Excellent article to accompany the one further

Excellent article to accompany the one further down, also from The Guardian:

The Calais camps will not go away

 

• Alan Travis
• The Guardian, Tuesday 22 September 2009

French police detain a migrant at a camp called the jungle near Calais. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

Immigration minister, Phil Woolas, insisted today that the 278 people, of which 132 are children, detained as a result of a police raid on the Calais camp must be illegal immigrants otherwise they would have claimed asylum in France or the first EU country they had come to.

But this ignores the practical failings of the European asylum policy known as Dublin 2 under which asylum seekers are supposed to be sent back to the first safe EU country they enter.

As the French socialist politician Jack Lang put it today the raid was "a search operation" – simply raking the leaves from one side to another – and predicted that other "jungles" will quickly appear along the French coast.

Refugee welfare groups say the burden-sharing Dublin 2 agreement is failing to operate for many of the Afghans, Iraqis and Eritreans in the camp.

The French, for example, who dealt with 35,000 asylum claims last year, have made it very difficult for those in Calais to claim refugee status. "The French are not playing their part in allowing people to claim asylum in Calais despite their obligations under the Refugee Convention," said Keith Best of the Immigration Advisory Service.

The situation is more desperate in EU border countries. Greece, the most likely transit country for many in Calais, accepted fewer than 1% of its asylum claims last year. Italy has raised international concern by summarily intercepting migrant boats at sea and forcing thousands to return to Libya without even a glance at their refugee claims.

The EU has so far failed to enforce a common European treatment of asylum claims and as the Refugee Council argued today until there are adequate systems to offer safety to refugees who need it across Europe, the Calais camps will not go away.

Nevertheless the existence of several hundred migrants the other side of the Channel does not prove that Britain is a "soft touch". If it were really an open "back door" there would be tens of thousands and not a few hundred trying to get into Britain. Indeed the door is not open at all. They are stuck in Calais because millions have already been spent on higher fences and heat scanners to keep them out of Britain.

It is worth however keeping the numbers in perspective. France and Italy (31.200] recorded more asylum claims than Britain [30,500] last year. The UK number is far below the 2002 peak figure of 103,000. The French saw an increase in claims from Mali and the Comoros Islands - countries the UK have no links unlike Afghanistan. But even these flows are small beer compared with the global situation. There were more than 10 million refugees last year and 200 million migrants internationally. The largest refugee camp holds 285,000 people not a few hundred. It is in Dadaab, Kenya.

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But there are always two sides to every story. Check out this article from yahoo that was just sent to me.