Vergennes
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Poor them. 
@flamer84 @waz @Kaptaan @mike2000 is back @Blue Marlin
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Demolishing the Jungle won't stop us: The migrants who tell SUE REID why they're hell bent on escaping 'racist' France for Britain and how some have already been deported by the UK
‘They lied to us migrants,’ he declares. ‘They promised we would go from the Jungle to a big house in a city. But they dumped us here in a place with no halal meat in the meals, no internet, and where we sleep ten to a bedroom and the kitchen is covered in flies.
‘The cows over the fence are better cared for than us. We were tricked and we are going to walk out,’ he adds as fellow Afghans living with him in a remote children’s holiday centre near the Normandy village of Cerisy-la-Foret nod in agreement.
Migrants from the Calais Jungle (pictured) have been relocated by French authorities 300 miles away at an isolated and dilapidated children's facility called Centre La Malbreche near Cerisy-La-Foret, Normandy
Rahmat is one of 6,000 migrants who were bussed out of the illegal Jungle camp in Calais this week as the French authorities finally moved to close it down.
In the controversial clearance, migrants were dispersed to every region of France (apart from Paris and the island of Corsica, which is already full to capacity) where 460 resettlement centres have been set up for them.
In Normandy, Rahmat and 800 other migrants will now have to apply for asylum to remain in France, although it could take months before they find out if they are successful.
If their applications fail, there is a good chance they will be sent back to the country where they originally entered Europe (in most cases, Greece or Italy) or even deported to their homelands. The bitter truth, however, is that the majority of these migrants don’t want to live in France — they want only to go to Britain. They have never applied for asylum in France, preferring to try their luck with a new life across the Channel.
The lure of the UK was abundantly clear this week when I met Afghans who had been ejected from the Jungle and sent to different locations in France.
Astonishingly, all three had reached Britain previously, only to be deported after failing to win asylum. Even more galling is the fact that they had been flown back to Kabul at British taxpayers’ expense. But as soon as they reached their home country, they simply turned round and embarked on the return journey, heading to Calais.
One, Abdul Jabarkhel, is now at the children’s home-turned-migrant-settlement-centre outside Cerisy-la-Foret, where Rahmat is also a resident.
Abdul lived in Finsbury Park, North London, for six years and has a girlfriend in the UK whom he has not seen since his deportation. ‘I only want to get back to England to her,’ he says.
The 29-year-old told how the Home Office flew him back to Afghanistan in 2014 and how he came back to Europe last year ‘hidden among the thousands going to Germany’. He then travelled to Calais and spent nine months trying to get on a lorry to cross the Channel.
In St-Germain-sur-Ay, a holiday home for disadvantaged children has been requisitioned by the local council for Jungle migrants
‘I do not want to stay here in France. Nor does any Afghan I know,’ he says.
The very existence of the Calais Jungle, which over 15 years grew to become Europe’s biggest migrant camp, is of course proof that Britain seems much more attractive than France to migrants escaping war or poverty in countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Pakistan and the Sudan.
But why should this be so?
People traffickers tell their victims the UK is a paradise, with generous welfare handouts.
It’s a message that has been repeatedly reinforced by the mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, who describes the UK as an ‘El Dorado’, with such lavish benefits that migrants are prepared to die in a clandestine Channel crossing to get their hands on them.
This week, the deputy mayor, Philippe Mignonet, also blamed Britain’s generous benefits system for luring migrants to his town.
But welfare benefits alone do not explain the discrepancy, for both the UK and France offer housing and free health care to asylum seekers. And France pays a more generous weekly allowance to asylum seekers than Britain (£56.08 a week for a single adult compared with the UK’s basic allowance of £36.95).
No, as Dave King, a former British soldier helping migrants in the Jungle explained recently, a major draw is that most of them have a smattering of English and want to join large communities of their countrymen already in the UK.
‘They come because they have friends or family in the UK, and they speak the language,’ he said.
Britain is also far more generous in offering asylum to non-EU citizens. In 2014, 31 per cent of claims in the UK were approved, while in France, only 15 per cent got the green light. Why this should be is not clear, but it is certainly the case that migrants appear to be less welcome in France than in Britain.
