By Peter Allen
The French government today vowed to clear Calais of the shanty town of illegal immigrants waiting to cross to the UK.
[dailymail.co.uk] Immigration minister Eric Besson told the town’s business leaders he would order the removal of a squatter camp which evolved after the closure of a French Red Cross reception centre at nearby Sangatte more than six years ago.
And he challenged the UK authorities to share responsibility for solving the problem.
Mr Besson urged the UK to sign up to an agreement making Calais a passport free zone – so they can get rid of thousands of illegal migrants.
It would mean that all could get straight across the Channel without official papers to the welfare benefits available in their British ‘Eldorado’.
Exasperated by the sight of the migrants sleeping rough as they try and board Dover-bound trains and lorries illegally, Calais mayor Natacha Bouchard outlined the scheme to Immigration Minister Eric Besson.
‘It’s necessary to speed up negotiations with the British because at the moment we’re ready to charter a boat to dump them over there,’ said Mrs Bouchard.
She said all that Britain had to do was sign up to the Schengen agreement, which allows anybody to travel between designated European Union states – including France – without passports or visas.
Mrs Bouchard also welcomed a scheme to bring in the Army to destroy a notorious shanty town next to Calais port called ‘The Jungle’ where a London journalism student was raped last year.
Both politicians – who are tough talking members of the ruling UMP party – were taking part in a crunch meeting aimed at ‘cleaning up’ a problem firmly blamed on Britain’s benefits culture.
The French believe it encourages foreigners from all over the world to use their country as a base to get to the UK, where they will receive generous welfare payments as asylum seekers or else disappear into the black economy.
While Mr Besson favours the use of military force to tear down the squatter camps, he knows that removing passport controls from Calais would cause outrage on the other side of the Channel.
Instead he would prefer to see a series of ‘mini’ welcome centres set up along the French coast, offering food, showers, and information about how to claim asylum.
The Minister denies emphatically that they will be like the Red Cross Centre at Sangatte which acted as a magnet to thousands of migrants to the UK before being shut down as part of an Anglo-French agreement in 2002.
If the UK did sign up to Schengen, then all of the Calais migrants could flock to Dover unchallenged – meaning France’s problem would immediately become a British one.
Earlier this week Mrs Bouchard said: ‘Today, with some 800 migrants in the town, the situation is becoming unmanageable. Calais is hostage to Britain, which refuses to ratify Schengen.‘
There are some 2000 migrants sleeping rough in the entire Pas de Calais area, with most playing a nightly game of cat and mouse with frontier police as they try to board lorries and trains to Britain.
Referring to ‘The Jungle’, Mrs Bouchart said: ‘It’s not a camp, it’s a village. The municipal workers cannot clean it up, they’re not up to it.
‘I’ve told the Prefect and I’ve asked him to look at a measure to wipe out this organised village. It needs an intervention by the Army.
‘There are more than 80 shelters, with a transport stop, a mosque, and a shop.
‘Migrants know exactly how to go about taking water, electricity, and stolen building material from local businesses.’ She said thousands of pounds worth of equipment had been stolen to build makeshift homes, with some of it recovered during a series of police raids on Tuesday.
Almost 200 men were arrested at the same time, in an attempt to break up people smuggling gangs who charge up to £1000-a-time for illegal passages to the south coast of England.
While almost all have since been released, Mr Besson said the operation was a success, and that his ‘target’ was the people smugglers.
On the new welcome centres Mr Besson insisted they will not become ‘a new, or a mini Sangatte.’
British Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said: ‘The UK policy is to not sign up to the Schengen Agreement.
‚Free movement is only rightly available to legal entrants. Weakening our controls will only play into the hands of the traffickers who profit from human misery and suffering.’
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk
