Home Secretary Amber Rudd will meet her French counterpart Bernard Cazeneuve in Paris today and is expected to reject any move to allow United Kingdom asylum claims in France. We do need a new and stronger treaty with France.
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So far, France has been hardly affected by a migrant crisis that has seen Germany take hundreds of thousands of new arrivals; migrants do not, on the whole, wish to stay in France. Making Calais a place in which to claim asylum to Britain would simply encourage more to make the unsafe journey into France across Europe from the Middle East or North Africa.
The UK may review its security co-operation with France, as demands from French politicians to shift the Calais border back across the Channel intensify.
Today a Home Office source called the idea a “non-starter” as Home Secretary Amber Rudd met her French counterpart for security talks.
A Home office source told the BBC the idea of allowing migrants to claim asylum in the United Kingdom whilst still in France was a “complete non starter”. “It might make it worse – I think it would make it worse, nearly certainly”. It’s perhaps unsurprising that French politicians have seized the initiative to tell the United Kingdom, that they too want to take back control over their own border.
‘We are also committed to finding long-term solutions to the problem of illegal migration, which is why we created the Organised Immigration Crime Taskforce a year ago to work with law enforcement and global partners to target the organised crime gangs behind people smuggling’.
Betrand said he wants the treaty revoked.
Dover MP Charlie Elphicke – who last week warned lorry drivers could be killed as they passed through Calais – said re-establishing border checks in the United Kingdom would only mean more migrants heading to the UK.
Charlie Elphicke, Conservative MP for Dover, said: “Axing the treaty altogether would be a disaster for France and Britain”.
“We will not continue to guard the border for Britain if it’s no longer in the European Union”.
Earlier this month, local councils in the United Kingdom said they should be involved in assessing the needs of child migrants in Calais before they arrive in the UK.
“We are committed to working together to strengthen the security of our shared border, to strongly diminish the migratory pressure in Calais and preserve the vital economic link supported by the juxtaposed controls in Calais”, Rudd and her French counterpart Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement.
“We need a new Dover Patrol guarding the English Channel to help catch and jail the people traffickers and end their evil trade of modern slavery”.
“The French government have repeatedly made it clear that removing the juxtaposed controls would not be in the interests of France”, they added.
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Under EU rules, known as the Dublin Regulation, asylum seekers should claim asylum in the first safe country they come to.
