Restaurants, building firms and other businesses illegally employing workers face “stronger” action, Yvette Cooper has signalled.
The Home Secretary admitted that some of the pull-factors attracting people to risk their lives crossing the Channel in “small boats” needed addressing.
Civic chiefs in northern France have criticised the UK for not having tougher enforcement on working requirements.
The British government has also been urged to introduce ID cards to make it more difficult for people to work illegally and for bosses to take them on.
“I do believe that we do need stronger action on illegal working in the UK,” Ms Cooper told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“You’ve seen employers exploit migration and that’s why, since the Labour government was elected, we’ve increased some of the immigration enforcement visits by around 20% over the summer.
“We are increasing returns, so enforced returns again up nearly 20% since the election compared to the previous year - I think returns have gone up to around 10,000 since the election.
“And this is about really saying that the rules should be respected and enforced. It’s about having proper systems in place and making sure that employers aren’t able to to get away with exploiting people in that way.”
Britain is also looking at the scheme adopted in Italy for asylum seekers there from “safe countries” to have their cases processed in Albania, though it has run into difficulties with the courts.
Unlike the Tories’ Rwanda scheme, the Italian programme would see asylum seekers being able to live in Italy if their applications are successful.
Around 33,000 people have crossed the Channel in “small boats” so far this year, with 5,417 in October, the highest number for two years.
Nine out of ten people arriving in the UK by “small boats” from 2018 to March 2024 claimed asylum and of those who had received a decision by 31 March 2024, around three quarters were successful, according to the Migration Observatory at Oxford University.
More than 50 people have died trying to make the crossing in 2024, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Ms Cooper stressed that the “network of law enforcement actually has been remarkably weak in response to organised immigration crime” and the “international criminal gang networks need to be the target for all of our law enforcement”.
She stressed the importance of striking “new co-operation agreements” with other countries to treat the migration crisis as a priority.
But she stopped short of saying that Britain would pay large sums of money to other countries, from where migrants are setting off and as Italy does to Tunisia, so they could strengthen their measures to deal with the problem.
She added: “We are investing more in the international law enforcement and in that co-operation - partly why we’ve set up the Border Security Command that has £150 million investment over the next two years - and that does include on the international co-operation as well.
“So you have to get the new co-operation agreements in place, and an agreement that all countries will really now treat this as a priority, these international criminal gang networks need to be the target for all of our law enforcement.”