Which explains why the migrants I met this week in Normandy, where I visited three new resettlement centres, were so upset at being moved on from the Jungle and stuck in France. In the sleepy seaside resort of St-Germain-sur-Ay, a holiday home for disadvantaged children has been requisitioned by the local council for Jungle migrants.
Looking across the Channel you can see Jersey — part of the British Isles — tantalisingly close, at just 16 miles away. Imram, a 30-year-old Afghan who lived in Upton Park, East London, for six years before being deported, does not yet understand its significance.
He asks forlornly, ‘Is that Ireland?’ before adding that he was ‘disappointed’ not to be ‘in a big city’ from which he might launch a new attempt to get to Britain.
Asif, 32, (also deported from the UK after living in Kilburn, North London, for eight years) complains it was ‘too quiet’ and says he is worried how long the group would have to stay. Indeed, two men tell me they were contemplating ‘running away’ to find Afghan communities in more multi-ethnic parts of France.
A brisk ten-minute walk away, Corinne Chassaing, who runs the resort’s shop, is suspicious of the newcomers.
She has had to ‘shoo out’ a couple of migrants who, she complains, were ‘loitering’.
She rolls her eyes tellingly when I ask her about them. But later she tells local journalists her true views: ‘I feel threatened. There’s nobody supervising these men. The local police do their rounds but they’re not here permanently.’
The centre's manager (centre) is flanked by police officers as he listens to concerns from the migrants
Another lady doing her shopping sums it up: ‘I’m worried they’ll cause trouble. We have started organising checks with some of the neighbours of houses that are empty out of season. We’re concerned about burglaries.’
I also see a family standing near their front door and ask what they think. A man in his 50s says the migrant influx was on the orders of the French state.
‘We are concerned they are taking the places of disadvantaged French children at the holiday centre. But with Jersey only half an hour on a motor boat and an hour on the ferry, I expect they’ll get bored soon and try to reach your country that way,’ he jokes with a wink.
He might jest. But it won’t be long before these migrants find out there are ferry rides which can sail them swiftly to Jersey. Tickets for the day trip, from the nearby port of Carteret, are advertised opposite the shop.
Close by, in La Chapelle-sur-Vire, a charming hamlet of 300 people named after the magnificent chapel which dominates it, they are worried about migrants, too.
A group of locals protested when they heard that 15 former Jungle residents from Sudan would be coming to live among them. A fire was lit outside the famous Christian chapel and farmers are said to have dumped a load of manure near the hamlet’s former conference centre which is now the migrants’ home.
As Josette Montaigne, a resident who created a Facebook page to protest against the ‘decision imposed on us’, says: ‘We are not against the arrival of migrants, but against the arrival of young men 18 to 25 years old. They will be free all day, this is not a prison.
‘What will they do? My 15-year-old daughter just went on a horse ride alone. After this, that sort of thing is over.’
Another resident says he feels sympathy for young migrants, but the hamlet was not the right place to have them.
‘We have only one bus stop, we don’t even have a mobile phone signal. We are a completely isolated village without even a shop for bread.’
Of course, Rahmat from the first resettlement centre I visited near Cerisy-la-Foret would probably agree with that. ‘We were persuaded by the French authorities to get on a coach to claim asylum in France, which none of us wanted to do,’ he complains.
A resettlement centre near Cerisy-la-Foret, where migrants have been taken after they were removed from the Jungle camp
Inside the isolated dilapidated children's facility called Centre La Malbreche migrants are forced to sleep on the filthy floor of this bedroom
‘They did not tell us where we were going. On the coach we asked and were shown a map of Normandy miles away from the Jungle.
‘A French charity worker on board said it would be a big house. Then when we got here the coach disappeared and we ourselves had to start cleaning the place: the showers, the bedrooms, everything was filthy. We were just dumped in the middle of nowhere.’
He adds that the food — beef meat balls and chicken in a sauce — was not halal and, because they were all Muslims, they could not eat it and were reduced to living on rice and vegetables.
Some of the migrants have flu, he claims, but they had not seen a doctor because ‘no one welcomes us in France.
‘I walked to the shop and it took 45 minutes,’ he says. ‘Every French driver that passed hooted at me as though they didn’t like me.
