The Home Secretary will bluntly reject calls to scrap the border deal between Britain and France when she meets her French counterpart in Paris later.
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French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and British counterpart Amber Rudd met in Paris and said in a joint statement that both countries plan to further secure the port and tunnels in coming months.
The French advocates see the reforms as a way of ending the unsatisfactory situation that has led to almost 10,000 migrants living in the squalid and violent Calais “Jungle”, and shifting the problem to Britain.
Under his suggested changes, if asylum applications were denied, migrants would be deported to their country of origin directly.
France’s Socialist government, including Cazeneuve and President Francois Hollande, have repeatedly said they will respect the Le Touquet agreement which, if dropped, could spur the flow of refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa through France to Britain.
He told the BBC that asylum seekers should be allowed to lodge their claims at “hotspots” in France.
The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is standing again to be president, has called for a processing centre in England to deal with asylum requests from those in Calais, but a Downing Street spokesman played down the speculation.
“When migrants are found in a lorry, they’re usually escorted by police a few hundred metres (yards) away, but most of the time there are no legal proceedings and that must change”, he said, as quoted by The Telegraph.
Migrants in Calais camps seeking asylum in the United Kingdom should be allowed to lodge their claim in France, the president of the region has told the BBC. “It might make it worse – I think it would make it worse, nearly certainly”.
He has given up his dream of going to Britain and is applying for asylum in France. That’s prompted concern that Britain could face an influx of asylum seekers.
Just as the French delayed Britain’s entry to the EU, our friends across the Channel were least troubled by Brexit than any major European nation.
“We need order at the border”.
“That’s why we need to have a new treaty between Britain and France to deal with these problems once and for all”. The two ministers will discuss a broad range of issues related to security.
A Home Office spokesperson told Sky News: “We remain committed to working together to protect our shared border in Calais and to maintain the juxtaposed controls”.
The Calais region prefecture says that since March, 55 children have been able to join families in Britain – the dream of most Calais migrants.
“It is not possible to keep the border here without a new agreement between the French and British governments”.
Migrants and refugees attempting to cross the English Channel have over the years gathered in camps known as the “jungle” in Calais.
Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz said the figures undermined the Government’s claim that it had “water-tight security at our borders”.
“Theresa May should use the upcoming G20 to seek reassurances from the French government about the deal that Sarkozy himself actually signed in 2003”.
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This search for solutions is understandable, not least in the context of next year’s French presidential election in which security and immigration will be key issues.
