Thread: Immigration Crisis On Britain's Doorstep

A dangerously tense situation is brewing on Britain's doorstep as gangs trafficking refugees to the French coast become more violent, an undercover Sky News reporter has found.



A recent crackdown on border security has left thousands of illegal immigrants stuck for months in port towns as they fail to sneak on board lorries to cross the Channel.
They are living in makeshift camps and facing threats from criminal gangs who prey on their desperation.
The situation is generating a humanitarian crisis just a few miles from Britain, charities are warning.

Around 1,000 immigrants are thought to be in the Calais area alone, but in an effort to find other routes into the UK many are now heading to alternative ferry terminals, as far down as Saint Malo and Roscoff.
British Immigration Minister Phil Woolas has announced that he plans to travel to Calais in the near future to assess the scale of problem, which he conceded had been made worse because of the improved security measures at the local ferry port.


Both the British and French governments have vowed to go after the organised criminal gangs making millions of pounds trafficking refugees into the coastal towns.
While filming covertly in Calais, Sky's undercover reporter experienced first-hand how dangerous the gangs have become.


Posing as an illegal immigrant from Armenia, he was approached by a pair of Afghan men who warned that his life would be in danger if he did not leave the lorry park.


The said: "The agents [traffickers] round here will kill you if they see you again.
"This parking is only for Afghans. They have been killing lots of people for this parking. Next time if they see you here they will kill you."
Many of the immigrants interviewed by Sky News described how the tougher security had made it almost impossible for them to smuggle themselves into the UK in lorries.


In recent years they could expect to stay in Calais for around two weeks before successfully boarding a lorry bound for the UK, now many have been there for months, and see little prospect of getting through.
Their situation has become so desperate, that gangs of 15 to 20 immigrants have started lying in wait for lorries at road junctions, attempting to board the moving vehicles as they slow down.


French charities such as Association Terre d'Errance and Coordination Francaise Pour Le Droit D'Asile have suggested many refugees are now heading to towns near the Belgian border and down the coast to ports such as Dieppe, Oustreheim, Cherbourg, Saint Malo and Roscoff.


They have warned that unlike Calais, charity support for immigrants in these towns in limited or non-existent, leaving many without food, water or shelter.

In Cherbourg, Sky News spoke to Ayas Yousef, a 21-year-old Iraqi Kurd.
Having been deported from Britain twice before, he has decided to avoid Calais and try his luck further down the coast.
He said: "It's very difficult... I cannot tell you how many times I've tried. I've got in a lorry maybe 20 to 25 times, but every time they find me."
He and around 50 other immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan spend their days in a small tent village on a hill over-looking Cherbourg. They benefit from some charity hand-outs, but many others like them are not so lucky.


The Government is also re-examining the amount of financial assistance it offers to France, to help boost security along the French coast.
Mr Woolas told Sky News: "It's right that we financially contribute and that taxpayer money is being spent in these joint border controls that we already have.
"One of the reasons that the number of people appears to be going up is that we are catching more people.
"That is a result of the extra resources we have spent, so of course we accept our financial responsibility and I think the public would expect us to do so."
But with the increasing pressure on the public purse, some will argue that if security is already working effectively, it is up to the French government to deal with the problem by either deporting those in their country illegally, or offering them state support.

Not entirely on topic but relevant


One in nine British residents was born overseas

One in nine people living in Britain was born overseas, according to figures that highlight significant changes in the population under Labour.



By Christopher Hope and James Kirkup
Last Updated: 9:50PM GMT 24 Feb 2009


Official statistics released yesterday show that 6.5 million people born overseas were resident in Britain in the year to June 2008.
This represented a rise of 290,000 on the previous year and an increase of 1.2  million since 2004. In all, 10.7 per cent of the British population were born overseas. In 2001, the rate was around 8 per cent.
Among the foreign-born population, the most common countries of birth were India (619,000 people), Poland (461,000), Ireland (416,000) and Pakistan (415,000).
Meanwhile, the number of British-born residents barely changed in four years. It was 53.9 million last year, compared with 53.8 million in 2004. This was largely because of emigration: more than two million Britons have left the country since 1996.
Tim Finch, the head of migration at the Institute for Public Policy Research, a think tank, said the new figures demonstrated the changing face of the UK after an era of more permissive immigration rules. “Britain looks different and has changed quite rapidly in recent years. Whether that’s a problem depends on your attitude,” he said.
Campaigners said the figures suggested that the British population was growing faster than previously forecast, with implications for future Government policies.
Sir Andrew Green, of the pressure group Migrationwatch, said: “The remarkable increase in the foreign-born population suggests that our population may be growing even faster than the extra 10 million in the next 20 years that the government statisticians are already predicting”.
The increase in foreign-born residents to nearly 11 per cent of the total population means the situation in Britain is closer to that in other major European countries.
An estimated 12.5 per cent of the population of Germany was born abroad; in France the proportion is thought to be almost as high.
There were also suggestions that the real level of immigration may be much higher. Local government leaders have said that the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which compiles the figures, significantly underestimates the number of migrants in Britain, leaving councils with a financial shortfall.
Westminster, the country’s biggest council, said the figures were “fundamentally flawed” and claimed that local services were being hit by an “unaccounted influx of immigration”.
Further statistics from the Home Office, the Department for Work and Pensions and the ONS suggested, however, that as Britain tipped into recession last year, fewer people came to the country to work. They showed that the number of short-term migrants, coming to work or study for less than 12 months, was down 13 per cent to 374,000 for the year to June 2007. In the year to September 2008, 720,000 national insurance numbers were allocated to adult foreign nationals, 7 per cent down on the previous year.
As disclosed in The Daily Telegraph yesterday, there has been a steep fall in the numbers of eastern Europeans coming to work in Britain. In the final quarter of last year, 29,000 people came to work in the UK, down from 35,000 in the previous quarter and the lowest level since 2004.
Referring to the drop in overseas workers, Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, said: “This will ensure that during these economic times, when people are losing jobs, people already here have the first crack of the whip at getting work.”
Independent experts said, however, that the fall was a sign of Britain’s growing economic weakness.
Meanwhile, the number of people applying for asylum in Britain rose sharply, while the number of decisions taken on applications fell. The Home Office figures showed that the number of applications for asylum, excluding dependants, was up 10 per cent to 25,670 in 2008. In contrast, the number of decisions on whether to grant asylum was down 11 per cent to 19,420 last year.
The Tories said the figures showed the asylum system was sliding back into chaos. “Slow decision-making and rising backlogs are bad news for taxpayers and genuine refugees,” said Damian Green, the immigration spokesman.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...-overseas.html