UK is 'Eldorado' for migrants says French Mayor

[Spursex]

Britain is 'Eldorado' for illegal migrants, says Calais mayor

Natacha Bouchart says Britain lacks 'courage' to review immigration laws

By Joe Barnes, BRUSSELS CORRESPONDENT 4 November 2021 • 10:30am



Britain is an “Eldorado” for illegal migrants and should toughen its laws to dissuade cross-Channel arrivals, according to the mayor of Calais.
Natacha Bouchart, a member of the centre-right Republicains, said Paris should rewrite the treaty that obliges France to control migrants before they cross the Channel.
“We know that a migrant who arrives in England is taken care of. They are housed, they have an income,” she told French radio station RTL.
“For them, England remains an Eldorado but the British Government does not have the courage to review its legislation in the field.”
Emmanuel Macron, the French President, must forcefully renegotiate the Touquet agreement because Britain’s soft touch on migrants has inflicted “trauma” on Calais residents “for over 20 years”, she added.
Ms Bourchart accused Britain of acting as a “pull factor” for illegal migrants, which has essentially lured people to the port town from all over the European Union.


Under the 2003 Le Touquet treaty, people must produce valid travel documents before leaving France for Britain. As a result, this leaves the French authorities in charge of the border protection arrangements.
In a call for showdown talks over migration, Ms Bourchart said President Macron must “strongarm” Britain to “overhaul” the treaty.
Mr Macron said he wanted to renegotiate the Touquet pact or scrap it during his successful bid to become French president in 2017. He later secured more UK funding for extra border security in talks with Theresa May.
The treaty effectively moved the British border on to French soil, preventing many migrants from reaching UK shores.
Paris has raised the prospect of ending checks on migrants in France unless Britain backs down in the post-Brexit dispute over fishing licences.
Either side can revoke the border agreement with just two years' notice before it is officially cancelled.

 

[muttley]

There's an easy solution staring Macron in the face. Just give he stretch from Calais to Dunkirk to the Brits and make it part of the Empire. Then we can build a Trump wall around it and block out the rest of France. That will solve the illegal immigrant influx.

 

[Spursex]

There's an easy solution staring Macron in the face. Just give he stretch from Calais to Dunkirk to the Brits and make it part of the Empire. Then we can build a Trump wall around it and block out the rest of France. That will solve the illegal immigrant influx.

We may well soon have a much bigger migrant issue on our hands and so will the EU - will they build a wall?

See: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-...ble-sahel-could-result-wave-migration-europe/


Population boom in unstable Sahel could result in wave of migration to Europe, report warns

Terrorism, hunger and failing governments already plague this region of Africa – time is running out to stop further deterioration


By Will Brown 4 November 2021 • 12:00pm



Europe is at risk of being hit by a tide of migration from the Sahel region of Africa, as a population boom hits a part of the continent already plagued by terror, hunger and failing governments, a major report has warned.
Researchers at the Atlantic Council, a think tank based in Washington DC, have made grim predictions for the vast region south of the Sahara, which is already home to deadly jihadist insurgencies and is widely seen as “ground zero” for climate change.
The report – overseen by Matthew J Burrows, a former CIA analyst who for nearly a decade led long-term forecasting for the US National Security Council – warns that urgent steps must be taken to reduce the birth rate and increase women's prospects and reproductive rights. Otherwise, a population explosion will make the region ungovernable, trapping tens of millions in poverty.

The result will not only be hunger and conflict but a new wave of migration towards Europe from the region, which stretches from Senegal, Mauritania and Mali to Burkina Faso, Chad and across 12 strict Islamic sharia law states of northern Nigeria.
Authors Stephen Smith of Duke University and Richard Cincotta of the Woodrow Wilson Center present three different scenarios for what could happen by 2043 depending on what action is taken now.
The best case scenario imagines the Sahel replicating Bangladesh's demographic turnaround and governments working together to overcome challenges to do with land ownership, drought, water, education and sanitation with technocratic, well thought out policies.
The worst case scenario makes grim reading, however. If the birth rate goes unchecked, Senegal is seen as the only country in the Sahel that will not become engulfed in turmoil.

By 2043, the region is predicted to become engulfed in ‘a war of all against all’ Credit: Simon Townsley/The Telegraph
The rest of the region will, by 2043, have “sunken into a war of all against all,” while Niger, now with a population of 60m – three times what it had in 2020 – is engulfed in the worst famine since the early 1980s.
Mr Burrows told The Telegraph the result would be the Sahel being “cordoned off by the rest of the world” – or at least an attempt made to do that.
“Europe would want to keep the refugees out,” he said. “It would be like Somalia, where no one wants to go in and tackle any of the problems of the conflict because it's an impossible situation”.
Already the UK and the European Union fund military forces and migration control facilities across the region.

