OUTRAGEOUS FRANCE’S TWO NEW MIGRANT JUNGLES
THOUSANDS more Britain-bound migrants are to be housed in two new official French Jungle-style camps in Paris.
The camps, the first in the city, will open by the end of September, it was announced yesterday.
Mayor Ann Hidalgo said they will be located close to the Gare du Nord Eurostar terminal from where high speed trains travel direct to London.
“There will be two migrant camps, one for men only and one for women and children,” said Ms Hidalgo, a socialist and close ally of President Francois Hollande.
She said up to 100 new migrants a day were currently arriving in Paris. The vast majority want to get to the UK, she said.
It comes as the council in Calais, 185 miles away, lobbies for the demolition of its own migrant Jungle. Currently some 10,000 migrants sleep rough in the port town in and around the camp.
Leaders of the conservative Republic Party want the camp razed or moved across the Channel to Dover.
If that were to happen the two official camps opening in Paris would become a magnet for thousands more asylum seekers from all over the world.
Trains between Paris and Calais are already full of migrants, with police finding it increasingly difficult to stop them getting on board.
Ms Hidalgo told the radio station France Inter that work on the camps was well under way at undisclosed locations “near the Garde du Nord”. They will include beds, washing and cooking facilities plus running water.
Advice will also be handed out on everything from health to claiming asylum.
But many will be hoping to stay in France only temporarily before they continue their journeys to the UK, where they will apply to stay for good.
Enraged
The French capital is already inundated with migrants who sleep rough in city parks, or under flyovers or railway bridges.
Riot police regularly destroy illegal settlements but it is impossible to move their occupants on for good. One migrant, Khalif, a 26-year-old originally from Afghanistan, said he was “extremely pleased” at the chance to move into one of the new camps.
“It will give us a good base to sort out our journey to England,” he said.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd was in Paris on Tuesday, when she and her French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, pledged “close co-operation” in dealing with the growing migrant crisis.
But there are fears that the French are becoming enraged by having to deal with migrants who want only to go to Britain.
If the Republicans win next year’s elections they may try to move the populations of all the migrant camps in France across to the UK.
BY THE end of the month migrants will have access to two brand new camps in Paris, the city’s mayor Anne Hidalgo announced yesterday. This is yet another terrible policy designed to help Europe cope with the migrant crisis. As with so many previous attempts to tackle the issue, it will only make things worse.
We have to question what Ms Hidalgo hopes these camps will achieve. According to her estimate, about 100 migrants a day are arriving in the French capital. Providing beds, washing and cooking facilities and fresh water is only going to encourage more people to turn up in the city – whether it is their final destination or not.
Many of the migrants entering Paris travel on to Calais where more than 10,000 are now thought to be living in the notorious Jungle camp. The port town is in enough trouble without misguided local politicians elsewhere making the journey there even easier.
And it was not exactly difficult to begin with. Across the EU most national borders are now little more than lines on a map. Once migrants get into Europe the chances are they will be able to travel all the way to the French coast without being stopped by anyone.
Ms Hidalgo’s camps will bring misery to Paris, a densely populated city that cannot possibly hope to absorb the huge number of migrants that they will attract. What’s more the damaging effects of this decision will spread far beyond the city limits.