‘In the town, a Norwegian tourist spoke to me. She said: “The French are afraid of you.” I told her they are racist. We don’t want to stay here and will just leave and go to a city to wait our chance to get to the UK from there.’
Rahmat adds: ‘I want to find work in London, even on the black market. I have 30 relatives in Afghanistan, most of them children, who are relying on me to do that. There is no job for me here and never will be.’
Indeed, the Cerisy-la-Foret group do deserve sympathy. Rahmat and his fellow Afghans say they would rather be back in the Jungle. ‘There was not even toilet paper given to us,’ he said. ‘The French show us no respect.’
Back in Calais, the French authorities have proclaimed the three-day Jungle clearance operation, which concentrated on adult migrants, a big success. Yet there are still hundreds of youngsters living there in temporary shipping containers because no one seems to know what to do with them.
And more are arriving all the time. In the past few weeks, as news spread that Britain was taking in child migrants, the young started heading to Calais from all over Europe.
One man said the food at Centre La Malbreche - beef meat balls and chicken in a sauce - was not halal and, because they were all Muslims, they could not eat it and were reduced to living on rice and vegetables
After the Jungle was officially said to be empty, I went back to find plenty of boys and youths milling about in the mud and squalor. Every one of the scores who I spoke to said they wanted to come to Britain.
One Afghan, 14-year-old Ramat Umhi, says he was waiting to join his brother in Coventry. I found him working in a bike-repair ‘factory’ run by the migrants and still doing brisk business.
Outside, 17-year-old Tahir Mohamad, from Eritrea, has the same high hopes. He has a cousin in London and wears a tag round his wrist with 27, the number of his room in one of the containers, on it.
‘I dream of getting to my relatives in England,’ he says. ’No one knows what will happen to us now.’
The truth is that the Jungle’s legacy may take years to clear up.
Rows of caravans were lined up (pictured) after the Calais Jungle camp was demolished earlier this week
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...caping-racist-France-Britain-deported-UK.html
@flamer84 @waz @Kaptaan @mike2000 is back @Blue Marlin-
Demolishing the Jungle won't stop us: The migrants who tell SUE REID why they're hell bent on escaping 'racist' France for Britain and how some have already been deported by the UK
- Some 6,000 migrants were bussed out of Calais Jungle camp this week
- People were dispersed to every region of France except Paris and Corsica
- Some migrants say France is 'racist' and they want to get across channel
- Traffickers tell victims the UK is paradise, with generous welfare handouts
‘They lied to us migrants,’ he declares. ‘They promised we would go from the Jungle to a big house in a city. But they dumped us here in a place with no halal meat in the meals, no internet, and where we sleep ten to a bedroom and the kitchen is covered in flies.
‘The cows over the fence are better cared for than us. We were tricked and we are going to walk out,’ he adds as fellow Afghans living with him in a remote children’s holiday centre near the Normandy village of Cerisy-la-Foret nod in agreement.
Migrants from the Calais Jungle (pictured) have been relocated by French authorities 300 miles away at an isolated and dilapidated children's facility called Centre La Malbreche near Cerisy-La-Foret, Normandy
Rahmat is one of 6,000 migrants who were bussed out of the illegal Jungle camp in Calais this week as the French authorities finally moved to close it down.
In the controversial clearance, migrants were dispersed to every region of France (apart from Paris and the island of Corsica, which is already full to capacity) where 460 resettlement centres have been set up for them.
In Normandy, Rahmat and 800 other migrants will now have to apply for asylum to remain in France, although it could take months before they find out if they are successful.
If their applications fail, there is a good chance they will be sent back to the country where they originally entered Europe (in most cases, Greece or Italy) or even deported to their homelands. The bitter truth, however, is that the majority of these migrants don’t want to live in France — they want only to go to Britain. They have never applied for asylum in France, preferring to try their luck with a new life across the Channel.
The lure of the UK was abundantly clear this week when I met Afghans who had been ejected from the Jungle and sent to different locations in France.
Astonishingly, all three had reached Britain previously, only to be deported after failing to win asylum. Even more galling is the fact that they had been flown back to Kabul at British taxpayers’ expense. But as soon as they reached their home country, they simply turned round and embarked on the return journey, heading to Calais.