The western Sahel has some of the highest fertility rates on earth. On average, a woman in Senegal and Mauritania will have 4.6 children, while a woman in Niger or northern Nigeria will have 6.5.
The population has grown an estimated five times from about 20 million inhabitants in 1960 to 103 million in 2020, with northern Nigeria growing at a similar rate to almost 80m.
The region is already facing a toxic cocktail of problems, from desertification and waves of malnutrition to food shortages. And in recent years insurgencies linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State have taken root, killing tens of thousands and displacing millions.
UN demographers estimate that this population of 180m in the six states and northern Nigeria will explode over the next two decades to between 370m and 415m people in 2045, making western Africa one of the most highly populated places on earth.

On the one hand, more people means more bright ideas. It means more university graduates, doctors, engineers, business people and farmers. But researchers at the Atlantic Council fear that the rate at which the population is growing means that the Western Sahel will miss the so-called demographic dividend.
The demographic dividend is a period of accelerated economic growth resulting from a decline in a country's birth and death rates. It leads to a larger, better educated workforce, a lower number of dependants and higher rates of productivity.
Since the 1950s, most rapidly developing countries that have reached upper-middle levels of development, like South Korea or Vietnam, have done so when their populations have hit a median age of around 25 or 26.
But that “remains a distant goal for the states of the Western Sahel”, says the report.
“Rather than yielding an economic dividend, the conditions spawned by the region's persistently youthful, rapidly growing, high-fertility populations overwhelm the capabilities of state-run services, generate extensive urban slum conditions, slow if not stall economic and social progress, and aggravate ethnic tensions.”

The report also highlights how women and girls have been failed by successive Sahelian governments. States have not enforced “existing laws that would reduce adolescent marriages, eliminate female genital cutting, protect women from forced marriages, restrict polygamy, and give women inheritance rights,” said the authors.
They also noted that “the combined effects of future population growth, continued climatic warming, persistent insurgency, and periodic drought” make food self-sufficiency highly unlikely in the foreseeable future.
The jihadists will also play a role in keeping fertility rates high, the authors argue. “Unlike the Marxist insurgencies that raged across Southeast Asia and Latin America during the 20th century, jihadists in rural Sahelian areas actively restrict women's education, their autonomy and family planning services that could help fertility decline and improve reproductive health and nutrition.”

Stephen Smith told The Telegraph that the West had not fully woken up to the problem and that people were scared to talk about the issue of fertility in West Africa.
“Given the electoral cycles in Western democracies, our time horizon and the aid budgets we mobilise and the policies we contrive turn out to be incompatible with long-term challenges such as the one the Western Sahel will be confronted with for decades to come,” he said.

more at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-...ble-sahel-could-result-wave-migration-europe/

 

[muttley]

We may well soon have a much bigger migrant issue on our hands and so will the EU - will they build a wall?

See: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-...ble-sahel-could-result-wave-migration-europe/


Population boom in unstable Sahel could result in wave of migration to Europe, report warns

Terrorism, hunger and failing governments already plague this region of Africa – time is running out to stop further deterioration


By Will Brown 4 November 2021 • 12:00pm



Europe is at risk of being hit by a tide of migration from the Sahel region of Africa, as a population boom hits a part of the continent already plagued by terror, hunger and failing governments, a major report has warned.
Researchers at the Atlantic Council, a think tank based in Washington DC, have made grim predictions for the vast region south of the Sahara, which is already home to deadly jihadist insurgencies and is widely seen as “ground zero” for climate change.
The report – overseen by Matthew J Burrows, a former CIA analyst who for nearly a decade led long-term forecasting for the US National Security Council – warns that urgent steps must be taken to reduce the birth rate and increase women's prospects and reproductive rights. Otherwise, a population explosion will make the region ungovernable, trapping tens of millions in poverty.

