United Kingdom: crackdown on illegal immigrants ” “

Agreement between Nicolas Sarkozy and David Blunkett, respectively Interior Ministers for France and Britain, was reached on Monday, 2 December. It provides for the final closing down of the holding centre at Sangatte (France) on 30 December. The centre was established by the Red Cross close to the entrance to the Eurotunnel in 1999, as a temporary response to the emergency created by the arrival of thousands of asylum-seekers – mainly Afghans and Kurds – desperately trying to reach Great Britain, whose legislation on asylum was hitherto among the most lenient in Europe. According to estimates furnished by Britain’s Home Office, some 67,000 persons have passed through Sangatte, while Eurotunnel has declared that it has stopped some 18,500 persons trying to reach Great Britain illegally in the first half of 2002 alone and that the majority came from the Sangatte refugee camp. The Anglo-French agreement provides, among other things, for the permission to Great Britain to extend its own frontier controls beyond its own borders. In its turn, the British government has agreed to accept 1200 persons currently being accommodated at Sangatte on temporary “work permits” or to join their families already resident in the UK. “There’s a sharp difference – said British Home Minister David Blunkett – between the ways of economic migration and our system of asylum that wants to protect those fleeing from persecution. We are opening ever more opportunities to permit immigrants to come to work here legally”. Hence our commitment to crack down on “bogus asylum applications” and to combat illegal immigration by increasing security measures and the work of intelligence. The document put out by the Home Office reports that, during the Christmas period, “every vehicle travelling to England via Calais will be searched for the presence of clandestine immigrants” and that the “United Kingdom, with the support of the French government, will provide other material for inspections to be conducted in other French ports – initially Cherbourg and Dunkirk”. The document also expresses the hope that other European countries, principally Belgium and Holland, may help in controlling the coasts along the Channel. The reason is that asylum is “a European question that requires a European response”. If the British government’s willingness to accept more immigrants is favourably seen by the Churches and by social workers who work with immigrants and refugees, the attempt to extend and reinforce security measures is regarded with some apprehension. According to the Catholic bishop of Lancaster, Patrick O’Donoghue, who heads the refugee office within the International Affairs department of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Great Britain has made a “generous gesture to welcome 1200 asylum-seekers, even if not as refugees”. “The decision to offer them the chance to work here seems to me reasonable and satisfactory”, said Louise Pirouet, co-founder of the mixed group of volunteer service Cam-Oak, active in promoting the recognition of immigrants’ rights. Both Bishop O’Donoghue and Ms Pirouet share, however, the concern deriving from the “danger of exporting our immigration controls” and the risk of “preventing genuine asylum-seekers from gaining access to our system of protection”. The bishop is also of the view that a lot still needs to be done to “integrate” immigrants, especially at school, and to “recognize and exploit the talents of these people who could so much enrich our country not only from an economic but also from a cultural point of view”.