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Eurotunnel a boon for migrants to the UK

Sanjay Suri in London

After fighting off the Spanish, French and Germans over a few centuries, the English are feeling besieged again.

Day after day hundreds of migrants silently storm the island. Nobody sees those who succeed; one only hears of those who fail -- eighty men were caught trying simply to walk into England through the Eurotunnel on Friday.

A day before, another 44 persons were caught inside the chunnel. Five others were caught in England after making it across the Channel in an inflated rubber dinghy.

The platforms around the Eurotunnel on the French side were ringed last month with new heavy-duty fencing whose wires cannot be cut by the usual tools. The fences have been topped with razor wires. Military experts from Britain and France have been called in to build up impregnable defences against the new invaders.

Yet every day hundreds try to get through. A spokeswoman for the home office said the numbers coming through were rising. "Twenty-seven asylum-seekers entered Britain through the tunnel in December, but in July this year the figure was 808."

A spokeswoman for Eurotunnel said 4,700 people broke through the security fencing last year. This year more than 18,000 have broken through. And a fair number are believed to succeed past the fence all the way to England.

The storming forces come from all over the world, mostly Afghanistan these days, though there's a fair number from the Balkans in Europe around former Yugoslavia. And there's at least a sprinkling of Indians and Pakistanis waiting in refugee camps in France trying to get in. But in recent weeks few of those caught have been from India or Pakistan. Either they've given up on England or they've found a way of getting through.

This is a business without numbers or records. But Indian lawyers in London and the Midlands indicate that a fair number of Indians are able to welcome their brothers from Punjab every now and then without immigration procedures getting in the way.

It's getting tougher as the British move to fortify themselves with something more than mere fencing. The British home office wants Eurotunnel to tighten up, though the operators say that is the government's job.

Meanwhile, the invaders keep coming despite an announcement that enough steps have been taken to improve security in the Eurotunnel. More than 200 cameras have been placed at tunnel entrances and every train is searched inside, above, and below after a group of refugees were found to have made it to London travelling under the train.

Still they keep coming. Some 200 people are caught every day at the Eurotunnel. But patterns of return and disappearance at the camps indicate that 50 to 100 get through to England daily. A slow but successful invasion by 20,000 a year is more than Britain wants.

Some of the success comes because despite the security it's possible to keep trying. Those caught are sent back to the refugee camps. But these camps are not prisons. "We just keep trying, what is there to lose?" one Afghan refugee said.

The French police could charge them with trespassing and trying to gain illegal access. But those who try and fail are not prosecuted. One group of Afghans was let off because the French said they could find no interpreters. The French police spoke no Pushtu and the Afghans spoke no French.

Some have been caught 30 times and sent back. But French regulations, or the lack of them, mean they can just keep trying.

Indo-Asian News Service

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