The result will not only be hunger and conflict but a new wave of migration towards Europe from the region, which stretches from Senegal, Mauritania and Mali to Burkina Faso, Chad and across 12 strict Islamic sharia law states of northern Nigeria.
Authors Stephen Smith of Duke University and Richard Cincotta of the Woodrow Wilson Center present three different scenarios for what could happen by 2043 depending on what action is taken now.
The best case scenario imagines the Sahel replicating Bangladesh's demographic turnaround and governments working together to overcome challenges to do with land ownership, drought, water, education and sanitation with technocratic, well thought out policies.
The worst case scenario makes grim reading, however. If the birth rate goes unchecked, Senegal is seen as the only country in the Sahel that will not become engulfed in turmoil.

By 2043, the region is predicted to become engulfed in ‘a war of all against all’ Credit: Simon Townsley/The Telegraph
The rest of the region will, by 2043, have “sunken into a war of all against all,” while Niger, now with a population of 60m – three times what it had in 2020 – is engulfed in the worst famine since the early 1980s.
Mr Burrows told The Telegraph the result would be the Sahel being “cordoned off by the rest of the world” – or at least an attempt made to do that.
“Europe would want to keep the refugees out,” he said. “It would be like Somalia, where no one wants to go in and tackle any of the problems of the conflict because it's an impossible situation”.
Already the UK and the European Union fund military forces and migration control facilities across the region.

The western Sahel has some of the highest fertility rates on earth. On average, a woman in Senegal and Mauritania will have 4.6 children, while a woman in Niger or northern Nigeria will have 6.5.
The population has grown an estimated five times from about 20 million inhabitants in 1960 to 103 million in 2020, with northern Nigeria growing at a similar rate to almost 80m.
The region is already facing a toxic cocktail of problems, from desertification and waves of malnutrition to food shortages. And in recent years insurgencies linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State have taken root, killing tens of thousands and displacing millions.
UN demographers estimate that this population of 180m in the six states and northern Nigeria will explode over the next two decades to between 370m and 415m people in 2045, making western Africa one of the most highly populated places on earth.

On the one hand, more people means more bright ideas. It means more university graduates, doctors, engineers, business people and farmers. But researchers at the Atlantic Council fear that the rate at which the population is growing means that the Western Sahel will miss the so-called demographic dividend.
The demographic dividend is a period of accelerated economic growth resulting from a decline in a country's birth and death rates. It leads to a larger, better educated workforce, a lower number of dependants and higher rates of productivity.
Since the 1950s, most rapidly developing countries that have reached upper-middle levels of development, like South Korea or Vietnam, have done so when their populations have hit a median age of around 25 or 26.
But that “remains a distant goal for the states of the Western Sahel”, says the report.
“Rather than yielding an economic dividend, the conditions spawned by the region's persistently youthful, rapidly growing, high-fertility populations overwhelm the capabilities of state-run services, generate extensive urban slum conditions, slow if not stall economic and social progress, and aggravate ethnic tensions.”

The report also highlights how women and girls have been failed by successive Sahelian governments. States have not enforced “existing laws that would reduce adolescent marriages, eliminate female genital cutting, protect women from forced marriages, restrict polygamy, and give women inheritance rights,” said the authors.
They also noted that “the combined effects of future population growth, continued climatic warming, persistent insurgency, and periodic drought” make food self-sufficiency highly unlikely in the foreseeable future.
The jihadists will also play a role in keeping fertility rates high, the authors argue. “Unlike the Marxist insurgencies that raged across Southeast Asia and Latin America during the 20th century, jihadists in rural Sahelian areas actively restrict women's education, their autonomy and family planning services that could help fertility decline and improve reproductive health and nutrition.”

Stephen Smith told The Telegraph that the West had not fully woken up to the problem and that people were scared to talk about the issue of fertility in West Africa.
“Given the electoral cycles in Western democracies, our time horizon and the aid budgets we mobilise and the policies we contrive turn out to be incompatible with long-term challenges such as the one the Western Sahel will be confronted with for decades to come,” he said.

more at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-...ble-sahel-could-result-wave-migration-europe/

Yep, a real world problem as opposed to what Macron is banging on about in Calais.

I didn't want Brexit, but quite happy to do our bit where we should in world crises, but remain an island for the rest. I'd also open any door to migrant innovators in any industry. We need to get through these next 10 years and then come out the other side.

 

[meee93]

Fix, or at least reduce, 3rd world poverty and you "fix" immigration. All this jingoistic back and forth between the French and the British is a sticky plaster being put over a gaping wound.

 

[Spursex]

Fix, or at least reduce, 3rd world poverty and you "fix" immigration. All this jingoistic back and forth between the French and the British is a sticky plaster being put over a gaping wound.

The issue is how, not the why really - the why it's happening is well known and understood.

