Local residents and others have criticized the plan and dubbed the barrier “the great wall of Calais”, according to the Guardian.
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“The decision to build a wall in Calais is the latest wrong move in what is the ongoing scandal of the handling of the plight of refugees in northern France”, Jean Lambert, a member of the European parliament and migration spokesperson for Britain’s Green Party, said on Wednesday.
The wall-building initiative comes as part of a security deal between Britain and France, where migrants pool in the port city of Calais, seeking a way to enter Britain – often illegally.
Goodwill told a parliamentary committee Tuesday that construction along the main highway to the port would start “very soon”, adding that “we’ve done the fence, now we are doing a wall”. “We’ve done the fence; now we are doing a wall”, UK Home Office minister Robert Goodwill said, according to the BBC.
Thousands of people, a lot of them from war-torn Syria and the wider Middle East, as well as from Africa, have reached Calais after long and risky Mediterranean and Aegean sea crossings, hoping to travel farther north to Britain by stowing away on trucks and trains through the Channel Tunnel.
In Britain, they’ve already given the upcoming wall a nickname.
Unfortunately for the desperate migrants, passage to Britain by train, boat, or truck is hard to come by and very unsafe.
“When you put walls up anywhere in the world, people find ways to go round them”.
On Monday, truckers, farmers, dock workers and merchants blocked a main access road to protest the disruption, as well as the fines they face if caught carrying stowaways.
“We are fed up with the migrant situation in Calais. We don’t know how we’re going to return in the evening because of the rocks and metal bars being thrown at us”.
Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, promised during a visit to the Jungle last week to close the camp down “as quickly as possible“.
Migrants make regular attempts to walk through the tunnel – used by passenger trains and vehicle shuttles – or to block roads in an attempt to slow down trucks so they can climb aboard.
A British truckers’ group says the wall is a poor use of money.
Vikki Woodfine of law firm DWF, who works with trucking companies, said the wall “is simply a knee-jerk reaction that is unlikely to make a difference in the long run”.
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Meanwhile Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has generated huge headlines and controversy with his plan to build a wall along the USA border with Mexico if elected.
