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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To wonder this about BBC reporting of Calais?

28 replies

wasonthelist · 01/03/2016 13:32

Before we start i AM NOT having a go at the BBC, nor dissing the people in the camp.

The BBC keeps reporting that the people don't want to go to the new area because they are worried the French will force them to apply for asylum - and that would end their dream of coming to the UK (according to the BBC).

But if they are granted asylum, won't they get a French passport and the ability to travel to the UK?

OP posts:
jalopyjane · 01/03/2016 13:34

Getting asylum isn't the same as citizenship or nationality. They could potentially follow I guess, but in a number of years.

Bettydownthehall · 01/03/2016 13:52

So far this is the nicest thread on Calais yet Grin

OP asks a reasonable question and a poster responds in a reasonable and informative manner.

Well done mumsnet Star

(Shall we just leave it here so we can pretend we are all civilised and lovely)

OuchLegoHurts · 01/03/2016 13:57

Good idea! Grin

WhereYouLeftIt · 01/03/2016 14:11

Oh dear, I hope this isn't considered inflamatory Grin, but honestly I don't really see why they wouldn't apply to France for asylum. The similarities between France and the UK far outstrips the difference surely?

OurBlanche · 01/03/2016 14:30

One reporter explained it a bit more. If they are forced to claim in France then they cannot claim here and here is widely considered to be a Utopia of free money and housing.

France has made the most of this for centuries, and will probably do so for ever more. It is a geographical nicety that we lose out on... we are, quite literally, the end of the line. Centuries of displaced souls have fled across Europe and ended up here.

NynaevesSister · 01/03/2016 14:40

The BBC is wrong. There is only about 500 spaces left in the containers, and there are around 1,500 being displaced at the moment.

The containers are filled with bunks for 15 people and nothing more. There are no cooking, showering or toilet facilities. All the people there have to go to the Jules Ferry centre for one meal a day and toilets etc. There are already 500 or so living in the centre and there are not enough showers or toilets for them.

Families refuse to move into the containers because they have no control over who they have to share with.

There is no protection in there for unaccompanied minors.

Other families refuse to move in because they have a legal entitlement to seek asylum in the UK. They have immediate family members here - husbands or wives, sons or daughters, sisters or brothers. The U.K. is ignoring this!

About 21% of asylum applications in France are successful. In the UK it is 22%. Also France gives out more in benefits than the UK however they provide less support while the application is being processed.

People aren't living for months in the muddy rat infested horror that is Calais because they want to come and live on benefits in the UK. Anyone with an iota of common sense can soon work out that is a lie.

NeedAScarfForMyGiraffe · 01/03/2016 14:43

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Original poster
wasonthelist · 01/03/2016 14:47

Why are the French doing this now I wonder? (I mean it - I really wonder - the camp has been there ages)

OP posts:
pastaofplenty · 01/03/2016 14:50

I thought you were wondering about the reporter herself - who has been rather odd all morning. Every bloody time the BBC goes live to her she starts talking then stops and pauses, looks at the horizon and then continues the report after a two second dramatic sweep of the camp. She's like a human meerkat - very weird and distracting.

howtorebuild · 01/03/2016 14:51

If it was me I would make an asylum application for myself and my children.

OurBlanche · 01/03/2016 14:52

The containers are for families and the most vulnerable... women and children were moved (partially) to the centre where food and toilets are being provided.

The problem is that providing better accommodation means more people trying to get there/here... which is why Sangatte was closed over a decade ago. So this is, apparently, France's solution, to send a stern message that they must look elsewhere in Europe as the French will not allow access to the UK from Calais (again, apparently).

Many people won't check in as they want to get into the UK more quickly than they could officially - not rumour, was said, very plainly, by a number of young men on various broadcasts recently. Oh, that they all speak some English is another draw to the UK.

It isn't a simple as some seem to be making it. There is a real mix of asylum seekers and economic migrants, all trying to get to the UK at any cost because, rightly or wrongly, we offer more than many other countries do.

OurBlanche · 01/03/2016 14:57

The meerkat reporter seemed to be unsettled by the masked mean and armed police who were walking around her.

