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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    French police bulldoze immigrant camp near Calais

    French police bulldoze immigrant camp near Calais

    By NICOLAS GARRIGA, The Associated Press
    10:45 a.m. September 22, 2009

    CALAIS, France — French police razed a squalid camp used by illegal immigrants in scrubland near the English Channel port of Calais on Tuesday, using backhoes and buzz saws to clear away the precarious dwellings of a fragile population, mostly Afghan minors, who were led away stunned and sometimes sobbing.

    The destruction of the site – known as "the Jungle" – ends the migrants' dreams of a new life across the Channel in Britain but signifies what France hopes will be a new era in European immigration control. People who lived there tried night after night to sneak across the Channel.

    "The law of the jungle cannot last eternally," said Immigration Minister Eric Besson, who ordered the destruction of what he called "a lawless zone where smugglers reign."

    He blamed a lack of coordination among European nations' immigration laws for the problem and said he looks forward to tougher border controls "ideally" by the end of the year.

    Police scuffled with humanitarian volunteers who have long helped the immigrants, but no injuries were reported.

    Up to 800 illegal immigrants camped near the port and in smaller "jungles" around Calais until months ago. However, hundreds began leaving as the expected date to raze the encampment approached. Officials said 278 people – mainly from Afghanistan and nearly half of them under 18 – were led out of the encampment of homemade tents and strewn with garbage piles and infested with maladies like scabies.

    Most nights, the illegal immigrants tried to dodge elaborate security – including heat sensors, infrared cameras, dogs and border police patrols – to hop onto or under trucks crossing the Channel to Britain via ferries or the Eurotunnel, which takes freight and passenger traffic between France and Britain.

    British Home Secretary Alan Johnson said Tuesday that authorities had halted 28,000 attempts to cross the English Channel illegally in the last year alone. He said he welcomed the "swift and decisive" move by France to close the camp.

    Each immigrant is to be offered a voluntary return, with a stipend, to his country or the possibility of applying for asylum, if candidates meet the profile. Those who reject both offers are to be expelled from France.

    Because of the war in Afghanistan, the receiving country would in some cases be Greece – a main point of entry to Europe. Greece would then be responsible for fielding asylum requests.

    Scores of police sealed camp exits about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday and, amid angry denunciations from humanitarian groups present, extracted the immigrants from the crowd one by one, lined them up and led them to buses. Numerous immigrants were seen sobbing or quietly shedding tears.

    They were later taken away to special centers for processing.

    Teams with bulldozers, backhoes and chain saws then moved in, pulling down the tents, made from sticks, logs and plastic, sawing through the logs and bulldozing the debris.

    "This operation adds nothing and resolves nothing," said Vincent Lenoir of the Salam association, which has regularly distributed meals to the immigrants.

    The network of associations that for years have helped feed and clothe the "jungle" population contend that the encampment's destruction will only displace the problem, not resolve it.

    For the hundreds who have already left, "they will come back bit by bit in the coming days and weeks," predicted Marcel Copyans, another volunteer.
    No one in Calais forgets the 2002 closing of a Red Cross-run shelter in nearby Sangatte that housed more than 1,000 people who used the temporary home as a springboard for their bids to reach Britain. Sangatte, ordered closed by Nicolas Sarkozy – then interior minister, now France's president – was replaced by the "jungle."

    Britain is seen by many illegal immigrants as Europe's El Dorado, a view fed by human traffickers and families who sometimes send their young to the West after paying out huge sums. In addition, many Afghans here speak at least some English and have relatives or know someone in Britain.

    Even Keith Best, the head of Britain's Immigration Advisory Service, was doubtful about the long-term effects of clearing out the Calais encampment.

    "The liquidation of the 'jungle' will not solve the problem," said Best. The problem is "a failure of the French to be able to admit people into their asylum process" and an uneven burden of asylum requests among European countries, he said.

    Besson said he wants both a coherent EU asylum policy and reinforced border controls among countries in the so-called Schengen system of open borders. Currently, detained immigrants must demand asylum in the country by which they entered Europe if they began the application process. Because Britain is not a signatory, it has no such obligations.

    "We have put in place a common border without putting in place sufficient means to control this border," Besson said in Calais.

    On Monday in Brussels, he proposed that Europe create a border police with reinforced powers, saying he hopes the idea will be adopted at the Oct. 29-30 EU summit.

    Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain have repeatedly called for more help from the EU in tackling the problem.

    The U.N. refugee agency said Greece has been making it harder recently for asylum seekers to gain refugee status. The UNHCR said Greece granted only 379 people refugee status in 2008 out of 20,000 asylum applications. Greece says it detained more than 146,000 illegal immigrants in 2008, a 30 percent increase from the previous year.
    –––
    Associated Press writers Martin Mazurkiewicz in Calais; Elena Becatoros in Athens and Karolina Tagaris in London contributed to this report.

    http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/ ... dex=170051
    NO AMNESTY

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  2. #2
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    "This operation adds nothing and resolves nothing," said Vincent Lenoir of the Salam association, which has regularly distributed meals to the immigrants.
    It got rid of the filth and dangerous structures. That resolves quite a bit. It got rid of illegals on their way to invade Britain.
    Vive la France! And Britain should be grateful. Meanwhile, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain should do more to reinforce their borders.
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  3. #3
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    French Police Detain Hundreds of Illegal Immigrants in Forest Camp

    Tuesday, September 22, 2009

    CALAIS, France — French police cleared out then bulldozed a squalid, sprawling forest camp near the northern city of Calais on Tuesday, detaining hundreds of illegal immigrants who had hoped to slip across the English Channel into Britain.

