CALAIS THE LAST STOP BEFORE ENGLAND

In 2002 when French president Nicolas Sarkozy closed the doors of Red Cross center in Sangatte, migrants started to camp out among the sand dunes and thorn bushes of Calais in a place labeled « the jungle ».
The camp was set up by Afghan Pashtuns three years ago as the war in afghanistan drove thousands of migrants to seek a better life in Britain.

Moving to douse a smoldering immigration conflict between France and Britain, French officials shut down the...
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In 2002 when French president Nicolas Sarkozy closed the doors of Red Cross center in Sangatte, migrants started to camp out among the sand dunes and thorn bushes of Calais in a place labeled « the jungle ».
The camp was set up by Afghan Pashtuns three years ago as the war in afghanistan drove thousands of migrants to seek a better life in Britain.

Moving to douse a smoldering immigration conflict between France and Britain, French officials shut down the Jungle on the 22 of september.

The number of migrants went from 800 a couple of months ago to 276 when the french police closed the Jungle. Among them, 135 are supposely minors and will be placed in social service hostels. Which they will be free to leave whenever they like. For the adults they will be invited to make asylum claims in France and if they refused they will be send to detention center. Under french law, illegal immigrants can only be held in a detention center for a maximum of 32 days unless a judge has delivered an order to expel them to their countries of origin.

For the socialist and for refugee support groups it is clear that shutting down the jungle was just a big photo opportunity for the french government to show he is honoring the agreement with Home Secretary, Alan Johnson in building stronger controls at the Calais border with the UK.
Francois Hollande a leading socialsit MP, said that in practice most of the migrant will return to Calais. «There is not one jungle, but several jungles, and the refugees are just going to go to one of the others. We have to deal with this immigration issue at a European level. »

Mathias Depardon
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