Lionel Gougelot (correspondent in Calais) / Photo credit: DENIS CHARLET / AFP
Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, was traveling to Calais, where the lifeless bodies of two migrants were found Friday while they were trying to cross the Channel. A new illustration of the impossible migration management in the North, while the minister came to defend his bill there.
By criminalizing the smuggling of illegal immigrants, now punishable by 15 to 20 years in prison, by strengthening controls and fingerprinting of migrants, Gérald Darmanin says he is convinced that his immigration law will be effective against smuggler networks. With an additional tool: the reestablishment of the offense of illegal stay in the territory.
“Very concretely, this would obviously help the fight against illegal immigration, particularly the most violent people. Because here, the majority of people in an irregular situation simply want to cross to England. There is also a small part of these people who are violent and which the population of Calais suffers. And we obviously need, in these cases, to be able to question them and be able to have them convicted by the courts”, he declared on the sidelines of his trip.
“Here, we are not at the theater”
Firm measures expected by Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, exasperated by the blocking of discussions in the National Assembly. “We need this law. Here, we are not in the theater, we are not throwing words and phrases at each other that mean nothing to us here, in real life, with real people, who have been experiencing this difficulty every day, every night, for so many years. All parliamentarians really need to be aware of this,” she told Europe 1.
This year, the number of illegal crossings to Britain has been reduced by a third. Gérald Darmanin wants to believe that his text will accentuate this downward trend. But the minister was quickly overtaken by reality: while traveling, two people died during two separate attempts to cross the Channel to England aboard makeshift boats, also leaving more than 60 shipwrecked.