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More Asian attempted small-boat Channel bridges in the first quarter of 2024 than any other ethnicity. Yet they are coming from one of the country’s fastest-growing economy. Why, therefore, are so many risking their lives to achieve Britain?

Phuong questioned whether she should move in after looking at the tiny inflatable boat. The boat was small in the water, with 70 people inside. She recalls the anxiety, stress, and despair on their heads. There weren’t enough lifejackets to go around.

But Phuong was desperate. She says she had been stuck in France for two months, after travelling there from Vietnam via Hungary, sleeping in tents in a scrubby forest.

She had already turned down three trips in the middle of the Channel because it appeared extremely overcrowded, and she had previously been turned around due to bad weather or motor failure three times.

Her sister, Hien, lives in London, and recalls that Phuong used to telephone her from France in grief. She had to choose between anxiety and determination to continue.

” But she had borrowed therefore many- around £25, 000- to account this trip. Turning up wasn’t an opportunity. ” But, she climbed on board.

Now Phuong lives in London with her girl, without any legal status. She was very apprehensive to speak directly to us, and Phuong is certainly her real name. She left it to her sister, who is now a UK citizen, to explain her experience.

With 2, 248 landings in the UK in the six weeks to June, Asian accounted for the most of all recorded small vessel immigrants in the UK, far exceeding those from nations with well-known human rights issues, including Afghanistan and Iran.

The incredible work of Asian immigrants to enter Britain are well documented, and in 2024 the BBC reported on Asian syndicates ‘ successful people-smuggling activities.

It is not without significant risks. Some Vietnamese migrants end up being trafficked into sex work or illegal marijuana farms. They make up more than one-tenth of those in the UK filing official claims that they are victims of modern slavery.

And still Vietnam is a fast-growing business, acclaimed as a” mini-China” for its manufacturing skills. Eight days as much as it was 20 years back in terms of per capita income. Add to that the subtropical beaches, beauty and value, which have made it a magnet for visitors.

What is it that causes so many people to be desperate to leave?

Vietnam, a one-party Communist state, sits near the bottom of most human rights and freedom indexes. No political opposition is permitted. The few dissidents who raise their voices are harassed and jailed.

But the majority of Vietnamese have come to accept the ruling party, which has a history of development that lends legitimacy to its existence. Really some who go to Britain are fleeing persecution.

Additionally, refugees don’t typically flee hunger. Vietnam has been praised by the World Bank for its practically unmatched track record of reducing hunger among its 100 million residents.

Instead, they are trying to avoid what some call” equivalent deprivation”.

Vietnam’s economy, despite its amazing record, was far behind most of its Asian neighbors, with growth just beginning to emerge shortly after the Cold War ended in 1989. As a result, regular salary, at around £230 a fortnight, are significantly lower than in adjacent countries like Thailand, and three-quarters of the 55-million-strong labor are in informal work, with no security or social security.

Nguyen Khac Giang, a Taiwanese educational at the Institute of South East Asian Studies-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, notes that there is a significant gap between large settlements like Hanoi and remote locations. For a majority of employees with limited abilities, there is a crystal roof. Even if you work 14 hours per day, you can’t keep enough to establish a home or raise a family.

This was what Phuong felt, despite coming from Haiphong, Vietnam’s third-largest capital.

Her girl Hien had made it to Britain nine years earlier, smuggled inside a shipping container. She worked long hours in restaurants and nail shops, and it had cost her around £22, 000, but she was able to pay it back in two decades. Hien married a Taiwanese person who already had American citizenship, and they had a girl, all three are presently UK residents.

In Haiphong, work were limited after the pandemic and at 38 years older, Phuong wanted what her sister had in London: the ability to save money and start a family.

” She may live in Vietnam, but she wanted a house, a better life, with more stability, “explains Hien.

Lan An Hoang, a teacher in creation studies at Melbourne University, has spent years studying movement habits”. Twenty to thirty years back, the urge to travel abroad was not as strong, because everyone was bad,” she says”. One bison, one motorcycle, and three meals per day made people happy.

” Immediately, a select few people emigrated to countries like Germany or the UK to work on cannabis fields or open nail salons. They began to take a lot of money home. They feel poor in comparison to all these people with immigrants who work in Europe, despite the fact that their financial circumstances have not changed.

Following the defeat of US troops in the north, Vietnam joined forces with the Soviet Union, which has a history of seeking better livelihoods abroad.

The state-led sector had hit rock bottom. Thousands were poor, some places suffered food shortfalls. In eastern union nations like Poland, East Germany, and Hungary, there are still tens of thousands of people working.

800, 000 boat people, mostly from China, escaped the communist party’s oppressive policies by sailing dangerously across the South China Sea before finally settling in the USA, Australia, or Europe.

