Tribune. Will there be as many deaths crossing the Channel as crossing the Mediterranean for an answer to be drawn up to the question of access to the right of asylum at the British border? So far, the situation, in Calais (Pas-de-Calais) and around, has been described sometimes by well-founded criticisms, sometimes by “everything is fine”. But the proposed solution, period.
The number of extra-European migrants in Calais has apparently stabilized since the evacuation of the “jungle” in 2016. The systematic evacuations of all encampments, carried out since by the French authorities (the police) maintain the number of migrants present in Calais around a thousand or two thousand. At the cost of a severe deterioration in their living conditions, which our marauders know well, and which the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) noted in its opinion of February 11. But the flows, both departures and arrivals, measured as we imagine, are increasing significantly.
These departures are now taking place in two directions: in France, either through shelters more or less far from Calais, where they often return, or spontaneously through the continuation of their wanderings, in particular those of the rejected or “dubliné”. come from another Member State of the European Union (EU); or to the UK, through illegal and dangerous crossings, by boat, since the overland routes have effectively been closed (over 10,000 since the start of 2021; up to almost 1,000 on some days in August).
Equivalent to a pushback
These migrants are not sufficiently informed about their rights, as the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) underlines, in Paris as in London. But we must consider them for a large part as asylum seekers in the United Kingdom, prevented by the location of this border in Calais from making this request.
We can see it from the fact that these migrants do not ask, or very little, to present an asylum application in France when they are sheltered in a French device which allows it, a reception center and examination of administrative situations (CAES); and the fact that those who cross clandestinely to the United Kingdom by boat, on the other hand, systematically apply for asylum on their arrival in the United Kingdom (98% of arrivals recorded in 2021), and are also subsequently recognized as refugees in a usual proportion (around 50%) with regard to the average recognition rates of asylum seekers in Europe.
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