BRITAIN’S BROKEN BORDERS
As fury grows over EU threat of refugee quotas, Calais migrants win ‘human right’ to live here
JUDGES punched a further hole in Britain’s porous borders last night by letting a Calais migrant gang across the Channel. The immigration tribunal ruling – justified on human rights grounds – paves the way for thousands of similar claims.
It came amid fury at plans from Brussels to make Britain accept up to 90,000 refugees a year. Failure to agree a quota could see the UK denied the right to deport asylum seekers to their country of arrival.
Number 10 last night vowed to fight the proposal, which is a major blow to David Cameron’s EU referendum ambitions. MPs warned the meddling by eurocrats and judges meant Britain had lost control of its borders.
‘This is scandalous,’ said Sir Gerald Howarth, a former Tory minister.
‘ The tribunal should have no business in this matter. We have very strict laws on immigration and asylum that are set by Parliament.
‘It is not for the courts to undermine them in this way.’
The ruling concerned four young Syrian men – two under-16s and a 17- year- old and his mentally ill 26-year-old brother – all living in the notorious Calais Jungle.
They were desperate to be reunited with their siblings or parents in the UK, the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal in central London heard. The
claims should have been dealt with in France but, after lawyers argued the asylum system there was in meltdown, judges said they had a right to a family life in the UK.
Although the Home Office is understood to be planning an appeal the four refugees will be allowed to travel over from Calais because the tribunal’s decision has immediate effect.
Their barrister Michael Fordham QC said the situation would ‘apply to others – certainly, I would say, any unaccompanied minor in this camp with a sibling in the UK’.
The ruling was delivered while ministers were still reeling from the news, revealed in yesterday’s Mail, that Brussels wants to rip up the so-called Dublin Convention. This states that asylum seekers should lodge their claims in the first safe country they reach inside the EU. Those who do not, and who later arrive in Britain, can be forcibly sent home.
The European Commission wants a new quota system under which member states share out the estimated 1.3million people expected to arrive in Europe this year.
Britain, which would be expected to take around 90,000, has been warned that – if it refuses – it will lose its right to send home migrants who should have made their claims elsewhere.
MPs and hauliers warned this would make Calais even more of a magnet for asylum seekers. Richard Burnett of the Road Haulage Association said: ‘The floodgates would open. The migrants that are already there don’t want to be in France, they want to get to the UK, and this would just make the problem far far worse.’
Tory backbencher Peter Bone said: ‘This is absolutely absurd. It is typical of the European Union to want to change the rules to penalise Britain.
‘Genuine asylum seekers should be delighted to be looked after in the first safe country they reach. Why would they need to be offered a choice? The longer we stay in the EU, the more there will be a creep that weakens our ability to control our borders.’
Lord Green, who chairs the pressure group Migrationwatch, said: ‘If the result of this is that asylum seekers know they will never be sent back to Europe once they get across the Channel, it is bound to increase the pressure on our borders at Calais.’
Ukip leader Nigel Farage said the chaos already seen at Calais could increase as more desperate migrants massed there.
Number 10 insiders insisted there was no prospect of the UK accepting the quota scheme. The Government also says it is determined to bolster security at Calais to deter would-be illegals.
One EU source said the timing could not be worse for Mr Cameron’s renegotiation: ‘It’s like they’ve laid out a minefield in front of him.’
European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker says he wants a deal on refugees around the same time as one is struck on Mr Cameron’s reform demands.
He said he was ‘ convinced the EU Council in February will reach a fair deal for Britain’ – paving the way for a referendum in June.
But Mr Juncker added: ‘I am worried we won’t have enough time to tackle there the refugee question in sufficient depth. I recommend to (European Council president) Donald Tusk that he holds a further summit.
‘We can’t have a success on the UK and not address the refugee quotas, that would be a mistake.’
Government insiders said the row made the prospect of a referendum in June even more likely, not less. Number 10 is unlikely to want to risk holding a vote after a summer of migrant chaos, sources said.
Asked whether the UK will lose its ability to remove people under the Dublin rules when the new scheme comes in, Natasha Bertaud, European Commission spokesman, said: ‘It’s very premature to talk now about what the future proposal will look like.
‘We will set out our plans in March. There are systemic deficiencies in the way the current Dublin system is working and it does need to be overhauled.’
International Development Secretary Justine Greening said the UK would strongly argue against any attempt to scrap the ‘first country of entry’ rule, adding: ‘It’s important and it’s obviously one we’ve made use of.’
Eurosceptic Tory Philip Hollobone said: ‘This is an outrageous proposal from the European Commission and underlines why the best future for Britain lies outside the EU.
‘It is increasingly clear that the EU does not even have respect for its own external frontiers when it’s very happy for asylum seekers to wash around within its boundaries to claim refuge wherever they choose.
‘I thought the Prime Minister saw the EU as a guarantor of our security but this flies in the face of that.’