It's farcical for the French to lecture us on immigration, blasts Leo McKinstry

PARIS has long been known as the City of Light, a testament to its beauty, elegance and civilisation.

By LEO MCKINSTRY

PUBLISHED: 00:01, Mon, Oct 31, 2016 | UPDATED: 10:32, Mon, Oct 31, 2016

Refugees have started setting up tents in Paris

But now tragically parts of the French capital have been transformed into sprawling, squalid migrant camps. 

Many central Parisian streets are lined with rows of filthy tents, put up by young men from Africa and Asia who think that Europe owes them a living. 

This mess is a symbol of the deepening immigration disaster inflicted on the continent by treacherous, unpatriotic politicians. 

The EU has made a fetish of open borders and multiculturalism. Now in the Paris makeshift settlements we can glimpse the destructive consequences of that ideology. 

The squatter camps in the capital have expanded in recent days due partly to the closure of the Jungle in Calais. 

But the Jungle in Calais was only allowed to develop in the first place because of the same mix of cowardice, political correctness and lethargy that is enabling the Parisian tents to mushroom. 

Instead of showing robustness and determination when the Calais freeloaders first started to arrive, the French authorities were pathetically inert. 

As the camp’s population reached more than 10,000, violence became endemic and businesses were destroyed. 

We ask you to take your responsibilities and assume your moral duty

Letter to Amber Rudd

Only when the continuing viability of the port was actually threatened did the French government finally act. 

Yet what has been so intolerable about this saga has been the instinct of French politicians and pro-immigration groups to blame Britain for the shambles. 

The Jungle campers were on French territory and had been waved through to Calais by French officials. Yet somehow, in the mindset of some Gallic buck-passers, it was our fault simply because the migrants had expressed a wish to live in England. 

In the aftermath of the camp’s closure French leaders are at it again with claims that Britain must take in 1,500 “unaccompanied minors” who were living at the camp when it was closed. 

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Activists in Paris sent a letter to Amber Rudd stating the UK should assume its moral duty

In a phone call to Theresa May on Saturday President Francois Hollande said that our Government must “play their part in subsequently welcoming these minors to the United Kingdom”. 

His demand was echoed by other figures such as Xavier Bertrand, the president of the Calais regional council who argued that “we now need the British Government to implement and accelerate the juvenile transfer process to the UK. It is a question of dignity and humanity”. 

From Paris more than 100 Left-wingers sent a pompous letter to Home Secretary Amber Rudd that stated: “We ask you to take your responsibilities and assume your moral duty by immediately organising their arrival.” 

All this Gallic emotional blackmail is as offensive as it is absurd. For a start the attempt to tug at our heartstrings will no longer work after the fiasco last week over Britain’s previous acceptance of so-called “unaccompanied minors” from Calais, many of whom turned out to be hulking young men rather than vulnerable children. 

The con trick played on the British public by the Calais agencies has permanently discredited the case for more assistance. 

Just as importantly, none of this is any business of ours. No matter how many times the phrase “my uncle in Birmingham” is heard, most of these migrants have absolutely no connection with Britain. 

If there really have been so many unaccompanied children at the camp then how on earth did they get there and why have the French done nothing about them until now? 

It sounds like Gallic negligence on an epic scale. And they have the nerve to lecture us about our supposed “moral duty”. 

French politicians are prize hypocrites. They want to focus attention on Britain to distract attention from their own spectacular failings, which have led to profound public disillusion in France with the entire political process. 

Instead of berating us President Hollande should put his own house in order. Under his hopeless leadership France has completely lost its way. 

Immigration is out of control. Militant Islam is a growing menace. France has become a land of fear and division. 

The French political class has treated its own people with contempt, refusing to defend the integrity of the nation or the fabric of society. As the Parisian squatter camps demonstrate, a grasping culture of entitlement now pervades in migrant circles, fomented by the self-serving politicians and media. 

It used to be held that the right to claim asylum was based on a genuine fear of persecution or death. 

Now the fashionable definition of a refugee is so ridiculously wide that it is applied to anyone “fleeing poverty”.

Given that there are around 1.3billion living in severe poverty around the world that label offers scope for an unrelenting deluge of new arrivals. 

It is a flood that will only accelerate under the auspices of the EU, to which French politicians remain absurdly attached despite the damage that Brussels is inflicting with its addiction to mass immigration and its hatred of traditional nationhood. 

The founding father of the European project was Frenchman Jean Monnet, as was Jacques Delors, the architect of the European Union. 