One, Abdul Jabarkhel, is now at the children’s home-turned-migrant-settlement-centre outside Cerisy-la-Foret, where Rahmat is also a resident.
Abdul lived in Finsbury Park, North London, for six years and has a girlfriend in the UK whom he has not seen since his deportation. ‘I only want to get back to England to her,’ he says.
The 29-year-old told how the Home Office flew him back to Afghanistan in 2014 and how he came back to Europe last year ‘hidden among the thousands going to Germany’. He then travelled to Calais and spent nine months trying to get on a lorry to cross the Channel.
In St-Germain-sur-Ay, a holiday home for disadvantaged children has been requisitioned by the local council for Jungle migrants
‘I do not want to stay here in France. Nor does any Afghan I know,’ he says.
The very existence of the Calais Jungle, which over 15 years grew to become Europe’s biggest migrant camp, is of course proof that Britain seems much more attractive than France to migrants escaping war or poverty in countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Pakistan and the Sudan.
But why should this be so?
People traffickers tell their victims the UK is a paradise, with generous welfare handouts.
It’s a message that has been repeatedly reinforced by the mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, who describes the UK as an ‘El Dorado’, with such lavish benefits that migrants are prepared to die in a clandestine Channel crossing to get their hands on them.
This week, the deputy mayor, Philippe Mignonet, also blamed Britain’s generous benefits system for luring migrants to his town.
But welfare benefits alone do not explain the discrepancy, for both the UK and France offer housing and free health care to asylum seekers. And France pays a more generous weekly allowance to asylum seekers than Britain (£56.08 a week for a single adult compared with the UK’s basic allowance of £36.95).
No, as Dave King, a former British soldier helping migrants in the Jungle explained recently, a major draw is that most of them have a smattering of English and want to join large communities of their countrymen already in the UK.
‘They come because they have friends or family in the UK, and they speak the language,’ he said.
Britain is also far more generous in offering asylum to non-EU citizens. In 2014, 31 per cent of claims in the UK were approved, while in France, only 15 per cent got the green light. Why this should be is not clear, but it is certainly the case that migrants appear to be less welcome in France than in Britain.
Which explains why the migrants I met this week in Normandy, where I visited three new resettlement centres, were so upset at being moved on from the Jungle and stuck in France. In the sleepy seaside resort of St-Germain-sur-Ay, a holiday home for disadvantaged children has been requisitioned by the local council for Jungle migrants.
Looking across the Channel you can see Jersey — part of the British Isles — tantalisingly close, at just 16 miles away. Imram, a 30-year-old Afghan who lived in Upton Park, East London, for six years before being deported, does not yet understand its significance.
He asks forlornly, ‘Is that Ireland?’ before adding that he was ‘disappointed’ not to be ‘in a big city’ from which he might launch a new attempt to get to Britain.
Asif, 32, (also deported from the UK after living in Kilburn, North London, for eight years) complains it was ‘too quiet’ and says he is worried how long the group would have to stay. Indeed, two men tell me they were contemplating ‘running away’ to find Afghan communities in more multi-ethnic parts of France.
A brisk ten-minute walk away, Corinne Chassaing, who runs the resort’s shop, is suspicious of the newcomers.
She has had to ‘shoo out’ a couple of migrants who, she complains, were ‘loitering’.
She rolls her eyes tellingly when I ask her about them. But later she tells local journalists her true views: ‘I feel threatened. There’s nobody supervising these men. The local police do their rounds but they’re not here permanently.’
The centre's manager (centre) is flanked by police officers as he listens to concerns from the migrants
Another lady doing her shopping sums it up: ‘I’m worried they’ll cause trouble. We have started organising checks with some of the neighbours of houses that are empty out of season. We’re concerned about burglaries.’
I also see a family standing near their front door and ask what they think. A man in his 50s says the migrant influx was on the orders of the French state.
‘We are concerned they are taking the places of disadvantaged French children at the holiday centre. But with Jersey only half an hour on a motor boat and an hour on the ferry, I expect they’ll get bored soon and try to reach your country that way,’ he jokes with a wink.
