May’s £44m will not stop Calais migrants trying to get to the UK
ON THE eastern outskirts of Calais, 30 Eritrean men huddle together for warmth as they gaze at a barbed-wire fence between them and a lorry park.
“We sleep under the bridge,” says Samuel, 24, pointing to a squalid underpass on the ring road. “At night we try to go to UK.”
Samuel and his young friends fled the violence in Eritrea, crossed from Libya to Italy and headed on foot to France. They make nightly attempts to sneak on a lorry heading for the UK, where they intend to claim asylum.
They could, if they wished, get food and shelter in one of the region’s asylum-seeker reception centres. But they don’t. “Fingerprints,” said Samuel, pointing to his gloved hand. “They make us give fingerprints. But if we do that they will send us back.”
His words reflect the headache facing France, one that will not be solved by Theresa May’s agreement with Emmanuel Macron last week to hand over £44million for wire fencing and CCTV around the port. Migrants are simply refusing to be processed.
Doing so scuppers their chances of getting into the UK. Under the European Union’s Dublin Convention, migrants must apply for asylum in the first member state they enter, identified through fingerprint records.
For Samuel and his friends, some of whom had their fingerprints taken in Italy, this would mean their dream of living in Britain would die.
Mr Macron was confronted with this dilemma when he spoke to members of the Calais prefecture, who complained that 75 per cent of the migrants they received refused to give fingerprints.
Though the notorious Jungle camp, home to 10,000 migrants, was demolished, around 500 continue to roam the port, sleeping rough under bridges and in woods. Many live in makeshift camps and play an endless game of catand-mouse with French police.
“Some nights, police come and beat us or use tear gas,” said Samuel as his friends, in woolly hats and scarves, stamped on the ground to keep warm.
France strongly denies using police brutality. Mr Macron has said any officer caught resorting to violence would be punished.
Mrs May says giving £44million to Calais will make it easier to stop migrants boarding and hiding in vehicles. And the UK’S promise to take in more child refugees should bring down the numbers of those sleeping rough.
But aid workers say none of these measures will persuade migrants to enter reception centres and start filling in asylum applications.
Christian Salomé, head of the L’auberge des Migrants charity, which boycotted Mr Macron’s Calais visit, said: “This won’t encourage people to go into the reception centres. Instead it will just make them take more risks and make more dangerous attempts to cross the border.”
Xavier Bertrand, president of the Hauts-de-france region, agreed: “The situation in Calais will stay exactly the same, with all its problems and dramas.”
None of this bodes well for a seaside town that claims its reputation is in tatters and its tourism facing ruin.
“They are here all the time,” one elderly dog-walker grumbled as he shuffled past Samuel and his friends. “They’re never going away.”