Donald Trump greets Nigel Farage during a campaign rally in Mississippi. (Photo: Getty)
Border walls don’t work, remember? Unless of course reality creeps in and it becomes clear there’s a good reason nations and empires have used them for centuries. Officials in the United Kingdom confirmed plans to build a “big new wall very soon” at a border port in France to stop Muslim migrants in nearby camps from illegally sneaking aboard vehicles bound for Great Britain.
Robert Goodwill, minister of state for immigration, announced the plan for a wall in Calais, France, during a Home Affairs Committee hearing on Tuesday. Calais is a common entry point for Muslim migrants trying to sneak into the U.K. illegally and is located at the narrowest part of the English Channel. Minister Goodwill said it would be in addition to an already existing fence in an area where the majority of ferry crossings to England take place.
“We’re going to start building this big new wall very soon,” Goodwill said. “We’ve done the fence, now we’re doing a wall.”
Migrants who frequently try to intercept vehicles approaching the port and jump on board and a Home Office spokeswoman said the four-meter-high wall (apprx. 13 feet) would be built along both sides of a one-kilometer (.6 mile) stretch of the main road into the Calais port. The office estimates the wall will be completed by the end of the year.
Though the wall is significantly smaller than what Trump has proposed, though size certainly wasn’t a factor when the Chinese built the Great Wall of China or the Roman emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of a wall bearing his name in Britannia, or what is now modern Great Britain.
Muslim migrant refugees walk in the northern area of the camp called the “Jungle” in Calais, France on Sept. 6, 2016. (PHOTO: REUTERS)
The migrant crisis in Calais has been a sticky issue for the U.K. and France. Plans for the wall comes as new Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May seeks to crack down on immigration after the British voted to leave the European Union in June, largely the result of unfettered Muslim immigration. Minister Goodwill said at the committee hearing the new government will seek to reduce immigration to “tens of thousands” of people “as soon as we possibly can.”
Now, freed up from EU requirements, officials in the U.K. are free to express their concerned over the French not doing their part to keep migrants from entering Britain through their country.
In 2003, France, Belgium and the U.K. agreed to what are known as “juxtaposed controls,” which obliges British officials to conduct immigration checks before passengers board the train or ferry from Calais. It’s meant to deter illegal immigrants from submitting an asylum application upon arrival in the U.K., however, like in the U.S., French politicians calling for the arrangement to be abolished in the meantime simply do not follow the requirements.
The British government has lodged complaints, citing a Home Office Committee report that declared immigration in Calais a “threat to UK security.” The report also noted the most migrants coming through at Calais are Syrian, Eritrean, Sudanese, Iranian and Iraqi. They’ve pushed for stronger controls and, jointly, the U.K. and France have invested in “additional fencing and floodlighting, CCTV, and infra-red detection technology.”
The report also concluded that between 5,000 and 7,000 migrants live in camps surrounding the area.
