Calais is a port town 21 miles from Dover, the British city across the English Channel, but is also the last stop for many forced migrants before reaching their destination of the UK. Hence, the city serves a sort of makeshift refugee camp as asylum seekers attempt to cross over. The migrants, who have paid the smugglers $500 to $1,000 to get them across the English Channel.
French efforts to shut down the camps and arrest the migrants have done little to deter them from seeking a better future in Britain. Britain says that it thwarted 18,000 illicit attempts to get to England last year. The International Organization of Migration in Calais offers about $3,100 to volunteers for repatriation but only 75 migrants agreed to go home last year.
Six years ago, the government closed the Red Cross camp of Sangatte, outside Calais, which Britain had said was a magnet for illegal immigration. Sangatte opened in 1998 to deal with an influx of Kosovo Albanians and soon descended into an overcrowded, unsanitary squalor.
The French government ignores this area as well as the international community.“Regionally we close our eyes, France closes its eyes, internationally people close their eyes.”
"In a country where housing and transporting undocumented migrants is a crime, punished by fines of about $11,000, the region’s 300 active volunteers say they tread a fine line."
Negotiations with the police have established so-called “calm zones” near a portable shelter and under the Calais lighthouse, where meals are distributed; in December, the charities succeeded in opening a hall for migrants to sleep in when temperatures fall below zero. But they cannot stop the police from raiding or burning shelters, or driving migrants to the border police station for questioning before freeing them, sometimes without their shoes.
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