But you can't fix this unless you bring about momentous change - and probably regime change at that - and the last thing we want is another Western intervention, so much of the aid we give now disappears should we give them more? - history has taught us the more we do that, the worse the problems in much of Africa become.

This has nothing to do with it 'just' being between the French and the British and everything to do with how the EU isn't even implementing its own rules on illegal migration - I suspect those counties in the UK pushing for a trump like 'wall' will soon get their way..


The Global Compact on Migration, a non-binding statement of principles adopted by most of the world's countries in 2018, commits governments "to save lives and prevent migrant deaths" by ensuring search and rescue and also by reviewing policies and laws that may "raise or create the risk" of people going missing or dying.


To Europe's shame, five of the 29 countries that did not adopt the compact are in the European Union. And today European countries and EU institutions are pursuing or proposing policies that endanger lives.


Not only have EU institutions and states abdicated their responsibilities for search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean, but their policies increase the risk of harm, including deaths at sea, by deputising Libya, withdrawing naval assets from high seas corridors where migrant boats are most likely to be in distress, and obstructing - even criminalising -non-governmental rescue groups.


In July, Italy renewed its funding to the Libyan Coast Guard, and the European Commission plans to deliver three new boats to the Libyan Coast Guard to increase their patrol capacity. Libyan authorities have intercepted more than 26,300 people and forcibly taken them back to Libya so far this year.


There is emerging evidence that Frontex, the EU's border agency, has directly and indirectly enabled these interdictions.


We will probably never know how many people have died because of reckless Libyan Coast Guard manoeuvers at sea but also due to pullbacks to almost certain detention in nightmarish conditions with risk of sexual violence, torture, forced labor, extortion, and death.

The central text of the joint communique of 12 EU states:

https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/euobs-media/59f9f4116a089cec71bf81b76413503a.pdf

Since then in the Council of ministers, there is almost a uniform agreement on building physical barriers to entry and to turn the upcoming 'border force' in a paramilitary-style organisation where individual members cannot be sued for any loss of life (including shooting illegal migrants) whilst doing their jobs.

 

[Spursex]

and so it continues..

read more here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-n...s-building-first-european-wall-ward-migrants/

Lithuania starts building first European wall to keep out migrants from Belarus

Belarus has repeatedly denied encouraging migrants to enter Poland and the Baltic states as a way of pressurising the European Union

By Our Foreign Staff 5 November 2021 • 3:02pm

Lithuania has built the first stretches of a steel wall on its border with Belarus since migrants from the Middle East and other areas began entering from Belarus this year.
The European Union accuses Belarus of deliberately encouraging the migrants to enter EU states Poland, Lithuania and Latvia via Belarusian territory as a way of putting pressure on the bloc.
Belarus has repeatedly denied this but its president, Alexander Lukashenko, has said his country would no longer stop the migrants since EU sanctions drain resources.
All three EU countries have put stretches of razor wire on the border to stop the migrants. Last week Lithuania began putting up the first stretches of the 3.4-metre (11-foot) high steel fence, topped with 0.6 metres (2 feet) of razor wire.

"It's probably impossible to build a totally unpassable obstacle, so I think that this barrier can too be overcome. But that would take a long time, and we would be able to react", said Virgilijus Raugale, the chief boarder guard in southern Lithuania.
Lithuania has allocated 152 million euros (£130m) to build 500 kilometres (300 miles) of the wall by September next year. The wall is supplemented by a 3-metre high heap of coiled razor wire next to it and video surveillance equipment.
More than 4,000 migrants entered Lithuania from Belarus this year before August, when the country resorted to sending almost all entering migrants back to Belarus.
Over 5,600 migrants were prevented from entering since then, the border guard service said, including 2,300 who tried to enter in October.
Meanwhile, Poland said on Friday a Belarusian soldier tried to fire flares at Polish border troops and others tried to tear down fencing along the frontier amid rising tension over a wave of migrants trying to reach European Union territory from Belarus.
"Further provocations at the border. Yesterday, a Belarusian soldier tried to fire a flare gun towards Polish soldiers. Fortunately, the gun did not fire," the Polish defence ministry wrote on Twitter.
"100 metres away, five armed Belarusians tried to destroy (our border) fence, shouting at the same time that they would shoot Polish soldiers."
Poland has erected a barbed-wire fence along the border, where a state of emergency is in effect, to keep out arriving migrants and plans to build a 5.5-metre (18-foot)-high wall along a 180-km (110-mile) stretch of the boundary.

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