🛥️ Britain’s Border Staff Are Burned Out, Underpaid, and Still Expected to Save a Sinking Ship

While the boats keep coming in, the people expected to stop them are voting to walk off the job. And no one’s asking why.

Border Force maritime officers — the very people on the front line of this illegal immigration crisis — are now being balloted for strike action.

Why?

Because they’re expected to risk their lives at sea, confront armed traffickers, and mop up the consequences of decades of failed immigration policy…
for a starting salary of around £29k a year.
No joke. That’s what they’re paying the people defending our border.

Meanwhile, the politicians who created this mess?
They’re sitting in climate-controlled offices, blaming each other, and acting surprised when the entire system buckles.

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🚨 The Real Numbers They Don’t Talk About:

– 30,000+ illegal Channel crossings so far this year
– £8 million+ a day spent on hotel accommodation
– Over 200 hotels in use to house arrivals
– £7 billion total projected cost of asylum backlog and resettlement
– And now, the very officers trying to enforce the rules are saying: “We’ve had enough.”

You can’t make this up.
You couldn’t write it as satire.
But it’s happening — right now, on our watch.

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🪦 Burnout, Chaos, and a Total Lack of Backup

Border Force staff have reported working in dangerous conditions, facing threats, and watching traffickers game the system in real-time while they’re under strict orders not to intervene.

Some days, they’re more like receptionists than enforcement officers — logging arrivals, handing out water bottles, and escorting people to luxury coaches instead of deterring illegal entry.

The morale?
Absolutely shot.
Imagine turning up to work every day knowing you are the last line of defence, but they won’t give you the tools, the powers, or the political cover to actually do your job.

And now they’re voting on whether to strike.
Not because they don’t care.
But because the system has failed them, too.

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🤐 Where’s the Government in All This?

Silent.
Distracted.
Or worse — still insisting everything is “within operational expectations.”

We’ve heard it before.
“We’ve got a plan.”
“We’re working with our partners.”
“Enforcement is a top priority.”

But year after year, the boats keep coming, the backlog keeps growing, and the people doing the job are being run into the ground.

And while Labour and the Tories keep pointing fingers at each other, no one seems to be doing the one thing that actually matters: fixing it.

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🛠️ What Reform UK Would Do — And Why It’s Different

Let’s be clear — Reform UK backs our Border Force.
We don’t want to see them burned out, underpaid, or set up to fail.
We want them to win.

Here’s how:

– National Security First — The Channel crisis is a security issue, not just an “asylum problem”
– New Border Command — Establish a dedicated unit with full powers and funding to prevent crossings
– Direct Deportation Agreements — If you arrive illegally from a safe country, you go back — no delays
– Immediate Withdrawal from ECHR — No more loopholes for activist lawyers to block removals
– Offshore Processing in Safe Third Countries — So no one reaches Britain illegally and stays
– End Hotel Use — Temporary camps, not 4-star hotels
– Proper Pay and Support for Border Officers — Because you don’t defend a nation on minimum wage

We’re not just talking about border policy.
We’re talking about border power.

The frontline staff are right: the current system is broken.
Reform UK won’t just patch it — we’ll rebuild it from the ground up, with the people who do the job finally put first.