apply for permission to work if they have been waiting for more than a year for an initial decision on their claim.