At least the British public had the sense to vote for freedom through Brexit. The French electorate will never be allowed that chance and so the nightmare of disintegration will only accelerate.

http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/leo-mckinstry/726911/French-immigration-Francois-Hollande-Calais-Paris-Brexit

Europe suffers the results of Merkel’s open-door policy, says Leo McKinstry

IMAGINE if an army of football hooligans or neo-Nazi skinheads tried to set up a camp at Calais.

By LEO MCKINSTRY

PUBLISHED: 07:49, Thu, Sep 8, 2016 | UPDATED: 08:34, Thu, Sep 8, 2016

Angela Merkel's open door policy has been problematic for Europe

Do you think the French and British authorities would allow them continually to spread violence, disorder, squalor and mayhem across the region, wrecking businesses and threatening lives? Not for a moment.

The army and police would use the utmost force to close the place and deal with the criminals.

There would be baton charges, detentions, mass imprisonments and deportations, all cheered on by the politicians.

But such resolution has been utterly absent from the official response to the creation of the Jungle camp in Calais.

Institutionalised political feebleness has shamefully allowed the site to become a vast engine of anarchy and intimidation.

The reason for this impotence is simple: the authorities are so obsessed with the dogma of multi-culturalism, so gripped by anti-Western self-loathing, so anxious about accusations of racism that they are too terrified to take effective action against the illegal migrants at Calais.

It is nothing more than cowardice dressed up as humanitarian tolerance. This is the attitude that is ruining Europe.

Calais is a symbol of the wider social breakdown that is engulfing the continent due to the disastrous policies of our rulers.

The very forces that should be defending our civilisation are now colluding with our enemies.

In the name of diversity, European governments actively promote the influx of vast numbers of foreigners who hold our values in contempt.

David Sagnard, of the French truckers’ federation, said this week of Calais: “Drivers now go to work with fear in their bellies.”

But that sense of fear is all too prevalent across the continent as a result of mass immigration and free movement, particularly since ­German Chancellor Angela Merkel signalled the opening of the floodgates to more than one million so-called refugees last year.

That tidal wave has been accompanied by a surge in brutal Islamic terrorism, reflected in incidents such as the bombing of Brussels airport this year, the twin massacres in Paris in 2015, the murder of the Catholic priest in Rouen and the attack on the Nice seafront in July in which 86 people died.

Apart from such atrocities there has also been an endless stream of other terror acts that have received far less coverage but are all too indicative of Europe’s accelerating disintegration.

There has been a surge in brutal Islamic terrorism

Last month in the district of Saint Denis in Paris a group of young men shouting “Allahu Akbar” stopped a bus with a makeshift barricade and then torched it with Molotov cocktails. Luckily the passengers managed to escape without injury.

Less fortunate have been the recent stabbing victims. They include a police officer and his wife who were murdered in June on the outskirts of Paris by an assailant who had declared his allegiance to IS.

As menacing as the direct Islamist violence is the growth of cultural terrorism.

Against the backdrop of our increasingly fractured society, the liberties, morals, aesthetics and heritage of Europe are under threat as never before.

Traditions such as freedom of speech and the celebration of art are in mortal danger.

The continent is now in the midst of an abuse epidemic

In France this summer more than 50 festivals, including several firework displays to mark the Feast of the Assumption, were scrapped following the Islamic attacks. But this cultural terrorism is perhaps seen at its darkest in the rise of sex attacks by immigrants across Europe.

The continent is now in the midst of an abuse epidemic caused by the import of toxic, often barbaric, misogyny from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

The notorious New Year assaults in Germany are just one example of this disturbing trend. In Belgium recently a group of young migrants filmed themselves as they laughed, danced and sang in Arabic while they raped an unconscious 17-year-girl who had been drinking at a party.

“She can’t complain. Women must obey men,” one of the rapists later told the police. A further snapshot of the unfolding horror comes from Östersund in Sweden, a sleepy town of just 45,000 people.

Here, in the space of three weeks during the early spring, there were eight separate attacks by migrants on women. The catalogue of sexual aggression included one disturbing crime at a bus stop where two 10-year-old girls were groped by a gang of men who threatened to rape them.

In a further indicator of how Europe’s essential freedoms have been eroded by immigration, police in Östersund warned women that they were no longer safe walking home at night.

A Swedish police chief said that the attacks “seem unreal”. We are now living with the lethal consequences of suicidal policies.

Yet our rulers, instead of admitting their failure, indulge in orchestrated attempts to cover up migrant crime, either by simply refusing to report the offences, as initially happened in the German sex assaults, or by obscuring the origins of the perpetrator.

So after the recent Russell Square murder in London we were informed that the suspect was “a Norwegian” when in fact he was a Somalian immigrant. In the same vein our rulers continually seek to deny the obvious link between Islamic culture and violence by referring to the criminals’ mental health, as if more psychiatry rather than stronger borders were the solution.

