Word: lefilleul
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...There will be no lodgings in it, and it will be administering to the most vulnerable of refugees," says Philippe Lefilleul, a member of Secours Catholique. "Resistance to any facility was sufficiently high that we're having to limit what we do to minimum humanitarian levels...
...Lefilleul says a majority of people who had resided in the Jungle have fallen back to nearby towns on the coastline - or have retreated all the way back to camp aside canals in Paris where they wait for smugglers to hide them in U.K.-bound trucks or freight trains. And Calais doesn't want those and newly arrived illegals to join the estimated 300 Jungle inhabitants still in town. The reason is evident: with its proximity to Britain - 30 miles, connected by ferries, trucks, cars and passenger and freight trains using the Chunnel - Calais remains a magnet for clandestine aliens...
...forceful message that France's humanitarian sympathy had run out. That message seems to have little impact on the people who view Calais as a staging post for a new life, many of whom have fled greater privations and dangers than a newly hostile Calais can offer. Instead, Lefilleul reports, migrants have simply gone underground and into deeper misery, hiding from even the aid groups looking to provide them minimal levels of assistance. "We aren't condoning illegal immigration and aren't naive about the role of traffickers in all this," he says. "But offering a little humanitarian care...
...That's not how Lefilleul's Secours Catholique day center, due to begin operating in January, is viewed across the Channel, where some hostile press reports dubbed it Sangatte II. "This is another gesture of contempt from France to Britain," said U.K. Conservative Party shadow immigration minister Damian Green. "It will encourage more potential illegal immigrants to try to break...
...Lefilleul disagrees with both analyses. "The reality is, until we find a way of physically moving the English coast farther away from France, the Calais region will be the place most aliens go because it's closest to the U.K.," he says. "The solution is to find a way to convince illegal aliens not to leave home in the first place. Trying to make their lives as miserable once they're here serves nothing...
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