The economic hardships of that time threatened the legitimacy of the communist party, and in 1986 it made an abrupt turn, abandoning the attempt to build a socialist system and throwing the doors open to global markets. The new theme of Vietnam’s national story was to catch up, and get rich, any way possible. For many Vietnamese, that meant going abroad.

” Money is God in Vietnam”, says Lan An Hoang. The ability to accumulate wealth is a determining factor in the meaning of” the good life.” In northern Vietnam, helping your family is also a top priority, especially for the elderly.

Because they believe they can take up large sums of money and help the movement of different people, the entire extended family uses resources to fund the migration of one fresh person.

Nghe An, one of Vietnam’s poorer regions north of Hanoi, is a country where big, new homes with gilded walls can now be found in large, new homes with smooth rice fields and a few flat rice fields. More are under construction, thanks, in part, to money earned in the West.

Returnees who have done well abroad can be acquainted with the new houses because they represent a powerful indicator of success.

Since Vietnam is viewed as a viable alternative to China for businesses looking to diversify their supply chains, it is now receiving significant foreign investment flows. Even this investment is gaining ground in places like Nghe An.

One of the many foreign companies building factories in Nghe An, Foxconn, a corporate giant that produces iPhones, is one of the many that create thousands of new jobs.

However, unskilled workers ‘ monthly salaries only reach around £300, even with overtime. That is insufficient to compete with the captivating tales of the money that can be made in the UK, as told by the people smugglers.

The business of organising the travel for those wishing to leave the province is now a very profitable one. Publicly, companies present themselves as either travel agents or brokers for officially-approved overseas labour contracts, but in practice many also offer to smuggle people to the UK via other European countries. They usually paint a rosy picture of life in Britain, and say little about the risks and hardships they will face.

” Brokers “typically charge between £15, 000 and £35, 000 for the trip to the UK. Because Hungary offers Vietnamese passport holders guest-worker visas, it is a popular entry point into the EU. The higher the price, the easier and faster the journey.

The communist authorities in Vietnam have been urged by the US, the UK and UN agencies to do more to control the smuggling business.

Vietnam receives about £13 billion annually from remittances from abroad, and the government has a policy encouraging migration for employment, though only legally, primarily to wealthy Asian nations.

More than 130, 000 Vietnamese workers left in 2024 under the official scheme. However, the costs for these contracts can be high, and the salaries are much lower than what they can expect to make in Britain.

The huge risks of the illicit routes used to reach the UK were brought home in 2019, when 39 Vietnamese people were found dead in Essex, having suffocated while being transported inside a sealed container across the Channel.

Yet this has not noticeably reduced demand for the smugglers’ services. The increased scrutiny of container traffic has, however, pushed them to find alternative Channel crossings, which helps explain the sharp rise in Vietnamese people using small boats.

“The tragedy of the 39 deaths in 2019 is almost forgotten,” says the cousin of one of the victims, Le Van Ha. He left behind a wife, two young children and a large debt from the cost of the journey. His cousin, who does not want to be named, says attitudes in their community have not changed.

” People hardly care anymore. It’s a sad reality, but it is the truth.

” I see the trend of leaving continuing to grow, not diminish. For people here, the success stories still outweigh the risks”.

Three of the victims came from the agricultural province of Quang Binh. The headteacher of a secondary school in the region, who also asked not to be named, says that 80% of his students who graduate soon plan to go overseas.

” Most parents here come from low-income backgrounds”, he explains. The idea of encouraging their child to expand their knowledge and advance their skills is not a priority.

” For them, sending a child abroad is largely about earning money quickly, and getting it sent back home to improve the family’s living standards.”

In March the UK Home Office started a social media campaign to deter Vietnamese people from illegal migration. Some efforts were also made by the Vietnamese government to alert people to the risks of using people-smugglers. But until there are more appealing economic opportunities in those provinces, it is likely the campaigns will have little impact.

” They cannot run these campaigns just once, “argues Diep Vuong, co-founder of Pacific Links, an anti-trafficking organisation”. It’s a constant investment in education that’s needed.”

She has first-hand experience, leaving Vietnam to the US in 1980 as part of the exodus of Vietnamese boat people.

” In Vietnam, people believe they have to work hard, to do everything for their families. That is similar to a chain from which they are unable to easily escape. However, they might start to change this attitude with more reliable information forthcoming over time.

But the campaigns are up against a powerful narrative. Those who go overseas and fail – and many do – are often ashamed, and keep quiet about what went wrong. Those who succeed come back to places like Nghe An and flaunt their new-found wealth. As for the tragedy of the 39 people who died in a shipping container, the prevailing view in Nghe An is still that they were just unlucky.

Top image credit: Getty Images

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