LATimes

Saturday, May 12, 2001

English Channel Shelter Is in the Eye of the Storm
Refugees: Red Cross aids hundreds desperate to slip across into Britain and seek political asylum.

By MARJORIE MILLER, Times Staff Writer

SANGATTE, France--There is no war here on the north coast of France, no persecution or natural disaster, and yet there are hundreds of desperate men, women and children seeking shelter from the Red Cross.

They are given hot meals, beds and woolen blankets in a former cement factory, where they brace themselves against the cold wind blowing off the English Channel each day.

Then, when night falls, they head for the channel--Britain’s Rio Grande.

Unlike migrants trying to sneak over the U.S.-Mexico border, they cannot walk or raft across this frontier, which is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Instead, they try to hide in trucks and ferries or to jump onto a moving freight train that will take them through the Channel Tunnel to England, where most will ask for political asylum.

If they make it, that is. Two have died trying in the last year. One man found on the electrified rails in April had a Red Cross toothbrush in his pocket but no identity papers or clue to his nationality. He was buried in a nameless grave, unbeknownst to the family that undoubtedly awaits word from him back home.

In the 28 days since Ahmed Zeynab arrived at the Sangatte center from his native Afghanistan, he had tried 15 times to sneak onto a truck or train but had been foiled each time by French police.

"I will keep trying until I make it," said Zeynab, 20. "We know the risks, but we cannot go back."

While some critics charge that the Red Cross center is a magnet pulling illegal immigrants toward Britain, the British government’s view is that the shelter is a symptom of Europe’s growing immigration problem--a key issue in Britain’s upcoming general election.

Last year, 390,000 people applied for asylum in the European Union, with Britain receiving the largest number of applications, a record 97,900. Germany was second with 78,800. So far this year, about 17,500 people have requested asylum in Britain--a drop that Home Secretary Jack Straw says is due to better border enforcement.

The numbers may be small compared with the masses of people who try to get into the United States each year, but they are big for Britain and potentially costly. Unlike illegal immigrants to the U.S., most people who sneak into Britain ask for asylum, entitling them to temporary housing and food aid. If their applications are denied, they might disappear into the underground economy and semi-clandestine world of undocumented immigrants.

Many refugees say Britain is a preferred destination because residents do not have to carry national identity cards as they do in Germany and France. That makes it easier for them to stay and work illegally if they are denied asylum.

The opposition Tory party charges that many of these people are "bogus asylum-seekers," economic migrants who head for Britain because the Labor government is a "soft touch" that provides too much support and freedom of movement while they wade through a lengthy asylum process.

The government counters that it has limited benefits and sped up asylum decisions, rejecting the majority of applicants. It is urging European governments to live up to agreements to process asylum-seekers in the country where they land, rather than allow them to keep moving north. Meanwhile, Britain’s police are increasing vigilance to make it harder for immigrants to enter the country.

As politicians debate their status, the migrants take ever-greater risks to get into Britain. Many have been pulled from the undercarriages of trucks. In March, nine Romanians, including a 3-year-old girl, hid in a freezing compartment beneath a high-speed train to London. Passengers heard them banging on the door, unable to get out. They were detained, and subsequently entered the asylum process.

About 28,000 people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Iran and other countries have passed through the Red Cross center at Sangatte since it opened in September 1999, and only 79 of them have asked for asylum in France, according to Michel Derr, director of the shelter.

As for the rest, "they made it, apparently," Derr said.

Red Cross workers know the drill. The migrants pay smugglers $6,000 to $8,000 to lead them to France via Istanbul and Athens, Sarajevo and Sofia. They travel by truck and train, by foot and by boat, whatever it takes to get past border checks and immigration officers. They make it to Paris, then north to Calais and Sangatte, where they used to sleep in the open until protests from residents prompted the French government to call in the Red Cross.

"The British think this is a kind of spa to put people in better shape to try to cross the border. I think that there is a humanitarian obligation to have this camp," Derr said.

The center is in a massive corrugated metal building with a high ceiling and concrete floor, more airplane hangar than health spa. It has communal sinks, showers and toilets, and rows of cabins shared by about a dozen people each. The shelter is frigid and gray, filled with sad people in search of a better life. Tired from trying to cross the channel, or simply too cold to get up, they while away most of the day in bed.

After dark, Red Cross workers watch their charges gather up their few things and make the long walk to the harbor in search of a ferry, for the gas stations where trucks refuel, or for the Eurotunnel terminal where trains are loaded. They alert the clandestine travelers to the dangers of electrocution and of falling from the trains but know their warnings fall on deaf ears. If the men and women still have identity papers, they often throw them out here, so that the French and British governments do not know where they came from and cannot send them back home.

On top of what they have already spent, the migrants will pay smugglers about $400 to lead them into the frosty night. The smugglers are believed to be the ones who speak French and carry the mobile telephones, although many of the migrants are middle class and also have phones. Red Cross workers say their job is not to police the crowds or to determine who is a legitimate refugee; they are there to help the thousands in need.

"They have no status. They are considered clandestine," said Serge da Silva, a Red Cross worker. "I consider them refugees because they left their countries of origin. The Geneva Conventions do not consider them refugees until they ask for asylum."

These are unfamiliar words and unimportant issues to Zeynab, a shopkeeper’s son and the oldest of five children.

"There is a war in Afghanistan, and it is impossible to live there," he said in school-taught English. "If you are there you have to join the army and you have to fight. . . . Either you kill or you die."

Zeynab says he wants to go to England because conditions are better there for refugees and because he speaks English.

"If I can find a possibility to live with my family in Afghanistan, I would do that. How long will it take? Five years? Ten years?" In the meantime, he said, "I want to study."

Eurotunnel, the British-French company that operates the tunnel beneath the channel, has spent about $4 million since 1999 to ensure that illegal immigrants do not make it across. The company has brought in carbon dioxide probes to check trucks for exhaling humans and has installed infrared cameras and razor-wire fences that make the terminal area look like a NATO compound. The British government has paid for a truck-sized X-ray machine to reveal human cargo.

"It’s not pretty. It looks barbaric, but the governments demand this to be a ’waterproof’ zone," said Eurotunnel spokesman Francois Borel. "It’s very, very difficult because the refugees are well organized and they get information from the smugglers. But it will be more difficult for them because we are building another fence to envelop the platform and this will be a very high fence that cannot be cut."

The security measures have pushed some of the traffic east and west, toward ferries, but police are stopping from 150 to 200 people a night around the tunnel.

"There are a lot of police on the road yelling, ’Stand up, stand up!’ " said 16-year-old Ajmal Amin of Afghanistan, still muddy from a failed crossing. "This was my second try in two days. When the police caught me the first time, he say, ’Come back tomorrow.’ But tomorrow he catch me and I say, ’Why did you lie?’ "

He shrugged over his hot lunch and said he would try again the following night, confident that sooner or later he will make it.

Songul Pasou, 28, a Turkish Kurd, was not confident about anything. A widow whose husband was killed in an anti-government protest six years ago, she was traveling with her 7- and 8-year-old daughters and a single, plastic grocery bag filled with their belongings. One girl is frail with a barking cough; the other does not speak.

Pasou had come this far and seemed determined to make it all the way to England, although she was too frightened to say so. She knew the trip would be dangerous. Her daughters did not want to walk and hide anymore; they wanted to stay in France. "I am alone and I don’t know what to do," Pasou said in tears. "I don’t know what will happen to us. But I know I will never go back."

-- Anonymous, May 12, 2001