Calais is France’s problem and they must deal with it
WHEN it comes to asylum there is almost no lunacy too, well, lunatic to become a reality. But try this for size: there are nearly 10,000 migrants in France who have made their way across Europe to Calais, in what has become known as the Jungle.
They are, to put it mildly, a big problem, not just for the town but for France itself. And yet the former – and if he gets his way, the next – French president Nicolas Sarkozy is suggesting that the problem is not France’s but Britain’s. You read that right.
The migrants are in France, not Britain. None of them has the least connection with Britain. They have no British relatives. They have never set foot in Britain. They are asylum seekers – in France.
It is France that admitted them, not Britain. And yet Mr Sarkozy says they are Britain’s problem, not France’s. He says that we should process their asylum applications in France and then move the Jungle camp to Britain.
His reasoning? They want to live in Britain. And that’s it. It puts a new gloss on lunacy. For one thing the most fundamental rule of asylum is that they should apply for it in the first place they reach.
That is the crux of all this because France is not even the first place they have reached, let alone Britain, which of course they haven’t reached.
ITOLD you it was lunatic. At this point I should make clear that there’s a deliberate mistake in the above. When I say that France has “admitted” them that’s not entirely right. No one in France – not border officials, not the police, not anyone – has taken the decision directly to let them come to France.
Because France is a member of the Schengen Agreement it has no borders with other members. So migrants are free to travel throughout Europe to France and get as near as they can to the border with Britain.
This is at every stage a French problem. It is the French who have decided to scrap their borders with other Schengen members. It is the French whose policy has led to the influx of migrants. And it is the French who have allowed the Jungle to grow and the problem to fester. The mayor of Calais