With small boats and the migrants they carry continuing to land on Kent's beaches, the returning home secretary Suella Braverman is being urged to get a grip of a very visible crisis.

On our stretch of coast and across the nation, the issue of asylum seekers arriving in search of refuge continues to provoke divisive and often bitter debate, as Rhys Griffiths reports...

Canute is best known as the foolhardy king who believed he could command the very tides themselves - portrayed long after his death as a madman, drunk on power, who stood before the seas and commanded them to retreat.

The alternative interpretation is that he wished to make a point to his assembled courtiers: that however mighty their earthly power, there are greater forces over which no mere mortal can expect to triumph.

Today, on the coastline of Kent, we face a different tide, but one which similarly threatens to make a mockery of the powerful when they order it to relent.

Our hokey-cokey home secretary Suella Braverman, out one moment and back in the next, believes she is the one to halt the flow of asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats, a tide of human misery breaking upon these shores daily.

But as desperate people continue to make the perilous voyage in woefully-inadequate craft, is this migration simply a force so great that even a king would fail to quell it, let alone the latest in the revolving cast of those taking up the reins in the Home Office?

Braverman, who stepped back into the breach this week following her six-day political death and resurrection, appears to believe the solution will emerge from a strong will and yet tougher deterrents.

Speaking at a fringe event at this year's Conservative Party conference, she sent what she famously described as the "tofu-eating wokerati" into meltdown when she claimed it was her dream to see migrants rounded up onto planes bound for Rwanda.

Not exactly Martin Luther King Jr, but the home secretary knows she is speaking to a constituency in this country which sees the ending of small-boat crossings as a national priority.

Played out across the TV news, the papers and social media, the issue of asylum and immigration tends to polarise opinion. Often those who shout loudest end up setting the terms of the debate.

Headline-grabbing incidents also, by their very nature, tend to be the things that remain stuck in people's minds.

In recent days reporting here in Kent has thrown up examples of how a global migration crisis is playing out on our doorsteps - occasionally all too literally.

On Sunday morning an asylum seeker walked into a house on Old Folkestone Road in Aycliffe, on the outskirts of Dover, demanding use of the occupant's phone and to be driven to Manchester.

The young man is thought to have arrived on a small boat a short walk away at Shakespeare Beach - a common landing point for those not rescued at sea or cut off by patrols.

Those plucked from the waters during the crossing are often brought back to the Port of Dover by the local volunteer lifeboat crew.

But even the work of these RNLI crew men and women has put them in the firing line - with volunteers now hiding the fact they give their time to save lives at sea because of the vitriol they receive for assisting migrants in small boats.

It's a crisis played out before us on our beaches and in our communities, but it is one that demands answers at national and international level.

Recent turmoil in Downing Street, and the resulting U-turns, mean it is sometimes hard to keep up with government policy from one day to the next.

But as things stand the flagship measure for tackling the ongoing crisis off the Kent coast remains the so-called 'Migration and Economic Development Partnership' that the former home secretary, Priti Patel, agreed with Rwanda.

In June, the government began issuing its first orders for removal flights to Rwanda, targeting migrants, including some who had made what the Home Office describes as "dangerous, unnecessary, and illegal journeys" by small boat from France.

European judges stepped in to halt the deportations, much to the dismay of the backers of the Rwanda plan.

But even before the legal ruling, the relentless numbers crossing to Kent appeared to suggest tough rhetoric and the threat of removal would not be enough to deter desperate people from attempting to reach the UK.

In August, even with the Rwanda scheme well publicised, almost 1,000 people arrived on our shores in a single day.

Then, just weeks later, the number of people reaching the UK by this route in 2022 exceeded the total for the whole of 2021.

By any measure, this is a tide that shows no sign of turning. And the numbers arriving here on the Kent coast represent a tiny, tiny fraction of the total number of displaced people worldwide.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that, at the end of 2021, the total number of people globally forced to flee their homes due to conflicts, violence, fear of persecution and human rights violations has reached a staggering 89.3 million. More than the entire population of this country.

