A Sudanese migrant is set to spend the night in Calais, France, on the evening of 27 November, waiting to cross the English Channel.
Photo: Mohammed Badra / EPA / SCANPIX
Ilze Kalve, “Latvijas Avīze”, JSC “Latvijas Mediji”
In the United Kingdom (UK), illegal immigrants from the European Union are crossing the English Channel in unsafe and overcrowded rubber boats despite a threat to life, reaching a sad record of 27 drowned last Wednesday.
A sad record has been reached
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The previous tragedy, with the largest number of victims – a family of five – took place in October 2020, but last Wednesday the 27 deaths are a new record – 17 men, seven women, three children. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has described the boat as “a pool you inflate in the garden”.
A few hours before the tragedy, coastal residents were able to watch migrant boats leave the French coast unhindered, with French police officers standing by and not intervening. The British government’s recent offer to assist in patrolling the French coast was rejected on the grounds of sovereignty. The French side is already in a hurry to blame the British migrant crisis, as the promises of attractive smuggling and the labor market by the smugglers in the English Eldorado are quite real.
France is likely to call for an increase in UK funding to tackle the migrant crisis, currently costing the UK £ 54 million (€ 64.19 million) a year. Natasha Bushara, Mayor of Calais: “I say it must end. The British government has been imposing immigration controls on our territory for the last 20 years. They have never had the courage to control immigration at home. We need to react, and quickly, to stop it. ”
The Calais mayor also blames French President Macron for not wanting to fight “mafia-style” smuggling gangs. Local officials believe that migrants should be relocated from Calais to central France, also by force, as this is the only way to stem the flow of inexhaustible migrants.
Marco Longi, a spokesman for North Dudley in the British Parliament, told Talk Radio this week, commenting: “When we talk about France, we are really talking about the EU. I have the feeling that this is one of the ways in which the EU is punishing the UK for leaving the EU. (..) If we look at [migrantu] figures, a significant proportion of those seeking asylum here in the UK last year came from Albania.
There is currently no civil war in Albania, no persecution. That is why we have to face the truth: they are economic migrants. And the EU does not give asylum to Albanians, so I have to ask why the UK does that? And why is the EU not tackling this problem if they have to?
International maritime law makes it clear that if a country, in this case France or the EU, knows that people are going to go to sea with a craft that is dangerous or unsuitable for the sea, every effort must be made to delay going to sea. But what do you see by the sea? There is evidence that the EU / French police are standing by and allowing this to happen. Here we can clearly see who is playing the political games. ”
Why blame France
The record number of migrants arrived in rubber boats in the UK in September – 3,879, but doubled to over 6,000 in November. In total, more than 26,700 have arrived this year, at least three times more than last year (8,404).
British journalists have repeatedly observed migrants leaving the French coast unhindered. On the morning of November 16, Mailonline journalists witnessed two inflatable boats with at least 40 migrants each traveling 33 km to Britain. It is known that a “ticket to England” costs about 4,000 pounds (4,761 euros) per person, so it can be estimated that human smugglers earn close to half a million if a single boat can accommodate 88 people, as it was a few weeks ago.
“Police can demolish the camps, but the migrants will hide in the woods and come out by boat to cross the sea,” an anonymous Iraqi smuggler told British journalist Sue Reid in Dunkirk. He does not hesitate to give an interview to a journalist because he has settled in France and owns a restaurant. He reveals that there are ten competing gangs in Dunkirk that run the “business” on the spot with the help of weapons, while customers are recruited by publishing promotional videos on the Internet.
What happens to a migrant after arriving in the UK?
Migrants are taken to a detention center for health and criminal screening and fed. Adults are interviewed for the first time and then sent to accommodation centers in the country run by private companies and paid for by British taxpayers. Migrants receive £ 37.75 (€ 45) a week for various expenses, such as food, clothing and toiletries, pending a decision on asylum. If this is rejected, deportation to the country of origin must take place.
Kevin Saunders, a former immigration worker, says in an interview with Times Radio that the UK is very attractive to migrants who know they have made a big profit when they arrive. Irrespective of whether the asylum application is approved or rejected, it is almost impossible to return the migrant to the country of origin.
“It’s very disturbing because we don’t know who these people are, because they destroy all their documents, they don’t give us their real names, they don’t tell us where they come from and so on. They are winners because they know that everything will be free for them in the UK, they will get education, medical care, money, a roof over their heads, it means real luck! ” the former border guard comments on the situation.
According to him, the only way out is to process asylum applications outside the country so that those who do not qualify for refugee status can be rejected. “How many deportations did we have last year? About 30,000 arrived and we deported five. Doesn’t look very good, does it? ” Official figures are slightly different from those of Saunders, but there are major problems in the UK in deporting rejected asylum seekers.
There have been recommendations to use abandoned oil rigs in the North Sea, but the idea of opening a new immigrant center in Albania is likely to appear now, where cases will be dealt with much sooner in the hope that this could deter migrants from traveling across the English Channel. However, the new immigrant detention center will cost the British taxpayer £ 100,000 (€ 119,000) for transporting and staying each migrant.
Why can’t I be deported?
A homemade bomb exploded in a taxi near a maternity hospital in Liverpool on 14 November, killing an Iraqi immigrant himself. It turns out Emad Al Svilmin arrived in the UK in 2013, and his asylum application was rejected in 2014. In the following years, the refusal to apply for asylum with the help of state-paid lawyers was appealed to the courts several times, with Emad converting to the Christian faith in 2017 in the hope that his chances of staying in the country would improve. The last refusal of asylum was received last December, witnesses report that at least since April, the newly baked Christian has been circulating in the mosque for hours every day.
It should be noted that migrants in the UK have the right to a free lawyer paid for by the state, and unfortunately there is no shortage of lawyers who earn their daily bread in this way. This makes it difficult to deport even sentenced murderers, rapists and drug traffickers back to their countries of origin.
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