Getting a little worried as we are off on our holiday into france soon via Calais. Whats the answer to it all? Is the mayoress correct in wanting to blockade the port? Should the french be doing more to stop the influx of immigrants into their country in the first place? It is reported they are turning a blind eye on the french/Italian border so is this not a problem they are making for themselves?
The French / Italian border is similar to the Kent / Sussex border, i.e. not guarded at all. Why should it be?
I understand we, the uk, are considering placing information booths at eu entry hotspots. That will stop them! Apparently the italians are supposed to take electronic finger print scans of each asylum seeker at the entry point. Once this has been done the person in question becomes the responsibility of the Italians. The only flaw being, the Italians are failing to do this as they do not want to be responsible for the immigrants, instead they are shuffling them across the french border at menton where french police are busy turning a blind eye. Hence why, these asylum seekers, persecuted individuals, murderers (whatever it is they are fleeing) end up camping at calais. Once at Calais, no money no food etc the criminal acts begin in earnest. HGV drivers are being robbed and threatened so I would suppose the people of Calais are facing the same criminal acts. I beleive we are one of the few EU members which will provide food and shelter for these people. Maybe the EU policy should be level across all member states and therefore reduce the numbers specifically aiming for the UK?
"Turning a blind eye" is a bizarre way of describing the fact that all people can cross an open border without restriction. When you travel from Essex into Kent do the police "turn a blind eye" to your crossing?
Yeah I realise that pete, I have crossed many French/Italian borders. If the french and Italians choose not to act then maybe it really is their problem and their problem alone?
not quite the same, but with the likes of terrorist threats you would think there should be some sort of presence
Non euro citizens can freely enter the EU without restriction? If thats the case, why is the UK allowed to pick and choose who enters?
Have you never heard of Schengen? All the countries within the Schengen area have open borders with each other, but not with countries outside of Schengen. Most of the countries of Western Europe (both within and outside the EU) are in Schengen, so everybody can travel around freely and easily from country to country. It is only the borders with countries outside the Schengen area which are guarded. The UK does not, of course, belong to Schengen as we fail to meet some of the basic requirements - hence the need for border guards at Calais/Dover. "Why bother with passports Pete if the entire global population can move freely anywhere one chooses?" - strawman, no-one has ever suggested any such thing. Schengen Area - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think the point I was trying to make was the fact that the french police are turning a blind eye to non "schengen" immigrants crossing illegally from Italy into France and then the French complaining about them congregating at Calais.
If illegal immigrants get into Kent, the police "turn a blind eye" to them crossing into Sussex. Are you saying that's wrong? Should they set up border posts and check documents at Tunbridge Wells? Crossing between Schengen countries is exactly the same.
We can't put people on the next boat back to France though, because they don't originate from there. Even if they had arrived into the UK direct from thier home country, the UK is very slow to actually repatriate anyone. We have to remember also that most of these people have no paperwork (even if they did have some, they will have discarded it, to avoid trouble of this kind). The elephant in the room is that the UK has a welfare system (including health and education) which was designed years and years before we joined the EU, and long before thousands of people were able to get into Euope from hellholes in Africa etc. We have continued to expand the generosity of this system despite our not being able to afford it (the entire, huge, NI input every year is only enough really to cover the current payout of state pension - it goes nowhere near funding all the other non-contributory benefits like housing benefit and child benefit). We have also ignored the fact that as part of the EU we ought to harmonise some of our benefits and taxes. But no, we have not done so, and as a result there is much money to be made by importing tobacco from less heavily taxed areas of the EU, and even legal EU immigrants see the UK as an attractive destination compared to much of the rest of Europe.
I think the problem is the fact that the people at Calais want to come to Britain. If they successfully get hear they claim asylum. International law says that they should claim asylum in the first safe haven ie France but they don't because they dont want to be in France. Now they are illegal immigrants in France so the French should be repatriating them but the French know that if they tried that they would claim asylum and so they would have to look after them Catch 22 for our nieghbours
According to Wikipedia (must be true ) "The UK declined to sign up to the Schengen Agreement, one argument being that, for an island, frontier controls are a better and less intrusive way to prevent illegal immigration than other measures, such as identity cards, residence permits, and registration with the police, which are appropriate for countries with "extensive and permeable land borders". Ireland does not share the UK's view that free movement without border checks should apply only to EU citizens, but did not sign up to the Schengen Agreement because it "would not be in the interest of Ireland to have a situation where the common travel area with Britain would be ended and Ireland would impose both exit and entry controls on persons travelling between here and Britain and, in addition, on the land frontier."