With millions of Ukrainians forced out of the country by the Russian invasion, and further displacement elsewhere in 2022, the total number of people displaced now exceeds 100 million people.

This means one in every 78 people on earth has been forced to flee their home.

Global instability - whether the result of conflict or of weather extremes caused by climate breakdown - will continue to drive people from their homes, and experts warn the coming century will be one defined by mass migration.

Long-established routes, often generating huge profits for people-traffickers, will inevitably continue to channel these people northwards to our door, the Channel crossing a 21-mile leg of a journey already thousands of miles long.

When they do reach the UK, the thousands among many millions more worldwide, they will enter the asylum and immigration system to have claims for refugee status considered.

Although a very vocal minority will tell you these are all economic migrants - Schrödinger's immigrant intent on both taking our jobs and milking our benefits simultaneously - the vast majority whose claims for asylum are completed are found to be genuine refugees.

This week a Parliamentary select committee heard that 85% of all processed applications are approved.

However, a remarkable 96% of claims remain stuck in a Home Office backlog - putting on hold the lives of many, including the 3,000 asylum seekers currently kept at a Manston processing centre designed to hold 1,600.

And only last week was it revealed a whopping £5.6 million a day is being spent housing asylum seekers in hotels.

Despite the mammoth bill, conditions in accommodation for asylum seekers - whether in camps such as Folkestone's Napier Barracks or hotels block-booked by the government - are often sub-standard and criticised by observers.

A recent investigation of hotels in Folkestone and Hythe used to house unaccompanied asylum-seeking children uncovered a catalogue of failings.

The report produced by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration found issues with security, vetting of adults with access to properties, and plans to transition youngsters into more appropriate long-term housing.

Inspectors visited a number of hotels in the south east - including a 60-room accommodation in Folkestone and a 44-room property in Hythe - during a three-month period earlier this year.

They discovered what their report describes as a "lack of professionalism" among security staff at the Folkestone hotel, including sitting in cars while on duty rather than being in appropriate positions to guard the site.

This led to an incident where a far-right activist was able to spend almost 15 minutes on the premises, streaming on YouTube, after accessing the site via a rear door.

Behind the statistics and the wordy reports, of course, are countless people, their stories, their hopes and their dreams. And in many cases, the greatest dream of all is to one day return to their country at peace.

While they are here, however, they are supported by the government to an extent that makes a mockery of the misconception that all they have to do is wash up on our beaches to begin a life of luxury at taxpayers' expense.

Those applying for refugee status are housed. This could be in a flat, house, hostel or bed and breakfast. Asylum seekers have no say over where in the country they will be living.

Financial support runs to £40.85 per person loaded onto a debit card each week to pay for essentials like food, clothing and toiletries.

Asylum seekers have no right to work in the UK, but they can access healthcare, and any children aged five to 17 must go to school.

So if tough new measures like the Rwanda scheme, and the relatively meagre support on offer, does not deter people from making the crossing by small boat, what do campaigners believe a better system could look like?

We already have programmes in place which have helped resettle refugees driven from their homes by violence in places like Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

They show it is possible for the authorities to facilitate legitimate movement of people who are seeking sanctuary in the UK.

Kent County Council recently released figures that show that 3,871 people have been matched with 1,642 hosts in Kent as part of the resettlement of Ukrainians fleeing war in their homeland - more than any other county in the UK.

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants argues the government should look to replicate these safe, legal routes on a larger scale.

Currently, there is no way to claim asylum in the UK until you set foot here. This, campaigners argue, is what drives people into the arms of the people traffickers and onto the flimsy inflatables in the Channel.

The Home Office points to recent schemes such as those for Afghanistan and Ukraine as evidence that it can provide resettlement where it deems it to be appropriate, but the focus of its small boats strategy remains essentially two-fold.

On one hand, impose the toughest sanctions possible on the smugglers operating the routes across the Channel, and secondly, urge the French to do more to prevent the craft taking to sea in the first place.

It will remain to be seen if Suella Braverman is successful in her stated aim of stopping the small boats from coming. But the awesome tides of worldwide mass migration may yet expose the limits of her earthly power.