The Situation In Calais

The situation for migrants in Calais is reaching crisis point. Since the agreement between the UK and French governments to close the Red Cross ran Sangatte camp in 2002 conditions have gone from bad to worse.

The Sangatte camp was housed in an old Eurotunnel building close to the tunnel entrance 3 miles from the main port. Designed to hold 900 migrants, it held 2,000 at its peak, most coming from the near and middle east but all heading for the UK.

The agreement itself was designed to reinforce the Dublin convention, under which asylum seekers are meant to apply for asylum in the first 'safe' country they enter. The practical consequences were the extension of UK border controls to the French side of the channel, a rapid increase in the UK detention estate together with joint UK-French deportation flights.

For migrants the channel became an even narrower bottle neck. So-called 'illegal immigrants' detected entering Kent from Calais fell by 88% from more than 10,000 in 2002 to 1,500 in 2006. The conditions they have to endure have also deteriorated significantly, with the French government upping their repression of migrants in the north east of the country. It was already against the law to aid 'illegal immigrants' in France, but it became policy to send newly recruited police and CRS officers to the Calais area to 'blood' them.

According to the French 'humanitarian' groups (local ad hoc associations that organise in defiance of the law to help feed and aid the migrants) there are around 800 migrants in Calais itself, mostly staying in the makeshift camp called the 'Jungle'. There are also many more in the surrounding area and in the towns along the coast that have crossing points to England, such as Dunkuerque.

At the weekend a group of UK No Borders activists visited Calais on our way to a meeting in Lille to organise a trans-national No Borders Camp in Calais planned for June this year . We visited the only 2 groups, Belle Etoile & Salam, still providing, food for the migrants in the town in defiance of the authorities. And in the jungle we found a Kurdish family with a 3 year old child having to survive in the freezing cold. Such desperate conditions have lead to a renewed call for the opening of a new centre to provide shelter for these people having to survive there.

Yet the new French immigration minister, Eric Besson, can breeze into town a couple of days ago, in what was a national media event, with news crews fighting for the best space, to announce that he wants to see an "exclusion zone" for immigrants in this region of France.

This will be greeted with a sigh of relief by UK ministers as they had lobbied hard for the French government to not reopen humanitarian shelters in the Calais area. No doubt when Besson meets his British counterpart, Phil Woolas, in the UK in February they will get on like a house on fire. That is until the French ask the UK tax-payers to help pay for the increased costs of the new regime.