At one point there was a man with a scar over his face stood with his arms crossed, a few feet from her. She looked up and left and quite literally seemed to come to a complete stop. Then an armed policeman walked round into camera shot and glared in the same direction, and she relaxed and continued. You can just see the man in scarf look in the same direction, so I had assumed there was someone there that made her feel uncomfortable, maybe for the camera man who would have had his back to whoever was there.

sugar21 · 01/03/2016 14:57

I don't pretend to know the whys and wherefores but surely if you are fleeing a war zone you claim asylum in the first friendly Country that you arrive in.
Why are these people not doing so and therefore allowing children to suffer?

angelos02 · 01/03/2016 15:00

pastaofplenty I agree. DH and I were joking this morning that she looked as though she was on work experience. She was no Kate Adie!

VertigoNun · 01/03/2016 15:04

I think it just shows how unsafe the reporter feels.

OurBlanche · 01/03/2016 15:08

(Dons hard hat) because not all of them really are fleeing from a war zone, just a lack of work/money.

Some have a male relative already here, so women and children are trying to join them Others have children here so the husbands, sons are trying to join them.

If, as I do most days, you watch the really early news on all channels, you get to see and hear the stuff they cut out by breakfast time. The people who speak fairly good English are very open about their expectations and understanding that what they are doing is illegal but that, until they register, they cold still get to the UK, which is what they want.

They have a great amount of knowledge about the situations in various European countries. Much more than we have. We seem to be the stable, rich Western country they all want to come to - especially now Germany has blotted its copy book.

Bluebolt · 01/03/2016 15:09

One of the reasons given is that the uk allows family to join after 5 months whereas France is two years.

hedgehogGivesUp · 01/03/2016 15:15

I don't pretend to know the whys and wherefores but surely if you are fleeing a war zone you claim asylum in the first friendly Country that you arrive in.
Why are these people not doing so and therefore allowing children to suffer?

Not necessarily. If you're terrified you may want to seek asylum in the country which you perceive to be the safest. Your perception of safest may not be correct but it's all you've got to go on when everything else has been torn away from you.

I cross paths with lots of refugees in my daily life and almost all of them who had a say in where they went were motivated primarily by perception of safety and their fear of being sent back.

howtorebuild · 01/03/2016 15:17

There are groups now boating to Jersey. I think in the next few weeks there will be groups boating on our shores as they are in Greece.

OurBlanche · 01/03/2016 15:19

almost all of them who had a say in where they went were motivated primarily by perception of safety and their fear of being sent back.

That too is born out by the early reports. One woman was clearly at the end of her tether but was hanging on desperately because the UK was safe and she could suffer anything to make her kids safe. She was asked why France was not safe and she laughed and said something like "They take you and put you there for many months, years. It is not good, not safe".

LarrytheCucumber · 01/03/2016 16:09

A lot of their perceptions are coloured by the rumour mill though. We have access to numerous newspapers, television channels, Facebook groups etc but we have difficulty working out the truth. How much harder it must be for the migrants. Remember the man who was angry that Sweden didn't give him the promised house and car? Presumably the traffickers fed him that line. So there are people assuring them that France is bad, UK good, and they have no way of establishing the truth.

OurBlanche · 01/03/2016 16:20

But there are also other, well educated people, who do know a lot of accurate info, they have mobile phones, internet access etc. Between economic migrants with a detailed knowledge of the law and opportunities and those who really are desperate, it becomes very, very hard to have a clear idea on which to base an opinion.

LarrytheCucumber · 01/03/2016 16:32

Another thing I want to know is, if so few of them have papers, how it can be established that they genuinely have relatives in the UK.

VertigoNun · 01/03/2016 16:35

Why are no borders not putting interviews with UK relatives on line with their papers showing they have relatives in Calais?

ZedWoman · 01/03/2016 16:36

Completely off-topic, but we went to Belgium over Feb half term. Driving along the roads from the shuttle port to the Franch border was very different this time from how it has been in the past.

There were loads of lorries being pulled over by police - particularly around Calais and Dunkirk. At the BP garage between Dunkirk and Calais there wwere loads of police in full riot gear. The queue to get through immigration at the shuttle terminal was horrendous, and the car was 'swept' by security on both journeys.

I'm glad we're sailing to Dieppe in the summer...

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