UKIP Leader's Message to Illegal Migrants: You Shall Not Pass

The migrant crisis in Calais will only get worse unless the United Kingdom toughens its stance on the problem, UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage said Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Farage suggested that Britain's "soft" approach to migration may be explained by a desire to please the European Union.

“Britain however urgently needs a tough new approach on illegal migrants that sends a clear message: that those who seek to enter our country illegally and make Britain their home will not be allowed to,” Farage has asserted in an article written for the Breitbart website.

The migrant situation will deteriorate unless the UK government starts sending that message, he added.

Farage cited UK Home Office figures, showing that only 40,000 out of 141,000 undocumented migrants who had been refused asylum between 2003 and 2013 had been removed from the country.

Almost 60 percent of those who applied for asylum in the United Kingdom received a refusal, according to the Home Office data.

The crisis in the northern French port of Calais has come to the fore in recent weeks with undocumented migrants undertaking thousands of attempts to enter the United Kingdom through the Channel Tunnel.

On Monday, the chief constable of the southeastern English county of Kent said that approximately 70 percent of the migrants who were in Calais in recent months had since left the area, many of whom may have reached the United Kingdom.