Illegal Migrants Huddle Along French Coast
15th January 2009
More than 600 illegal migrants like Mohammedei are backed up this winter in Calais, 150 miles north of Paris, living in makeshift shelters pitched in the patchy snow. They have swollen a floating population of Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, Kurds, Eritreans and English-speaking Africans who number more than 1,000 at any given time in a string of communities along France’s English Channel coast.
Well, who wouldn’t want to live in Londonistan rather than an Arab — or, indeed, any Muslim — country? I wonder why….
But the migrants’ motivation is so strong, particularly in societies that have been ripped apart by war, that those headed for London seem to have missed the message. “It’s not El Dorado, that’s for sure, but it’s always better than the situation in their own countries,” Copyans said.
Mohammedei, for instance, said he decided to leave his home town, just south of Kabul, after a grenade tossed by Taliban fighters sent shrapnel into his left calf, knee, thigh and shoulder. Despite the sub-zero temperature, he pulled up a double thickness of pant legs and a layer of long underwear to display the scars to a visitor in the thicket.
“Taliban,” he said.