Legal News

A report by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee has revealed that there is evidence illegal immigrants arriving in EU member states are making their way unchecked across EU borders to Calais, to await transport to the UK in the back of lorries.

The Daily Mail reports that the committee has found evidence that around 100 arrests at the Port of Calais are being made every day – and numbers there have nearly doubled to around 2,500 migrants awaiting their chance to cross the Channel to England.

Most illegal immigrants leave from ports in Libya and Alexandria in Egypt – and many are fleeing war zones in Syria, Somalia, Eritrea and the Middle East.

They arrive mainly in Italy, Turkey, Greece and Malta – and countries in the EU which receive the majority of illegal immigrants have all asked for more help in processing them and offering them asylum.

The Home Affairs Select Committee has found that migrants arriving in Turkey and Italy are able to make their way across EU member states with no checks at all.

Turkey has also become a route for those heading to Syria to join IS militants, including young recruits travelling to Syria from the UK.

The committee’s report – Migration failures lead to a crisis in Calais – blames the Schengen Agreement, which allows allowing EU citizens to travel between member states without passport checks

Freedom of movement across borders is a founding principle of the EU – and has been a sticking point in the UK’s attempts to renegotiate EU membership and prevent jobless EU migrants arriving in the UK and claiming out-of-work benefits from the time they arrive.

The executive director of European border agency Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri, has warned that Libya may have up to one million migrants waiting to leave for the EU.

Search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean were scaled back at the end of 2014, in the belief this would reduce the number of desperate migrants risking their lives in makeshift vessels and cargo ships from Libya and Alexandria.

People traffickers are behind the increasing number of migrants making their way from war zones to the safety of the EU.

Director-general of the Home Office’s Border Force, Sir Charles Montgomery, said that in the ten months to the end of January 2015, UK border checks detected 30,180 attempts to enter the UK illegally – compared with 18,000 the previous year.

Migrants who fail to make it across the England simply try again after being released back into the makeshift camps at Calais by French police officers.

MPs are warning that lorries are being warned not to stop near the Port of Calais, but it is feared desperate migrants will attempt to reach England in cars and mobile homes, unknown to motorists and holidaymakers.

Home Affairs Select Committee chairman, Keith Vaz MP, said:

“The crisis in Calais is a direct result of the soft EU external border in the Southern Mediterranean and the Greek-Turkish border.”

The committee’s reports adds:

“Schengen was intended to allow free movement, but not the free movement of illegal migrants.

“It was based on the assumption that the external border would be secure.”

A spokesman for the Home Office said a total of £12 million had been committed to extra security at Calais – “including installing security fencing and improving the flow of traffic to reduce the risk of queuing vehicles being targeted by migrants”

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