The tiny baby is manhandled aboard a Channel small boat, roughly held aloft by its right arm.Expressionless, defenceless, dressed in a white romper and wearing a bib, the child is surrounded by men clad in lifejackets and dirty clothing.But there is no life preserver to protect this little infant photographed last Sunday at a beach in northern France on a people traffickers' dinghy bound for Britain.Aged around six months, give or take. An innocent life. It is not clear whether it's a boy or a girl, but let's call the child Dylan, a name which means 'son of the sea' – although in modern times it has become unisex.As Dylan is dragged aboard the inflatable, someone standing in the water – the child's father or mother, perhaps – throws a baby bottle full of milk up into the vessel.Is this the baby's first trip to the seaside, I wonder as I look at the pictures. A trip where its life is put in peril aboard a deathtrap dinghy? A boat over-laden with strange men and no doubt with petrol and filth sloshing around in the hull?Only the coldest of hearts could have failed to have been moved by Dylan's tragic plight.But another understandable reaction is anger that this blameless child was being put in such danger for no reason – France, after all, is a safe country where Dylan's parents could have claimed asylum. An infant in a babygrow was held up by their right hand on a boat in France amongst men bound for Britain A woman in a life jacket prepared to board a boat to cross the Channel at Ecault, France, with two children A Border Command boat brought migrants rescued from the Channel into Dover last weekendSome, 34 children have died trying to reach Britain from continental Europe since the Channel crisis began in 2018, according to the International Organisation for Migration.The total includes six youngsters who perished in a single capsize incident off Cape Gris-Nez, near Boulogne, in September 2024.And in October 2020 a Kurdish-Iranian family – Rasoul Iran-Nejad, wife Shiva Mohammed Panahi, both 35, daughter Anita, nine, and sons Armin, six, and Artin, just 15 months – all drowned when their dinghy went down.It is too awful to think of the terror those poor children must have endured in their final moments. Baby Dylan, thankfully, appears to have survived the journey.But what happens to him or her now is also a concern, given that British taxpayers are still footing a multi-billion pound annual bill as the small-boats crisis continues into its ninth year with no sign of a solution.There is no proper data on how much Dylan's life here in the UK may cost the public purse.Nor can we begin to prejudge the path it will follow. Dylan could become an academic and economic success story, for all we know, and contribute greatly to society. It is to be hoped that does indeed come to pass.But the odds appear stacked against it happening. The available data indicates that those who arrive as asylum seekers make a significantly lower contribution to the economy, when compared with the rest of the population.Last December, a report from the government's official advisers on immigration policy, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), said people entering the UK through asylum and refugee routes make an 'unambiguously negative' contribution to public funds.