I discovered the other day that when the channel tunnel was built, France agreed to have border control in Calais, so if our government doesn’t appear to be too critical of the French, then perhaps we know why. It’s one which will not be solved by higher fencing or more police, but by co-operation between the UK and French governments to deal effectively with asylum claims; by establishing safe and sanitary accommodation for refugees; and by working internationally to combat the factors which are forcing millions to flee their homes.
“I had a two-metre wall put up to stop them”.
Bouchart has previously threatened to blockade the port of Calais if the British government did not send more help to the besieged port town. They have not, as many headlines would have us believe, made long and risky journeys to Europe for the sake of marginal economic gains, and those making potentially fatal attempts to reach the UK are not doing so in the hope of benefiting from our welfare system – which is less generous than many continental countries and, in any case, does not cover asylum seekers. Nor do its residents even make up a significant fraction of the total number of unauthorized migrants who have come to Europe this summer.
Jan Brulc, a spokesman for Migrants’ Rights Network, a London-based advocacy group, argued that “when there are no legal routes, people will take any means to enter the country…” It’s about the idea that migration is taking Britain toward a frightening future, and that no one can stop it.
Natacha Bouchart accused the prime minister of “imposing his own laws” on the people of Calais and demanded that he meet her and the French president, François Hollande, for urgent talks in the region. Speaking to British news station ITV, Cameron describe migrants crossing the Mediterranean as a “swarm” of people who wanted to come to Britain to get jobs and a better life.
Imagine the situation if control of our borders was moved to Kent?
Abdul Rahman Haroun (40), the first migrant known to have almost crossed the channel on foot, managed to walk 50km under the cloak of darkness from Calais, France, avoiding being dragged under passing trains.
But the real issue here is not immigration itself. “It is good that church leaders remind us to be compassionate, but equally good they they are not running the country”.
Viewed through that lens, it makes sense that British politicians would respond to the Calais crisis with such overheated rhetoric, and that 67 percent of the British public apparently supports deploying the army to France to keep out migrants.
“Dislike of immigration”, the YouGov pollsters found, “is strongest among those groups who feel least secure and most pessimistic about the years ahead”.
A number of people have written to me recently with concerns about the situation at Calais. We have all seen images of migrants attempting to evade police and make it through the Channel Tunnel into Britain, and heard about the disruption this has caused at the border.
