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Migrants risk all to get into Britain

Stephen Beard Jul 29, 2015
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Migrants risk all to get into Britain

Stephen Beard Jul 29, 2015
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A man died in the French port of Calais as hundreds of migrants tried to enter the Channel Tunnel to cross illegally into the United Kingdom. The 20-year-old from Sudan was thought to have been crushed by a truck. He’s the ninth person to die attempting the crossing this summer. Several thousand migrants are camped out in Calais, and every night some of them try to jump on a truck or train and smuggle themselves through the tunnel into Britain.

This so-called “migrant activity” has caused massive disruption in trade and traffic between Britain and Europe, and it’s raised big questions about migration and asylum.

Why are so many migrants desperate to settle in Britain? Why – if they are genuine refugees – do they not claim asylum in the first safe country they reach, like Germany or France?   And why have the French not done more to contain the crisis in Calais? 

Click on the media player above to hear more.

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