He might jest. But it won’t be long before these migrants find out there are ferry rides which can sail them swiftly to Jersey. Tickets for the day trip, from the nearby port of Carteret, are advertised opposite the shop.
Close by, in La Chapelle-sur-Vire, a charming hamlet of 300 people named after the magnificent chapel which dominates it, they are worried about migrants, too.
A group of locals protested when they heard that 15 former Jungle residents from Sudan would be coming to live among them. A fire was lit outside the famous Christian chapel and farmers are said to have dumped a load of manure near the hamlet’s former conference centre which is now the migrants’ home.
As Josette Montaigne, a resident who created a Facebook page to protest against the ‘decision imposed on us’, says: ‘We are not against the arrival of migrants, but against the arrival of young men 18 to 25 years old. They will be free all day, this is not a prison.
‘What will they do? My 15-year-old daughter just went on a horse ride alone. After this, that sort of thing is over.’
Another resident says he feels sympathy for young migrants, but the hamlet was not the right place to have them.
‘We have only one bus stop, we don’t even have a mobile phone signal. We are a completely isolated village without even a shop for bread.’
Of course, Rahmat from the first resettlement centre I visited near Cerisy-la-Foret would probably agree with that. ‘We were persuaded by the French authorities to get on a coach to claim asylum in France, which none of us wanted to do,’ he complains.
A resettlement centre near Cerisy-la-Foret, where migrants have been taken after they were removed from the Jungle camp
Inside the isolated dilapidated children's facility called Centre La Malbreche migrants are forced to sleep on the filthy floor of this bedroom
‘They did not tell us where we were going. On the coach we asked and were shown a map of Normandy miles away from the Jungle.
‘A French charity worker on board said it would be a big house. Then when we got here the coach disappeared and we ourselves had to start cleaning the place: the showers, the bedrooms, everything was filthy. We were just dumped in the middle of nowhere.’
He adds that the food — beef meat balls and chicken in a sauce — was not halal and, because they were all Muslims, they could not eat it and were reduced to living on rice and vegetables.
Some of the migrants have flu, he claims, but they had not seen a doctor because ‘no one welcomes us in France.
‘I walked to the shop and it took 45 minutes,’ he says. ‘Every French driver that passed hooted at me as though they didn’t like me.
‘In the town, a Norwegian tourist spoke to me. She said: “The French are afraid of you.” I told her they are racist. We don’t want to stay here and will just leave and go to a city to wait our chance to get to the UK from there.’
Rahmat adds: ‘I want to find work in London, even on the black market. I have 30 relatives in Afghanistan, most of them children, who are relying on me to do that. There is no job for me here and never will be.’
Indeed, the Cerisy-la-Foret group do deserve sympathy. Rahmat and his fellow Afghans say they would rather be back in the Jungle. ‘There was not even toilet paper given to us,’ he said. ‘The French show us no respect.’
Back in Calais, the French authorities have proclaimed the three-day Jungle clearance operation, which concentrated on adult migrants, a big success. Yet there are still hundreds of youngsters living there in temporary shipping containers because no one seems to know what to do with them.
And more are arriving all the time. In the past few weeks, as news spread that Britain was taking in child migrants, the young started heading to Calais from all over Europe.
One man said the food at Centre La Malbreche - beef meat balls and chicken in a sauce - was not halal and, because they were all Muslims, they could not eat it and were reduced to living on rice and vegetables
After the Jungle was officially said to be empty, I went back to find plenty of boys and youths milling about in the mud and squalor. Every one of the scores who I spoke to said they wanted to come to Britain.
One Afghan, 14-year-old Ramat Umhi, says he was waiting to join his brother in Coventry. I found him working in a bike-repair ‘factory’ run by the migrants and still doing brisk business.
Outside, 17-year-old Tahir Mohamad, from Eritrea, has the same high hopes. He has a cousin in London and wears a tag round his wrist with 27, the number of his room in one of the containers, on it.
‘I dream of getting to my relatives in England,’ he says. ’No one knows what will happen to us now.’
The truth is that the Jungle’s legacy may take years to clear up.
Rows of caravans were lined up (pictured) after the Calais Jungle camp was demolished earlier this week
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...caping-racist-France-Britain-deported-UK.html
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