Word: britains
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...crossing to Britain has become all but impossible over the years, as British immigration officials have increasingly tightened security, using sniffer dogs and carbon-dioxide detectors in the ports. As a result, thousands of immigrants have found themselves stranded along the French coast, living with little sanitation or clean water...
...hazardous journey across Europe, and instead blamed French officials for failing to deal with them. "The French government has effectively washed its hands of the problem and deliberately held back from bringing these people into the French asylum system in the hope that they will make it to Britain," says Dan Hodges, director of Refugee Action, a London-based charity. "This is a grotesque game of human pass-the-parcel." (See pictures of the French crackdown at the Jungle...
...Calais is hardly new. Over the past decade - and even before the 2001 Afghanistan war began - thousands of Afghans have traveled illegally on epic journeys that last weeks and cross several borders. They all have one goal in mind: to sneak aboard container trucks on ferry boats bound for Britain, where they see their best prospects. With no national identity cards in Britain, illegal immigrants for years have found it easier to escape notice there than in France, where police frequently check immigrants' documents in the streets. (Read "Postcard from Calais: Treading Water...
...Before the police cleared the Calais camp on Tuesday, Immigration Minister Besson had failed to persuade Britain to take the men as refugees. That is a contrast to 2002, when Britain agreed to take 1,200 of the 1,500 immigrants living in a Red Cross center in Sangatte, a suburb of Calais. Nicolas Sarkozy, who was Interior Minister at the time, shut the center, saying it would stop immigrants from converging in Calais. (See pictures of Nicolas Sarkozy...
...rumors of the crackdown spread throughout Calais on Monday, Mohammadullah Safi, an Afghan interpreter for the UNHCR, explained to immigrants how to apply for asylum in France. Safi - himself a refugee who failed to cross into Britain in 2002 - believes that thousands more Afghans will still try to make it to Britain, while thousands more will dodge police as they travel across Europe, hoping to make new lives there. No riot police can stop that, he says. "Change things in Afghanistan, and things will change here," Safi says. Until then, Europe's politicians will continue their bitter arguments over illegal...