The Jungle: bulldozed – but now what?

No one would say that Calais’ “Jungle” camp was a pleasant place to live, said Barbara Speed in the i newspaper. But it had churches, schools, shops. It was a community of sorts. Now, the camp has been bulldozed; and this week, the last 1,500 children still living on the site were finally bussed out. They had hoped to be sent to the UK: instead they were taken to reception centres around France. As for the camp’s 6,000 or so adult residents – most of whom were young men from East Africa and Afghanistan – hundreds have disappeared, perhaps to live in yet more squalid camps elsewhere; the rest are now living in hastily arranged transit camps, ranging from a former children’s holiday centre in a chateau in Normandy, to a block of empty council flats near Toulouse. In the next few weeks, they must apply for asylum in France – or face deportation.

Some may now give up their dreams of reaching Britain, said The Independent. But others are sure to drift back to Calais, to keep trying. Why? Not because they are determined to exploit the UK’S welfare system: people don’t risk their lives to scrounge a few extra quid in benefits. More likely, they speak some English, have friends or family here, and think Britain offers them their best hope of getting a job, and building a future. Why are we so anxious to keep them out, asked Natalie Nougayrède in The Guardian. Last year, 1.3 million people applied for asylum in Europe. That amounts to only 0.2% of the EU’S population. It’s not unmanageable. In the 19th and 20th centuries, millions of Europeans went in search of better lives in the New World. Now, it’s the other way around – and we regard the migrants as “barbarian” hordes, instead of welcoming a useful injection of “youth and dynamism”.

I am all for economic migration, said Janet Daley in The Sunday Telegraph, and no doubt, the migrants who manage to make it to the EU are fit, motivated and resourceful. But that is in itself a problem. If we’re looking for a just and humane outcome to the global refugee crisis, should we be encouraging vast numbers of capable young men to abandon their troubled homelands and settle in the rich West? Or should we be helping the “hapless” people left behind in war-torn or despotic regimes? Surely our duty is to the most vulnerable, yet when Britain proposed taking refugee families from camps on the Syrian border, rather than illegally trafficked migrants from Greece, it was condemned by the EU, as it didn’t help solve the crisis in Europe. What outcome do we want? We must stop breast-beating, and make some decisions – or migration will remain a “brutal fight to the front of the queue”, won by people who are not always the most deserving.