More hostile UK ‘will put a stop to the migrant rush’
MIGRANTS see Britain as ‘ El Dorado’, and the UK should create a more hostile environment for those who arrive, French lawmakers said yesterday. Calais MP Pierre-Henri Dumont said the UK provided a ‘magnetic attraction’ but slammed the idea of British police patrolling his beaches as ‘crazy’. ‘We can put as many police officers on the French shore. We will not stop these crossings because we have 200 to 300km of shore to monitor,’ he told BBC Radio 5 Live. ‘ Make it harder to come to the UK, make it harder to find a job when you are illegal, harder to find a house when you are illegal. ‘Stop all the magnetic attraction for these migrants to come to the UK.’ He said France already processes four times more immigrants than the UK and called for asylum seekers to be intercepted and processed at centres across Europe. ‘It’s time for both our governments to stop blaming each other and to try to find real solutions, not a crazy solution such as sending the British Army to the French shore,’ he said. French interior minister Gerald Darmanin said ‘immigration is badly managed in Britain,’ with UK firms illegally employing undocumented migrants. And he slammed the smugglers who persuade people to risk their lives crossing the Channel. ‘For a few thousand euros they promise them “El Dorado in England”, he said, referring to the mythical South American city of gold. ‘Sadly, this has been repeated every day for the last 20 years.’
French MP Bruno Bonnell told Sky News 1,500 smugglers had already been arrested this year and 60 per cent of Channel crossings were intercepted.
‘It’s not enough, fair enough, but we do try, and pointing fingers at the French people for trying to help those migrants cross the Channel is just a myth,’ he said. ‘We need to create the conditions so the migrants stop being obsessed by crossing the UK border.’