The petition to have Katie Hopkins fired from her job as a columnist for The Sun has passed 60,000 signatures.
The backlash is in response to an article she penned in which she describes migrants as "cockroaches" and insists boats making their way from Africa should be turned back with force.
Hopkins continued to defend her comments on Sunday morning during a guest slot on LBC Radio, despite the news that up to 700 migrants are feared dead after a boat capsized in the Mediterranean.
She said: "Why do we take one everyone else's problems? We can't afford to take on these problems. We need to push these boats back.
"And we should make a huge bonfire from these boats so they can't be used again. If we rescue boats we are perpetuating the problem."
The online petition currently stands at 63,000 signatures and is rising rapidly.
Izzy Saunders who started the petition said: "It's deeply depressing that Katie Hopkins is using such a powerful platform to spread poison about immigrants, but I started this petition because I believe most people in the UK disagree with these extreme views.
"Our response to the tragedy in the Mediterranean should be to send lifeboats not gunboats."
Katie Hopkins writing in Friday's Sun
Headlined 'Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants' the comment piece includes lines such as:
NO, I don’t care. Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad.
I still don’t care.
Also:
Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit “Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984”, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb. They are survivors.
And finally:
It’s time to get Australian. Bring on the gunships, force migrants back to their shores and burn the boats.
But Hopkins remains unperturbed...
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