could someone help me with my college work?

Question

ok guys I have got to write a piece on illegal immiagrants comming into this country(mainly from africa). I will be the first to admit that maybe I am slightly ignorant on this subect because I know nothing what so ever about it. I have never had to show that much intrest in it til now.
so how do people actually get into this country from africa if they don't go the legal way(by visa and by plane) is it possible to go the whole way by road???(read something about jumping on the back of a wagon) and if that's the case how long does it take to get all that way to england. and does it happen often without the people being caught.
thanks in advance x

Answer 1

The only thing African illegal immigrants need to do that is difficult is to get into the European Union undetected. Once inside, there are no internal borders until they reach the British Isles, if that is their destination. Some of them travel for several weeks, mainly by road or by water, until they reach the EU. They generally enter the EU via either the Straights of Gibraltar, crossing between Morocco and Spain, further east in the Med (Greece/Italy) or through the new EU states to the east. In all these places the borders leak like sieves

Once they arrive in the UK and claim asylum, the delights of the EU's Dublin & Dublin II Conventions kick in: the first written by Major's Tories, the second by Blair's lot. What it says is that the nation in which asylum is claimed is the nation responsible for their upkkeep until their claim is decided, unless it can be established through which country they first entered the EU, in which case they are returned there. Hence the silence when this question is asked.

You may have wondered how such large camps of illegal immigrants survived in places such as Sangatte, near Calais, when the French authorities clearly knew the people there were flouting French immigration law? It was simple. As long as they were confident the camp's residents were heading for the UK, why bother? If they arrested them for immigration offences, they would claim asylum in France, and that's the last thing the government there wanted. So, leave them alone, and let the British have them. So much for Entente Cordiale. Of course, what is true for the Frenh is true for the rest of the nations the immigrants pass through too: they don't want them either, so they turn a 'Nelsonian eye' to this constant transiting of their nations by illegal immigrants.

Of course, before the Dublin Conventions, there was a gentlemen's agreement between the Channel Port nations that people arriving without papers would be returned on the next available ferry. The was scrapped in 97, the year asylum applications began going off the scale.

But don't worry, now the nations where most of the illegal immigration came from are part of the EU, so they don't appear in the official asylum figures (although we are still granting asylum to Romanians, despite the fact that they join the EU next year). And in any case, the Home Office, the Prime Minister and all of parliament can't do anything about immigration now anyway, because it is a policy area controlled by the European Union. Charles Clarke signed away our right to decide our own policy a couple of years ago.

For what its worth, I'm fine with immigration, but I'm rather less fine with the duplicity of government and the media in not making clear that there is little if anything they can do, because it depends on the willingness of our European neighbours to policeour borders.

Answer 2

More people are refused entry than ever get here illegally. There are those who use false papers and passports. Those who arrive by ferry or carried illegally by container load, but these are widely reported and not always from Africa as you suggest.
Most would appear to be over-stayers who arrive on visitor visas but then disappear within 6 months or never return.
The Home office do not know how many are here illegally, how could they know that??? but media speculation is also probably wildly inaccurate.
Most migrants are here legally for study or on temporary work permitts.

Answer 3

People overseas either get sham marriages or they get some other kind of visa and stay past the expiration date.