French Authorities Actively Help Migrants Board Channel Boats Bound for the UK

{snip}

It is 2.30pm on Sunday, the English Channel in perfectly calm and they are waiting for the dinghy pick-up from the last stage of their marathon journey from Africa to the UK that has taken some of them months, others years.

But perhaps the most shocking part of the entire scene is the sight of French authorities – in considerable numbers and just metres away – not just standing by and letting these illegal migrants, and another bunch who race down from nearby sand dunes, clamber aboard throughout the next several hours, but actively assisting in getting them to the dinghy.

Then the dangerously overloaded dinghy was followed by French vessels until it reached international waters. At this point the illegal migrants and asylum-seekers were handed over to the British, who don’t bother with any tailing activities.

Instead they are taken on board a boat of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and sped to an English port for processing, and immediately provided with a daily allowance, housing and other benefits.

{snip}

For weeks the British public has been told the Labour government has successfully cut the numbers of cross-Channel asylum-seekers.

The numbers are indeed down, but not all of the 40 per cent reduction on last year’s record cross-Channel arrivals is attributable to the £662m ($1.25bn) given by the UK to the French over three years to stop the boats.

Nor is the British-French relationship as warm as the effusive backslapping by President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Andy Burnham – who this month jointly announced a special force to crack down on the mega-dinghies – might indicate.

The fact that no boats were launched throughout August – usually a busy time for migrant crossings – was primarily to do with high winds and rough seas in the Channel, and not all due to an expanded 1100 police, intelligence and military personnel in the Calais region.

So far this year there have been more than 17,100 illegal immigrant arrivals in the UK using the increasingly larger dinghies – 5000 since Mr Burnham became Prime Minister on July 20.

The issue has become very heated. Labour’s political opponents, including the Conservative Party, accuse the government of providing “a water-taxi service” for the illegal migrants, many of whom claim to have lost their passports.

Reform UK, in conjunction with the National Rally’s Jordan Bardella in France, have promised to stop the boats if they are elected.

{snip}

In France, the police on the beach say “it’s complicated” as to why they won’t step in and intervene despite the incentives and the pressure from the British.

They say they won’t slash or puncture a dinghy in water that is more than waist deep for fear of endangering the migrants’ lives. This has allowed the very lucrative people-smuggling trade – and the accompanying violence and corruption – to proliferate.

{snip}

Yet last Sunday – the first clear weather window in five weeks – the people-smugglers were well prepared, working overtime and organising the swollen numbers of migrants waiting in the sand dunes while co-ordinating the arrival of Chinese-made mega-dinghies, some of which are capable of carrying 230 people.

At 1am a boat carrying 120 migrants launched from near Cherbourg, in Normandy, some 250km south of Calais, for a test run on a much longer and precarious route, while purposefully stretching the French officials with launches from more predictable locations.

The French authorities sent lifeboats and border patrol ship the Abeille Liberté to escort the Cherbourg dinghy into international waters to the south of the Isle of Wight. The migrants off this dinghy came ashore at Portsmouth, and were faced with a large protest demonstration and hand-wringing by local politicians.

At 6.30am at Gravelines, just in front of the Loon-Plage camp, more than 300 migrants ran down the sand dunes into the surf and tried to get on a mega-dinghy. Dozens were left soaking wet and disappointed not to have clambered aboard amid disagreements about payments.

Simultaneously, a mega-dinghy was launched at Berck, an hour and a half south of Calais. The migrants had been waiting there for more than a day, travelling down on the train to Boulogne and then on to Hardelot, following strict instructions sent to their mobile phones by the smugglers.

Transiting through Boulogne is such a well-trodden route that French railway officials turn a blind eye to the fare-dodging and local police ensure there is no interruption to their journey.

This is where The Australian finds crowds of Somalis, Sudanese, Iranians, Eritreans and Afghans being directed by two aggressive female charity workers who had transported them on a bus to the station.

{snip}

In this febrile atmosphere, the 140 migrants who had landed at Portsmouth and put on border force buses were chased by British protesters up to Dover.

Not one of those launches, including the mega-dinghy witnessed by The Australian, had been stopped or intercepted by the French.

{snip}