The real lunacy comes from the supine, craven politicians, who have lost all willingness to protect their own society.

http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/leo-mckinstry/708423/Europe-suffers-results-Merkel-open-door-policy-migrants-terror-Calais

The EU's Migration Crisis Is Far From Over

German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have adjusted her policies after last year's refugee influx. But on Sunday, she was punished anyhow by voters in her own constituency ...

SEP 6, 2016 7:32 AM EST

By

Leonid Bershidsky

THE LUCKY ONES.

PHOTOGRAPHER: ALFONSO DI VINCENZO/
PACIFIC PRESS/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES

German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have adjusted her policies after last year's refugee influx. But on Sunday, she was punished anyhow by voters in her own constituency of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. That's one sign that the EU migration crisis is far from resolved yet.

Ever since March, when Merkel rammed through a European Union deal with Turkey under which undocumented migrants reaching the Greek islands from Turkish ports are to be sent back, the flow of refugees from Turkey to Europe receded quite dramatically. That's not because the deal is working as written: According to the United Nations refugee agency, only 468 people have been returned to Turkey since March in nine separate handovers, a tiny portion of the 16,688 people who arrived on the Greek islands from Turkey between March 20 and September 4.

The mere possibility of being sent back to Turkey has reduced the daily number of Greek island arrivals to 111 in August from 6,360 in October, 2015. It's a psychological effect that is not mitigated by the obvious tension between Turkey and the EU, caused on the one hand by Europeans' unease about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authoritarianism and on the other hand by the Turkish resentment of the EU's slowness in sending financial aid for refugees and abolishing short-term visas for Turks. Even an arrangement as shaky as this one introduces extra uncertainty into a fleeing Syrian's already high-risk plans.

Besides, countries along the migration route from Turkey have reinforced the route's negative publicity: Macedonia, for example, has all but closed its border with Greece. It's clear by now though that far from solving the problem, this kind of word-of-mouth deterrence has made alternative, longer and more dangerous routes of migration look comparatively more attractive. 

The Italian Shift in Refugee Flows

Daily numbers of migrants arriving in Greece and Italy by sea

Source: UNHCR

On certain days, the number of refugee arrivals in Italy matches the high levels seen in the Greek islands last year. In August, the average number of arrivals reached 686 a day, up from 263 in October, 2015. 

Most of these arrivals come through Libya, a country with which the EU is not able to make a deal similar to the Turkish one. The country's "government of national accord" has rejected the possibility because it doesn't want to commit to take any refugees back: The Libyan state has no money, no infrastructure and not enough authority to house refugees the way Turkey does for the 2.7 million Syrians it has temporarily settled in host communities and camps.

Since Europe can't send them back to Libya, that makes the route preferable to the Turkish one today, even though the chance of dying at sea is much higher on a Libya-Italy voyage than on a Greek-Turkey one. That explains why the number of migrants who die or go missing at sea hasn't gone down since last year: 3,169 of them have died or disappeared so far in 2016, compared with 3,777 for the whole of 2015, and the run rate is actually higher than last year. Most of the deaths occur on the so-called central Mediterranean route, the one to Italy and Malta.

Italy is wealthier and less bureaucratically inept than Greece, so it has served as a better barrier for migrants hoping to end up in northern Europe. In May, Austria even stopped the construction of an anti-migrant wall on the Italian border, reassured that the influx was under control. And yet Germany hasn't really noticed.

According to Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, more asylum petitions were filed in January through July, 2016 than in all of 2015 -- 479,620 compared with 476,649. The number of applications is actually increasing rather than dropping.

The Refugee River Won't Run Dry

Number of first-time asylum applications filed in Germany

Source: BAMF

While the number of new arrivals has dropped because of the stricter policies, the migration service -- whose budget, staffing and efficiency have been boosted this year with the help of $10 million worth of McKinsey's consulting services -- has been processing a huge backlog. The steady influx of new applications means that more people are still arriving and that some who arrived before these attempts began in earnest are still undocumented. This means they haven't even begun to integrate into Germany society and the labor market, even if they plan eventually to do that.

The presence of hundreds of thousands of new arrivals in a bureaucratic limbo does nothing to fix Merkel's political problem. In Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, her party lost just 4 percentage points compared to its 2011 performance, and it will probably still be part of the ruling coalition headed by the Social Democrats, who won a plurality just like in 2011. And yet the CDU was overtaken by the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, which, with 20.8 percent of the vote, is now the second strongest in the state. 