    French Immigration Minister Eric Besson, who visited the site known as "the Jungle," called it a "base camp for human traffickers" and said he would return the rule of law to the northern French coast.

    "The law of the jungle cannot last eternally," Besson said. "A state of law must be re-established in Calais."

    The people who camped here — mainly immigrants from Afghanistan — have strained relations between Britain and France and become a symbol of Europe's struggle with illegal immigration.

    A total of 278 people — nearly half of them minors — were detained in the first part of the operation, said Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, the top official for the Pas-de-Calais region.

    "This operation is not targeting the migrants themselves, it is targeting the logistics of the human traffickers ... who exploit them," he said.

    Refugees in jeans and sweatshirts, many apparently in their teens, carried knapsacks and blankets as they were led away in single lines by police. Activists yelled at police with bullhorns. Some formed a human chain around the refugees and briefly scuffled with police as they took the men and boys one by one.

    Some refugees sobbed as they were loaded onto buses, saying they wanted to stay in the camp and voicing fears about being returned to Afghanistan. Police struggled with others.

    Besson said there was no violence in the operation and all personal belongings were collected and being sorted in the Calais mosque. Thirty interpreters and a medical team helped authorities and 200 temporary beds were arranged for the immigrants.

    Bulldozers and backhoes were later brought in to raze the maze of makeshift tents built from sticks and sheets of plastic amid the sand and brush. Workers with chain saws cut down the trees and scrub brush that had supported the tents.

    While the encampment was squalid, it was widely viewed by the immigrants as a better option than being expelled and it allowed them to keep hoping that they would one day reach Britain.

    Activist group Refugee Action called the police operation "horrific" and inhumane but agreed the camp should not have been permitted to sprout up in the first place.

    "They should never have been allowed to rot there like this. It's appalling neglect and has allowed false expectation to be built up," said Sandy Buchan, the group's chief executive.

    Britain is viewed as an easier place than France to make a life, even clandestinely, a view perpetuated by traffickers and family members or friends already there.

    British Home Secretary Alan Johnson said he was "delighted" that the camp was being closed. Britain has ruled out taking the migrants in, and Johnson said genuine refugees should apply for asylum in the country where they entered the EU.

    Most of the immigrants reached Calais after costly and dangerous clandestine journeys across Asia and Europe, by foot or hidden in trucks and boats.

    The immigrants try to elude the elaborate border security network, including heat sensors and infrared cameras, at the port of Calais or the Channel tunnel that carries Eurostar trains and other undersea traffic to Britain. Nearly a decade ago, many thousands made it across by slipping inside or under trucks traveling through the tunnel. Today only a few make it, but enough to sustain hope.

    Besson said other, smaller camps scattered around the region — sheltering Iraqi Kurds and illegal migrants from other trouble spots — would also be cleared out this week.

    He said each immigrant was being offered individual options, and that to date 180 have agreed to return to their homelands and 170 started applying for asylum in France. The others will be expelled from France, primarily to Greece, the point where most of the migrants first entered the European Union.

    "Expelling them will do nothing, just disperse them," the French rights activist group CSP59 said.

    For France, "the Jungle" was inhumane and a sign of what is wrong with European immigration policy. The 27 nations that make up the EU each maintain their own immigration policy, complicated by some open borders, creating a soup of laws, accords and bilateral agreements.

    "France wants greater European solidarity," Besson told a news conference, saying he hopes all EU members will sign on to an immigration action plan at an Oct. 29-30 summit.

    Besson also rejected criticism that France was just passing the problem of illegal migrants on to Greek authorities.

    The U.N. refugee agency said Greece has been making it harder recently for asylum seekers to gain refugee status. The UNHCR said Greece granted only 379 people refugee status in 2008 out of 20,000 asylum applications. Greece says it detained more than 146,000 illegal immigrants in 2008, a 30 percent increase from the previous year.

    The U.N. agency has also criticized Italy for its immigration practices.

    Greece, Italy and Spain have repeatedly called for more help from the European Union to tackle the problem of illegal immigration.

    As many as 1,000 people at a time called the Calais "Jungle" their home, but their numbers dwindled when it became clear police would act this week.

    In the camp before the raid, piles of garbage littered the scrubland. The illegal migrants, some as young as 14, baked flat bread over a fire in a tin drum. The only amenities were a spigot of water at the entrance, a homemade toilet hidden behind plastic and, in a scrupulously cleared area, a mosque made of blue tarp and ringed with pots of flowers.

    In 2002, authorities dismantled a Red Cross-run camp in nearby Sangatte, which had been used by illegal migrants as a springboard for sneaking across the Channel. The migrants kept coming back even after the camp was shut down.

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,553541,00.html
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  4. #4
    Senior Member lccat's Avatar
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    We should do that in the United States; tear down the slums that house the ILLEGALS and ship the ILLEGALS off to Greece!

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by lccat
    We should do that in the United States; tear down the slums that house the ILLEGALS and ship the ILLEGALS off to Greece!
    we should do this as well.
    however we have the ACLU, LaRaza, Maldef, LULAC and others who will whine and cry like babies

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