Tragedy in the Channel
Last week’s tragedy in which 27 people lost their lives while attempting to cross the Channel set off a bitter blame game between Britain and France ( see page 4). Mohammed Shekha Ahmad, a Kurdish Iranian who was one of two survivors, said the migrants had made mayday calls to both French and British authorities, but each side told them it was the responsibility of the other to send help. The group had held hands, he said, in an effort to stay afloat but finally succumbed to freezing temperatures. The dead included three children and a pregnant woman.
Britain and France were due to hold talks on the Channel migrant crisis this week, having earlier promised to do “everything possible” to tackle the people-smuggling gangs. Boris Johnson said it was time to “break these gangs who are literally getting away with murder”; President Macron said France would not “allow the Channel to become a cemetery”.
What the editorials said
The fact that the number of migrants reaching Britain in small boats has tripled this year to 26,000 is a reflection of Britain’s “success in choking off other routes”, such as stowing away in lorries, said the FT; but the undimmed determination of migrants to reach the UK meant they would always try other ways. What makes last week’s tragedy all the more terrible is that it was “predictable and preventable”. It was the result of a culpable failure to get a grip on this crisis.
Yet as we know, there are no easy solutions, said The Times. France has promised to step up patrols, but rejected a proposal to allow British police to help guard its beaches. Targeting smuggling gangs often leads only to the arrests of “small fry” while the criminal networks remain undisturbed. And processing migrants abroad would be impractical, costly and legally fraught. One thing though is for sure, said the Daily Mirror: no progress will be made until Paris and London “stop blaming each other, and start working together”. Until they do, “innocent people” will keep dying.
What the commentators said
The environment faced by migrants in Dunkirk’s refugee camps could scarcely be more hostile, said Tim Adams in The Observer. Here, people from war-torn states such as Afghanistan and Syria live in freezing conditions along roads and railways. There’s no water or sanitation; police move them on every few days. Yet still people come, passing through camps and paying sums of about s3,000 to smuggling gangs for the chance to cross the Channel on unseaworthy inflatable boats. Among them was Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, 24. A Kurdish Iraqi student, she was desperate to join her fiancé in the UK. Yet, like 26 others on board her boat last week, she never made it. So what drives migrants “to make the perilous journey in small boats?”
The first thing to remember is that comparatively few do, said Caitlin Allen on Reaction.life. Roughly four times as many people claim asylum in France every year as in the UK. Germany deals with about ten times as many claims as we do. Both offer more generous welfare benefits to asylum seekers, and allow them to take on paid work sooner than they can in Britain. Those who do come to Britain are motivated by factors such as family and community ties, language, and the ready availability of black market jobs. “Neither compassion nor callousness” alone will solve this crisis, said Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times. We have to remember that those making this journey are people, just like us. But we must also recognise that open borders and generous benefits serve as a “boon to traffickers” by making millions feel it is worth taking serious risks to get here. So what to do? We need to get tougher, by cracking down on the black economy and swiftly deporting those whose asylum claims are rejected. But we must also be more generous: we should offer to those whose asylum claims are accepted far more help in integrating and finding employment. To make such reforms requires “enlightened leadership and political courage”. What a tragedy that “these qualities are in such pitifully short supply”.
What next?
Plans in the Nationality and Borders bill to push back boats carrying migrants could breach Britain’s human rights obligations, MPs warned this week. The Joint Committee on Human Rights urged the Home Office to explain how border officials would enforce push-back powers in the bill, which is now going through Parliament.
An EU border agency plane will patrol the French coast for migrants seeking to cross the Channel from this week. The move followed talks between France, the Netherlands, Belgium and the European Commission last weekend.