Read the original article on the Telegraph website HERE
Migrants are going to Britain, come hell or high water
Gazing across the Channel in the direction of the white cliffs of Dover, Amir Gul stood on Calais beach and imagined himself on the other side - and living the dream that has brought him 3,500 miles from Afghanistan.
"A hundred times in the past month I have tried to get into lorries," the 15-year-old said in fluent English. "The police or drivers always throw me off and sometimes they beat me. But I will not stop until I reach London, unless I am killed trying, even if it takes me a year."
In the sand dunes and scraps of waste ground around Calais, a ragged army of migrants desperate to breach British border controls is slowly growing in number, and they are as determined as ever.
Nobody is sure how many live in the squatter camps or sleep rough in parks, but the United Nations estimates that there are now around 1,500 in the Calais area alone – a figure steadily approaching the 2,500 who were to be found at Sangatte refugee camp before it was closed in 2002.
Security has been tightened at the port and far fewer illegal migrants get through to Britain now, according to the UK's Border Control Agency. It told The Sunday Telegraph that effective control of Calais port and the routes across the Channel was a success story.
But the fact that it is harder to reach Britain merely means that the migrants - almost all of them men and boys - hang around in Calais for even longer, months instead of weeks, as they attempt to stow away on lorries or in cars.
Meanwhile they live in conditions which are so appalling that last week the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees opened an office in the town, only the second in Europe for an agency which is more typically found in troublespots like Congo or Pakistan.
UN officials feel they must do something for the inhabitants of the stinking "jungles" where desperate men and boys fight each other with knives and suffer diseases like scabies and TB, as the filth, frustration and violence take their toll.
The UNHCR works with hard-pressed charities that try to help the migrants and encourages them to apply for asylum in France. But only 120 enquiries have been made in the past month.
"France is no good. I want to get into London because I will get a house and money, and I can work there," said an Afghan man who was killing time in a park until nightfall, when he was going to look for a lorry to hide in.
On the beach, French families in swimming trunks and bikinis were enjoying themselves in the sunshine apparently oblivious to the young Afghans and Iraqis washing their grimy clothes in the surf.
Mr Gul knows it could be months before he successfully stows away in a lorry - or even in the boot of an unwary motorist - and sneak across the Channel to his promised land, now so tantalisingly close.
Until then he will have to sleep rough in a filthy camp, hidden in a thicket of thorn bushes behind the beach. He sleeps under a plastic tarpaulin donated by a charity, trying to ignore the stench from the surrounding bushes which are used as a lavatory.
Every day at noon he walks through the suburbs of Calais to a soup kitchen in a car park, where gangs of Africans, Iraqis and Afghans jostle and argue in the queue. Tribal and ethnic differences rankle, and knives are pulled when tempers fray.
Caroline Nazanin, a nurse who has worked in the camps, said: "The frustration drives some of them crazy - they become violent and fight each other when arguments get out of control."
Yet despite all this, Mr Gul had no interest in seeking asylum in France. He was determined to stay in Calais for as long as it takes for him to stow away succesfully and get to Britain.
Marie-Ange Lascure, UNHCR's spokeswoman, said migrants were arriving in bigger numbers than a few years ago. "They want to go to England because the people smugglers tell them it is a beautiful place, where they can easily earn money to send home to their families," she said.
Persuading them to instead claim asylum in France was a struggle, she admitted.
Under an EU rule whereby an asylum claim must be made in the first safe port of entry, if the migrants have already been fingerprinted on arrival in Greece or Italy the French authorities can deport them back there.
So some migrants scar their fingertips by heating up a plate until it is hot, then pressing their fingers to it. For several weeks the fingers are too blistered for prints to be taken, providing temporary relief from the risk of deportation if they are arrested or checked.
Residents of Calais have become increasingly worried by the growing desperation of migrants, and last year elected a conservative-minded mayor, Natacha Bouchart, who blames the temptation of Britain's generous welfare state for attracting migrants to their town. "Calais is a hostage to the British," she complained earlier this year.
Jean-Lou Hereng, 46, who owns a café near the biggest camp, known as the "jungle", said: "The problem is as bad as it has ever been. They are aggressive and dirty, and there are fights between them."
Other Frenchmen are more sympathetic. "It is difficult for us, and it is difficult for them," said Jonathan Corbeau, 22, a welder who lived almost opposite an encampment of Afghans. Nevertheless, he had put up a strong fence and bought a dog after his wife was molested by migrants a few weeks ago.
French police frequently raid the camps, and sometimes destroy them. Sixteen vanloads of CRS riot police arrived on Thursday as bulldozers levelled a derelict warehouse which 30 Sudanese from the war-torn province of Darfur had been using as a temporary home.
"My money and clothes are now buried under there," one of them said, gesturing at a pile of tons of debris. He had simply moved with his friends a few yards to a take over a small park.
Many of the Afghans, who are now the majority of migrants at Calais, said they had fled the Taliban. Samim Siddique, 24, from Khost, rolled up his trouser leg to show a bayonet scar where he had been tortured by terrorists who wanted him to carry a bomb into the university where he was studying.
"The Taliban don't like education, and there was no place where I would be safe from them in Afghanistan," he said. "We all want to go to England, we speak the language and we can work there. I want to study IT, and then set up a print business.
"We hate being in this camp, it is the life of an animal here. We have to wait for months to get into a lorry, but every week a couple of boys don't come back in the morning - they have caught a lorry across the sea.
"I will keep trying. One day I will get to England."
THIS IS WHY WE NEED TO ADOPT ITALYS LAWS ON IMMIGRATION
