LONDON - The British government on Monday began housing asylum seekers on a hulking barge moored on the Dorset Coast in an effort to cut down on the high costs of housing migrants in hotels - currently running at about $7.6 million a day - and to deter others from attempting the dangerous English Channel crossing.
The arrival of a small group of asylum seekers onto the football-field-sized Bibby Stockholm, an engineless barge registered in Barbados, was a highly symbolic moment in Britain's debate over migration. The government wants to use barges and former military facilities to address a recent surge in irregular entry.