That's not a tragedy -- Mecklenburg-West Pomerania is a small state, and AfD won't govern it -- but the party's performance has been unprecedented for a German right-wing force, and it poses a danger for Merkel if she decides to run for chancellor again next year and for her center-right party if she steps aside. German domestic politics dictate the need for a less makeshift solution to the refugee crisis than the Turkey deal.

Other big European countries -- especially Italy as an increasingly important point of entry and France, where long-distance truckers are protesting against the increasingly unruly and dangerous migrant camp near Calais, known as the Jungle -- also need a more lasting solution, but their leaders cannot expose themselves to the kind of backlash that Merkel has been facing. Their positions are not as secure as hers was to start with. But if these countries can't take in more people, the options for a coordinated European solution are pretty much limited to sealing the union's external borders -- a costly proposition that would be difficult to execute, especially with elections looming in several big nations.

The crisis is far from over, and it won't be while the Syrian war and the anarchy in Libya continue. Europe can't be an impregnable fortress, so it needs to be a stronger force for peace.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-06/the-eu-s-migration-crisis-is-far-from-over

Calais is France’s problem and they must deal with it, says STEPHEN POLLARD

WHEN it comes to asylum there is almost no lunacy too, well, lunatic to become a reality.

By STEPHEN POLLARD

PUBLISHED: 22:05, Tue, Aug 30, 2016 | UPDATED: 22:13, Tue, Aug 30, 2016

There are nearly 10,000 migrants in France who have made their way across Europe to Calais

But try this for size: there are nearly 10,000 migrants in France who have made their way across Europe to Calais, in what has become known as the Jungle. They are, to put it mildly, a big problem, not just for the town but for France itself.

And yet the former – and if he gets his way, the next – French president Nicolas Sarkozy is suggesting that the problem is not France’s but Britain’s. You read that right. The migrants are in France, not Britain. None of them has the least connection with ­Britain. They have no British relatives. They have never set foot in Britain.

They are asylum seekers – in France. It is France that admitted them, not Britain. And yet Mr Sarkozy says they are Britain’s problem, not France’s. He says that we should process their asylum applications in France and then move the Jungle camp to Britain. His reasoning? They want to live in Britain. And that’s it.

It puts a new gloss on lunacy. For one thing the most fundamental rule of asylum is that they should apply for it in the first place they reach. That is the crux of all this because France is not even the first place they have reached, let alone Britain, which of course they haven’t reached. I told you it was lunatic.

At this point I should make clear that there’s a deliberate mistake in the above. When I say that France has “admitted” them that’s not entirely right. No one in France – not border officials, not the police, not anyone – has taken the decision directly to let them come to France. Because France is a member of the Schengen Agreement it has no borders with other members.

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French president Nicolas Sarkozy is suggesting that the problem is not France’s but Britain’s

They are asylum seekers – in France

So migrants are free to travel throughout Europe to France and get as near as they can to the border with Britain. This is at every stage a French problem. It is the French who have decided to scrap their borders with other Schengen members. It is the French whose policy has led to the influx of migrants.

And it is the French who have allowed the Jungle to grow and the problem to fester. The mayor of Calais Natacha Bouchart is clear about this. Last week she said that the French police cannot deal with the “uncontrollable” gangs that effectively run the Jungle camp and demanded that President François ­Hollande send in the army. As she put it: “It has been over a year since I have been asking for the army to come.”

According to Ms Bouchart, President Hollande is uninterested. But instead of dealing with their problem, of their making, in their country, a growing number of French politicians are joining Nicolas Sarkozy in trying to shift the problem to the UK. Alain Juppé, Mr Sarkozy’s main rival for the right to challenge President Hollande in next year’s presidential election, has also attacked the current arrangement, known as the Le Touquet Accord.

As has Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader. And as has Xavier Bertrand, the leader of the northern France region. As things stand under the 2003 agreement – negotiated by Mr Nicolas Sarkozy when he was interior minister – British border officials are allowed on French soil to carry out checks.

Anyone without the right paperwork is refused entry. Those turned away then have to apply for residence in France – in theory, although many remain there illegally. Last year UK Border Force officials in France caught 84,088 migrants trying to cross the Channel hiding in lorries, cars and trains: one every six minutes.

That number has trebled already year on year. There are reciprocal arrangements in the UK: anyone who has travelled to France on the Eurostar will have had their passport checked by French officials at King’s Cross station in London.

This works in France’s best interests. Without the British officials’ presence in Calais it would be even more of a magnet for migrants to France who were seeking to get to the UK, especially as France has decided to do without border controls.

