Some 2,500 migrants in Calais have moved to the city not because they want to remain in France, but because they want to move to Britain, whose laws, according to the mayor of the French city, are more lenient to asylum seekers.
There needs to be more solidarity between European countries over
migration issues, the city officials said.
“All they want is to cross, hence the difficulty and the
misunderstanding from their side, and obviously from ours,”
said Calais Mayor, Natacha Bouchart.
Bouchart created controversy on Tuesday after saying that
migrants were “willing to die” for benefits. She made
the comments to a Commons Home Affairs Committee when a special
evidence session was taking place.
The UK has agreed to provide Calais with some €15,000 ($19,000)
to help secure the port, which will be spent on improvements in
border control and heightened security at the northern French
port city after a surge in attempts at scaling the gates there.
“We Calaisians will not benefit from this money,” the
mayoral office told RT.
READ MORE: UK govt to pour nearly £12 mn into
France for immigration crackdown help
“The system in Britain, according to the immigrants
themselves, is generous,” Bouchart stated. Her comments on
Tuesday appeared to imply that all immigrants hoped to make it to
Britain.
“It’s true that in France, when asylum is asked for, it's
complicated, because one must justify an identity, one has to
explain why one would like to come to France, one must ask for
nationality, which takes around 10 years,” she said.
“That moment that you set foot on British soil, you are accepted
by the community. This is not the same in France or other
European countries,” she added.
A surprisingly small number of migrants actually, however, end up
in the UK. Eurostat figures show that Britain’s 600 asylum
seekers per week in 2013 was meager in comparison to Sweden’s
1,000, Germany’s 2,400 and France’s 1,500.
However, Bouchart still reported a burden specific to Calais.
She made calls for cooperation on immigration issues, as it was a
problem affecting both nations and was, in terms of France, very
specific to Calais.
“Britain is not El Dorado, the British authorities have to
cooperate with the city of Calais, so that we could face this
problem together, and not fight each other,” she told RT.
However, London immediately challenged that claim saying they
were addressing such “pull factors.”