In this episode, I'm joined by the excellent journalist Patrick McElroy to talk about the scale of the problem of illegal immigration across the English Channel, and what it says about us as a country. We talk about how much money is being wasted trying to deal with the problem, and why we need to do something about it.
00:00:18.220Yeah, well, an astronomical amount of money, but between something like 8 billion quid a year on the migrant hotels or 6 billion quid a year.
00:00:24.640The British public are being asked to put up with a hell of a lot here.
00:00:27.100We are being asked to take on a huge personal safety risk.
00:00:32.380His idea was that the way you deal with this problem, you smash the gangs.
00:00:36.520How are we doing on smashing the gangs?
00:00:37.760Oh, we're not smashing any gangs. So that's good.
00:00:40.900What do you think it actually says about us as a country?
00:00:47.800I've been meaning to have you on for a while, but you've been doing some really, really good investigative journalism,
00:00:53.100which has been great to see on an issue that a lot of people talk about,
00:00:56.500but you've actually gone and done some proper looking into things, showing things about illegal immigration and the nature of that problem.
00:01:06.960Yeah, gosh. Well, I mean, where to start, really?
00:01:09.160First thing I would say is how easy it was.
00:01:11.060I mean, genuinely just go there and you'll see the sheer scale of the problem.
00:01:17.020So the scale of it is the first thing.
00:01:19.080The lack of action by the French is another, and we'll get into this, no doubt.
00:01:22.780But, for example, where the biggest camp near Calais is, there's a huge camp, and then there's a little bit of a field, and then there's a beach.
00:01:30.040And for the half a billion quid we've sent the French, they've not even put a fence up.
00:01:35.620There's also the type of person who's coming across.
00:01:39.520We now, I think, rightly, openly laugh at people who say, well, it's all poor women and children.
00:01:44.140Well, there are some women and children, and clearly, I don't like seeing them getting into boats and taking a dangerous journey across the busiest shipping lane in the world.
00:01:52.180But the absolute stone-cold reality of the situation is that the overwhelming majority of these people are young men.
00:02:00.740And it's not just about where they're coming from.
00:02:04.260It's the fact that they have all, by definition, travelled through numerous different other countries and, for whatever reason, been unable to make a lie for themselves there.
00:02:12.540Some of them undoubtedly through criminality.
00:02:15.220Some of them potentially through choice.
00:02:17.480Most of them through a lack of opportunity in any of those countries.
00:02:20.180And what that means, if you take it to its natural conclusion, is the calibre of person that we are now getting across an English Channel is very, very low.
00:02:30.380Because a lot of people, if you are a genuine doctor or engineer, there is a very good chance that you would have been able to have found a lie for yourself in one of these other countries.
00:02:39.520And I don't particularly necessarily like using this term of language.
00:02:42.660But we are, in a sense, I think, in many cases, getting the dregs of the migrant crisis problem.
00:02:48.200Hmm. Well, that would make sense in many ways, because, as you say, people who are qualified to do a skilled job would find themselves a job somewhere else.
00:02:57.820And also, a lot of those people might be entitled to come here legally because we do need the doctors and the nurses and the whatever who can come in if they make an application.
00:03:07.480So, but it sort of makes a lot of sense that people who are coming illegally are doing so because actually we don't want people like that to come.
00:03:18.640A lot of them, when you actually go and talk to them in person, so whether it's at them just wandering around the streets or it's in the camps or it's in one of the big warehouses that I went to where people are looking more to try to get into the lorry park side of it,
00:03:32.440which I don't think gets enough attention, actually, the illegal lorry crossings.
00:03:36.220When you actually talk to them in unguarded moments, they're not particularly fussed about the idea that they're fleeing war and persecution or that they are actually persecuted Christians in a country or that they're gay or all of this stuff.
00:03:47.920They are quite open about the fact that they want to come to Britain for a house and for money and because we've got a generous benefit system and they think that there is very little chance of them being deported in Britain.
00:03:57.620So they actually say this stuff to you and there's been a couple of quite massive clips that I did off that.
00:04:02.940I was a Sudanese man who was just saying, well, give me a house and give me this and give me that.
00:04:07.360And that is the general kind of attitude is when they get here and maybe get into contact with certain lawyers or certain charity groups that you start to get these yarns about the level of persecution they might face back home,
00:04:22.260the trauma that they might have felt en route and various different incredibly spurious reasons in some cases to why they could never be returned home.
00:04:30.820They're not saying that stuff in these camps.
00:04:33.440And when they're walking down the street, they weren't saying that to me and they would have had the perfect opportunity to do so.
00:04:38.920I mean, one chap was an Eritrean man who says he's left his wife in Eritrea.
00:04:43.920So I said, well, why if it was a war zone?
00:04:47.040He did make some vague reference about it being a war zone, couldn't explain why he'd left his wife there.
00:04:51.200And then I said, how are you continually trying to afford the boats?
00:04:54.640But his mum and dad who are in Eritrea are sending him the money for it.
00:04:57.720So there's a few things that don't quite add up, really, about them being desperately poverty stricken, in constant plight in their home country.
00:05:07.320I mean, if it's safe enough to leave your parents and your wife over there and your parents are funding your journey continuously,
00:05:15.300it doesn't quite add up to me, this idea they're all that poor and desperate.
00:05:18.480Patrick, I think it's worth you outlining how the system actually works, because a lot of these guys,
00:05:26.440they don't just come from one particular, through one particular country.
00:05:29.600It's six or seven, they go through Austria.
00:05:32.120One person in particular was talking about going through Austria, Hungary, all of these types of countries.