And if Mr Sarkozy’s idea of a British “hotspot” in Calais was implemented, where British officials processed asylum applications, it would not only be against the rules of asylum it would lead to even more migrants making their way to Calais. Useless as President Hollande may be, even he sees this.

But now that the opening salvoes of the 2017 election campaign are under way his opponents see Brit bashing as electoral gold. President Hollande is doomed to defeat. The issue is which Right-wing candidate will emerge to fight him and Ms Le Pen for the presidency. This means that the next president is likely to have campaigned to end the Le Touquet Accord.

GETTY

They are asylum seekers – in France. It is France that admitted them, not Britain

So despite the harm it would do France to end it, this is unlikely to be an issue that will go away. We must stand firm. Apparently a senior British official has already made a thinly veiled threat: “They depend on us for a lot of security advice and co-operation after the Nice attack.

There are other elements in our security relationship that I don’t think they would be interested in having changed.” Yesterday Home Secretary Amber Rudd met her French counterpart, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve. She made it clear that we will not budge on this. But you can bet this is going to run and run.

http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/705496/Calais-France-problem-must-deal-with-it-migrant-crisis

What is the Le Touquet agreement? Could the British border checks be moved from Calais?

THE HOME SECRETARY is visiting France today to bat down suggestions that the Le Touquet agreement could be scrapped and border controls moved to Kent. But what is the agreement?

By REISS SMITH

PUBLISHED: 12:03, Tue, Aug 30, 2016 | UPDATED: 12:16, Tue, Aug 30, 2016

Amber Rudd is set to meet her French counterpart after several French politicians called for the treaty to be ripped up and the British border be moved from Calais to Kent. 

This would result in thousands more asylum seekers landing on British soil and setting up camp around Dover. A Home Office source rubbished the proposed move and called it a “complete non-starter”.

What is the Le Touquet agreement?

The Le Touquet agreement is a bilateral treaty between Britain and France which established juxtaposed border controls in each country.

Under the deal, British immigration officials check passports and inspect vehicles in Calais, with their French counterparts doing the same in Dover. 

Juxtaposed controls had been in force since 1994 on the Channel Tunnel, but the treaty extended the deal to also cover ferry ports.

This allows UK officials to intercept illegal immigrants before they step foot on British soil.

The treaty was signed by the then President Jacques Chirac and ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair on February 4, 2004, and came into power one year later.

Who is calling for the British border checks to be moved?

Several French politicians have called for the agreement to be scrapped and the British border checks be moved back to Dover.

Xavier Bertrand, president of the region around Calais, has called for an amendment to the treaty that would allow migrants seeking asylum in Britain to lodge an application at a “hotspot” in France. 

He has said that those refused entry to the UK would be deported to their home country by French officials. 

Ahead of the EU referendum, Mr Bertrand threatened that the border checks would be moved to Dover if the UK voted for Brexit. 

He said: “We will not continue to guard the border for Britain if it’s no longer in the European Union.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president who is seeking to be elected again, has called for the Calais Jungle camp to be moved to Dover.

He told a rally: "I'm demanding the opening of a centre in Britain to deal with asylum seekers so that Britain can do the work that concerns them.”

Mr Sarkozy’s Republican rival, Alain Juppe, has also called for the agreement to be scrapped. He said: “We must move the border back to where it belongs.”

If the border checks were moved, the Calais Jungle would be moved to Britain. French politicians are keen on such a move as they spends considerable resources policing the camp. 

It would however be in violation of EU rules, which clearly state that asylum seekers should be processed in the country where they first arrive.

The current French Government has confirmed that President Hollande will not push the border checks back to Britain.

Bernard Cazeneuve, the Interior Minister, said: “It would send a signal to people smugglers and would lead migrants to flow to Calais in far greater numbers. A humanitarian disaster would ensue.”

GETTY

Amber Rudd is travelling to France today to meet with her counterpart there

What has Amber Rudd and the British Home Office said?

Ms Rudd is travelling to France to discuss migration and security with her French counterpart, Mr Cazeneuve.

Ahead of the meeting, a Home Office source called any amendments to the Le Touquet agreement “a complete non-starter”.

They added: “The Home Secretary is crystal clear that people in need of protection should seek asylum in the first safe country they enter. That's the long-held international norm, and we're going to stick to it.”

The EU’s Dublin Regulation states that “those in need of protection should seek asylum in the first safe country they enter.”

A Government spokesman said: ”We remain committed to working together to protect our shared border in Calais and to maintain the juxtaposed controls.

"The French Government have repeatedly made it clear that removing the juxtaposed controls would not be in the interests of France.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/705248/le-touquet-agreement-what-is-british-border-checks-calais-dover?