Great Britain’s migrant crisis

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Great Britain’s migrant crisis

Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, February 7th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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Western powers are still trying to figure out how to deal with Russia. International aid agencies say all the money the west is pouring into Afghanistan won’t help many people unless there are financial reforms as well. Plus, we’re going to examine the UK’s migrant crisis.

Abu
That’s very hard. I miss everything in Afghanistan. We must come here because here is a little bit safe.

Marc Filippino
In the first of our three-part series, we’ll hear from refugees in northern France who are desperately waiting to find a way across the English Channel. I’m Marc Filippino and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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There is a frenzy of diplomacy this week aimed at de-escalating tensions with Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron plans to visit his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin today. Meanwhile, European and US officials are working on a back-up plan in case Russia cuts off gas to the EU. That could be Russia’s response to western sanctions if Moscow invades Ukraine. The FT reports that the EU could have a tough time getting all 27 member states on board with sanctions, though. The bloc relies heavily on Russia for energy and some member states, like Italy and Austria, have especially strong business ties to Russia.

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Western cash is starting to flow into Afghanistan to stem a growing humanitarian crisis, but international aid agencies warn that the money won’t help much without reforms that make sure the funds get to ordinary people. Aid agencies are urging western governments to release frozen Afghan central bank reserves. They say this would restore interbank lending and foreign exchange transactions and help revive the country’s banks. They also want the unblocking of donor funds locked up by the World Bank that would help the broader economy. An estimated three and a half million Afghans have been forced to leave their homes in order to survive.

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A migrant crisis is further poisoning relations between the UK and France. French President Macron recently said the UK’s immigration policy encourages people to risk their lives by crossing the English Channel from France. Here’s the response from Britain’s home secretary Priti Patel.

Priti Patel
Macron’s comments are wrong, they’re absolutely wrong. So let me be very, very clear about that.

Marc Filippino
Patel is the face of the UK’s efforts to address the crisis. British lawmakers are reaching for harsh measures to deter migrants. Even though the number of refugees arriving in the UK has remained steady, the number of people coming by boat has risen dramatically. Last year, 30,000 people took the perilous journey across the channel, triple the number of the previous year. The News Briefing is going to explore the UK’s migrant crisis in a series of reports. We’ll start in northern France. The FT’s Anna Gross went to a refugee camp near Calais to meet some of the people waiting to get to the other side of the channel. She joins me now. Hey, Anna.

Anna Gross
Hi, Marc. Thanks for having me.

Marc Filippino
So Anna, you went to one of these camps and you know, we’re going to post a few of the pictures that you sent us to our Twitter account, @ftnewsbriefing. And these pictures they show, you know, red and blue tents and tarps clustered along a railway track next to a forest. For you, you know, what did you see when you were there? What was it like?

Anna Gross
It’s pretty chaotic, and there are people milling around, a lot of people in a very small bit of space. Because it was so cold, there were several fires that had been made and it wasn’t easy to make fire because the logs were so wet from the rain that there would be people constantly trying to make fire. And on those fires, they’d be boiling milk or cooking some food that they’d gotten hold of. Because it had been raining so much, people’s clothes and the tents themselves were really wet, so there were people walking around with wet shoes and clothes and didn’t have any option to kind of get dry.

Marc Filippino
What were some of the people like? I know that you met one young man from Afghanistan named Abubakar. Here’s some of what he told you.

Abu
I lost my way, but two months I’m here. It’s very hard. I’m just alone. That’s very hard. I miss everything in Afghanistan. We had everything. We must come here because here is a little bit safe.

Anna Gross
He left his family in Afghanistan in the summer when the Taliban took over. And from Pakistan, he went to Iran then to Turkey, and then finally he made it to France.

Abu
There’s no work, no job in France. We all know, I saw the Paris, a lot of Afghan guys from other countries, many of them, they are living on the street.

Marc Filippino
So, I understand you talked to quite an age of, age range of people there?

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Anna Gross
Yes, so this is a little girl that we met. Her name was Diva.

Marc Filippino
[laughing] Very, very appropriate.

Anna Gross
[laughing] Yeah, she just really wanted the mic the whole time. And this girl, Diva, was really attached to this woman called Bakhar. She’s 28 years old and from Kurdistan.

Bakhar
But there are two parties there, two political parties. They have controlled everything and everyone there. If you are not with them, maybe one day someone will come and kill you without having any reason. Just like one of our neighbours.

Anna Gross
So Bakhar said she got a visa to visit France, but she didn’t want to stay in France. She was really keen to get to the UK.

Bakhar
We have some, about some families there, and our English is better [laughing] than French. Learning a new language is really difficult. We just want to go study there, continue our life there.

Marc Filippino
So Anna, can you give me some context, you know, this number of people who are trying to get into the UK, how does this compare to numbers of refugees trying to get to other European countries?

Anna Gross
The UK receives about a third as many asylum applications as Germany per year, and fewer than half the number than in France. Even Spain takes more refugees than the UK. The reality is that fewer displaced people want to go to the UK or at least managed to get to the UK. But we do tend to attract migrants from certain countries, specifically Kurdistan and Iraq, Iran.

Marc Filippino
Yeah, Iran. So tell me a little bit about Ali, who you met at the camp and is actually from there.

Anna Gross
He’s 24 and he was with his father, both of them trying to get to the UK. He’d already been there for close to a month when I met him, and he seems really frustrated.

Ali
Look, they gave us a small food. I used to eat three time in the day. Now, I don’t eat once in the day.

Anna Gross
Ali’s situation was really different to anyone else that I’d met at the camp because he’d actually spent the last six years in Denmark with his father, his mother and his sisters. And they all were at a similar camp there and applied for asylum in Denmark. And while his mother and sisters were granted asylum, Ali and his father were denied it.

Ali
Yeah, they played with us for six years, what the hell.

Anna Gross
Six years you lived there?

Ali
Yeah, I was in near to college, go to the study.

Marc Filippino
So Denmark rejected Ali’s asylum application. Why didn’t he just try for another country in the European Union?

Anna Gross
Since Brexit, the UK is no longer party to an EU law called the Dublin Regulation. That regulation allows refugees to apply for asylum in the first country deemed safe that they set foot in. And otherwise they have to wait 18 months without the right to work before they can apply again. They can’t apply anywhere else in the EU.

Marc Filippino
So if I understand this correctly, because the UK is no longer in the EU, it means Ali can go to the UK and get a second chance at asylum?

Anna Gross
Yeah, if he goes to the UK, he can start again and apply for asylum immediately. So that’s what he’s hoping for.

Marc Filippino
So these people in the camp make it to the UK, what’s next for them, Anna?

Anna Gross
So once they get to UK shores, which is usually around Kent, they’ll likely be taken to hotels or other accommodation while their asylum application is processed. And that process is supposed to take roughly six months. In that time, they aren’t allowed to work. So they often kind of sit around and hoping that it’s successful and that they can make a new start in the UK.

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Marc Filippino
Anna Gross is a reporter for the FT. Thank you, Anna.

Anna Gross
Thanks a lot.

Marc Filippino
Tomorrow, in the second part of our series we’ll hear from writer Horatio Clare. He went to the town of Dover to find out more about the migrants, and to hear how local residents view the people arriving on their shores.

Horatio Clare
It makes no more sense to be for it or against it than it does to be for or against the weather. And the people of Dover, particularly one lifeboat coxswain, he said, we are the interface with the continent, it’s like, that’s what it is here. It’s war, refugees, that’s what it’s like.

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