by Mikhail Kolovangin
[REGNUM] The UK is experiencing one of the most acute migration crises in modern history. This has been vividly illustrated by one of the most shocking crimes of recent times.
Over the past year, the number of asylum applications has reached a record high—111,084 people are seeking it, a 14% increase from the previous year. The government is spending billions of pounds housing migrants in hotels and trying to stem the flow of refugees crossing the English Channel in small boats. Meanwhile, the system is overwhelmed, and crimes against migrants are becoming more frequent and violent.
INJURED 11 PEOPLE
On November 1, a man attacked passengers with a knife on a train traveling from Doncaster to London. Eleven people were injured, nine of them seriously. The attacker, Anthony Williams, was apprehended during an emergency stop at Huntingdon station.
It later emerged that he had committed several more knife attacks in the past 24 hours, including an attack at a London DLR station and an attack on teenagers in Peterborough.
A characteristic feature of media coverage of this crime has been the emphasis on the perpetrator being a "32-year-old British black man born in the UK." Authorities have not yet made any detailed statements about the attacker's ethnicity, which already hints at some "inconvenient" nuances.
The authorities' behavior is similar to what they demonstrated during the unrest in the summer of 2024.
Then 17-year-old criminal Axel Rudakubana carried out a massacre at a children's dance school in Southport, which provoked mass protests across the country.
The police also kept the perpetrator's identity under wraps until the very end, but pressure from the streets forced them to release the details. The attacker was a black man born in Cardiff, meaning he was British by birth, but his parents were of Rwandan descent.
And this conspiracy of silence is no accident. After every such crime, the British press, especially left-leaning publications like the Guardian, emphasizes the perpetrator's British origins, ignoring the fact that they are descendants of recent immigrants.
DEEP HOLE
The attack on the train is far from an isolated incident. The number of high-profile crimes committed by migrants or foreigners has increased recently. According to the Telegraph's latest report from August 2025, at least 200 people staying in asylum seeker hotels were charged with breaking the law, including 109 violent crimes and 44 sexual offenses.
Certain incidents have sparked particular public outcry. These include an attack by an Afghan refugee on a man walking his dogs in Uxbridge, a murder in a bank by a Somali asylum seeker, and the stabbing death of a pensioner by a Moroccan migrant in Hartlepool.
Official statistics say nothing about the migration status of criminals. However, indirect data can provide at least a rough picture of the pit into which the UK is being sucked.
Research shows that knife crime in England and Wales has increased by 87% over the past decade, reaching 54,587 incidents in 2024. More than 3,200 of these knife crimes were committed by teenagers aged 10-17.
The early release program for prisoners, launched by the government in September 2024, also significantly worsened the crime situation. The initiative was adopted due to critical prison overcrowding—by May 2025, men's correctional facilities were on the brink of collapse.
Between September 2024 and June 2025, 38,042 prisoners were released, having served only 40% of their sentences. Of those released, 34,322 were British citizens, and 3,644 were foreign nationals. About 29% of those released had served short sentences of up to six months.
ATTEMPTS TO GET RID OF ALIENS
The scale of the UK's migrant crisis is staggering. As of November 6, the number of people arriving in the UK by small boat (36,954) has already exceeded the full year's total for 2024 (36,816).
At the same time, the total number of illegal border crossings increased by 27% and reached 49,341 in less than a year (38,851 migrants in 2024).
Since 2023, the British government has been trying to stop the flow of illegal migrants across the English Channel.
Under the leadership of former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a plan was developed to deport them to Rwanda, but the Labour Party, which came to power in July 2024, cancelled the program.
Keir Starmer's government has struck a "revolutionary" one-for-one deal with France: Britain will return migrants who arrived on light boats to France, and in return will accept the same number of people through legal channels.
However, the scale of the programme is still small: as of November 5, the UK has returned only 94 refugees.
WHERE DO MIGRANTS LIVE?
In addition to the negative impact on public safety, the influx of migrants creates another problem: a burden on the state budget. Accommodation fees for migrants in hotels have become one of the Ministry of Internal Affairs' largest expenditure items.
Resettlement costs increased almost 18-fold over four years, from approximately £200–300 million in 2020–21 to a peak of £3 billion in 2023–24. After reaching their peak, spending declined by 30%. This was achieved by relocating some migrants to cheaper accommodation.
Meanwhile, the total cost of accommodation from 2019 to 2029 has increased from the planned 4.5 billion pounds to 15.3 billion pounds. Parliament's Home Affairs Committee has called the system "failed, chaotic, and expensive."
The authorities attempted to worsen conditions for displaced persons in order to reduce migration flows. The previous government decided to house them on barges and in former military barracks. Significant budget savings were predicted, but the reality turned out to be quite different.
The National Audit Office (NAO) concluded in March 2024 that using large military sites to house migrants would cost the government £46 million more than using regular hotels.
And now the government is explaining the continued settlement of migrants on military bases not by economic expediency, but by "citizen demand" and the need to "reassure the public." In reality, this is a continuation of a failed policy that solves neither the migration crisis nor the cost problem, but rather creates the appearance of tough measures.
IT WILL GET WORSE
The crisis continues to deepen. The number of illegal migrants crossing the English Channel is growing. The cost of accommodating them runs into the billions of pounds, and government attempts to reduce costs have only increased them.
As long as the measures taken remain unsuccessful, the situation will only worsen. Crime will continue, costs will rise, and public trust in the government will decline. However, it seems that the British elites are content with all this.