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While New Jersey man Hadi Matar stabbed famous novelist Salman Rushdie in presence of hundreds of audiences at the Chautauqua Institution auditorium in the New York City, according to the Arab News, people traffickers smuggling migrants across the English Channel are offering a “summer sale” to people wanting to reach the UK, promising safe passage and that “the French won’t stop you”.
The Daily Mail reported on August 9, 2022 that traffickers are advertising trips across the English Channel for as little as £1,500 (US$1,815) on social media, with talk of limited intervention from French authorities and unusually good weather contributing to an uptick in numbers attempting the journey.
The UK has seen a steady increase in people making the dangerous Channel crossing over the past year, with many coming from Syria and Iraq, but in particular from Afghanistan, following the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021.
However, the recent swell is also thought to have been driven by large numbers of Albanians — who made up more than one-third of arrivals by boat in the past six weeks — exploiting a loophole in UK asylum law, claiming that although their country is not at war nor do they face persecution, they are victims of trafficking and slavery.
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One advert on TikTok said: “Don’t pay £17,800-£18,000. They are passing by every day, it has never been cheaper”. Another showed a group of people holding an Albanian flag smiling in a dinghy crossing the sea.
The price of a journey by dinghy across the Channel has dropped significantly in the past year after previously costing as much as £20,000 per person.
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Competition has helped lower the price, with up to nine gangs now known to be operating trafficking routes by boat from France — and fears abound that the UK’s plans to deport people to Rwanda will make it more difficult to cross in the near future.
One smuggler using a TikTok account called @franc_gomone_angli1 told an undercover reporter from The Sun posing as a migrant that the UK’s Rwanda policy had been canceled, and that the country would put asylum seekers up in hotels.
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“The French won’t stop you. On the contrary, they will escort you safely until you reach the UK water border”, he said.
“I can give you a number of a solicitor (in the UK) I have used for my relatives. They have managed to secure documentation (permission to stay) for half the Albanians in London”.
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He added: “Three months ago one boy was kept in detention for a month, then he was freed by his solicitor. All others I have talked to after they arrived were sent to hotels, then they disappeared. They went to their relatives”.
The former director-general of the UK Border Force, Tony Smith, told the Telegraph: “It may be the business model is struggling to handle new markets like Albania, and may have to do a bit more of this sales pitch to encourage more people to do it”.
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On August 8, 2022, 150 migrants, including young children and a baby, were rescued in the Channel. More than 500 people reached the UK by dinghy over the weekend, with the total for the year climbing above 18,000. At least 28,526 crossed in 2021, up from 8,404 the year before.
Natalie Elphicke, Conservative MP for Dover, which bears the brunt of the influx, told the Mail: “It’s clear many Albanians coming to the UK in small boats are not fleeing war or persecution — they are economic migrants.
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“This is blatant criminality, and it underlines the urgency of getting on with Rwanda and similar schemes”.
Tom Hunt, Conservative MP for Ipswich, said: “It’s so critical that the government gets on and introduces the Rwanda scheme.
“We need to bring this farce to a close. Legislation to bring the Rwanda scheme to fruition should be top of the in-tray when Parliament gets back after summer recess”.
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Home Secretary Priti Patel said in a statement: “No one should question this government’s determination to break the gangs’ business model.
“Social media posts promoting illegal crossings are totally unacceptable. We are looking at reforming the system we use to identify victims of modern slavery, so that we can support genuine victims while making sure that the system is not misused”.
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Commenting on this massive influx of illegal migrants into Britain and other European countries, columnist Christine Douglass-Williams said, “The ongoing violation of Britain’s borders is beyond a free-for-all, with no political will on the part of anyone in Britain to do anything to stop it. British taxpayers are footing the bill and enduring the security risks of the invasion by mainly Muslim migrants from Africa and the Middle East”.
According to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, “In 2020, the top five most common countries of nationality of people seeking asylum in the UK were Iran, Iraq, Albania, Eritrea, and Sudan”, which are all majority-Muslim countries except Eritrea, which has a significant Muslim minority. “Of all refugees resettled in the UK from January 2010 to December 2020, around 70 percent were Syrian”.
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The case of Hadi Matar
According to police, Hadi Matar (24), a New jersey man, who stabbed Salma Rushdie sympathies Iranian regime and its notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Iranian regime has called for Salman Rushdie’s death.
Law enforcement sources told The New York Post that an initial investigation suggests Matar has made social media posts in support of Iran and its Revolutionary Guard, and in support of Shi’a extremism more broadly.
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New York State Police, however, said that Matar’s motive remained unclear.
“We don’t have any indication of a motive at this time”, Major Eugene J. Staniszewski told reporters. He added that police believe Matar acted alone.
The attack comes amid a slew of foiled Iranian plots on American soil, including a plot against former National Security Advisor John B and an apparent attempt on the life of an Iranian-American journalist in Brooklyn.
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Salman Rushdie was stabbed ahead of a planned talk about “the United States as [an] asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression”, according to the institution’s website.
It was also reported in the media that Hadi Matar is supportive of Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while has been sympathetic to Hamas.
With the latest incident of gruesome attack on Salman Rushdie, it clearly rings the bell of existence of hundreds of Hadi Matars in the United States, while Joe Biden has almost opened the borders welcome illegal migrants with widely-opened arms. Meaning, America’s security is at stake and America is a gravest risk. Unless these appeasers of Islamists and jihadists are not voted out from the Congress and Senate during this November’s midterm elections and unless there is a patriot in the White House, America may not remain the land of free speech any more.
