British National Party UK Immigration News Bulletin w/c April 9, 2007
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1. £200 GETS YOU INTO UK AT THE NEW SANGATTE

Another example of Home Office incompetence, and a standing invitation to terrorists.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1626701.ece

The leader of the people smuggling gang waved dismissively at the charred wreckage of his woodland camp, torched during a raid by the Calais border police. Sher, a tubby Afghan in his late twenties and one of the most notorious of the gangsters who smuggle stowaways into Britain, told an undercover reporter: ‘We were raided by the police and they burnt the camp down. But we set up a new one the following day.’ He and his helpers had already handed out blankets, quilts and pillows to the 70 or so young Afghans who had paid him the going rate of €300 (£203) to €1,000. Makeshift tents, lashed together from bin-liners, were once again standing in the woodland. Thanks to Secours Catholique (Catholic Aid), a charity, there had not even been an interruption to the free food supplies. Stacks of tinned rice, tuna, meat, fresh bread, cakes, tea, milk and sugar were waiting for collection as usual at 7pm at the edge of the forest. The police, said Sher, are ‘ferocious’. He added: ‘They hassle us too much.’ But although he resents their interference in his lucrative trade, it is a distraction that he and his fellow gang leaders have learnt to cope with. Within minutes of the reporter entering the camp, he and four others were chased by the police.

As the group sat by the metal fence that borders the motorway, a police car arrived on the hard shoulder and chased the group back into the scrub-land. This was the second time the reporter had been chased by police in a week. Sher’s camp, or ‘the jungle’ as he and his fellow Afghans call it, lies about nine miles south of Calais in woodland near the picturesque village of Nielles-lãs-Ardres. Half a dozen or so similar camps house about 500 illegal immigrants — or ‘clandestines’, as the locals call them — on the periphery of Calais. They are all within striking distance of the A26 motorway, L’Autoroute des Anglais. It ends at the Calais ferry port, carrying an endless flow of juggernauts towards Britain. The present-day images are a worrying echo of the old Sangatte refugee camp, when immigrants swarmed over wire fencing to clamber aboard UK-bound freight trains. The welfare facilities on the Calais dockside, near the railway station, act as a magnet for the new wave. Up to 200 gather there for lunch and dinner, and tea and croissants are provided in the morning. Most are Afghans but some are from Eritrea and Sudan, and there are a few Iranians and Palestinians. Secours Catholique, the main charity helping the migrants, also provides clothes and blankets and gives people lifts to nearby facilities where they can shower and shave.

Although the French police arrest immigrants who they see on the streets of Calais, the charities and the government have brokered a deal whereby the dockside has become a ‘tolerance zone’ during the day, with no arrests. The smugglers take full advantage of this to tout for business. Things look as if they can only get better for the smuggling gangs. A new welfare centre, dubbed Sangatte Two, is to be built conveniently close to the Calais ferry port in a disused football stadium. It will offer food, clothing, toilet facilities, immigration advice and medical care for about 300 migrants at a time. Talk to the Home Office in Britain and it paints a very different picture. John Reid’s aides say that since the closure of Sangatte, the number of people caught trying to enter Britain through Kent has dropped from 10,000 in 2002 to 1,526 in 2006. However, the Sunday Times investigation suggests that the Home Office, which three years ago spectacularly underestimated how many legal migrants would come here from Poland, has again miscalculated. The 500 illegal immigrants reckon to spend between two to three weeks at Calais, implying that up to 200 get to Britain every week. With the addition of those stowing away at Dunkirk, St Omer and Brussels, an estimate of 10,000 arrivals in the UK looks cautious. Sher runs his gang with the help of three fellow Afghans, each of whom is an illegal immigrant.

They have associates in British cities who can collect money in advance from the relatives of would-be immigrants to Britain. The undercover reporter, posing as an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh desperate to go to London, was told the tariff by Jameel Asmol, a member of the gang. If the money is paid in the UK, then the rate is €1,000. If the would-be immigrant gives cash in hand to the gang, he can pay as little as €300. If the would-be immigrant wants a guaranteed entry into Britain, he has to pay the smugglers €4,400 (£3,000). In this case, the immigrant would be smuggled into the UK with the connivance of a truck driver, said Asmol. The camp is close to a motorway truck-stop where some drivers stop to sleep. As night approached, the reporter watched five people being taken by the gang to be hidden inside lorries. All except one headed to the motorway empty-handed; the last one to leave took a carrier bag full of clothes. The bravest stowaways get into Britain by holding onto one of the axles of the truck. Bosh, one of the gang, explained: ‘In a long lorry, there are three axles at the back but one of them is not used and is pulled up. We get you to cling on throughout the whole journey.’ The gang plays a wary game of cat-and-mouse with the police. Sher told the reporter that the previous night, police suddenly stormed the truck stop as five immigrants were about to clamber into the lorries.

The five were arrested but the gang leaders managed to get away. The reporter watched as the migrants lit a fire at their makeshift camp, heating metal bars until they became red hot before rubbing their thumbs and index fingers over the metal. One explained that this was to thwart the police who take the finger-prints of every illegal immigrant they arrest. Those stowaways who do get into the trucks are often caught in Calais. Gamma ray detectors spot movements inside the container and there are also heart beat detectors and CO2 probes for human breath. As part of the tariff charged by the gangs, they promise the would-be immigrants that no matter how many times they get caught, they will be put back in lorries until they reach Britain. According to another group of Afghans, milling around outside the charity feeding station, the gangs sometimes put the immigrants inside the wrong lorries. Some claim they know of people who ended up in remote corners of France or Belgium. The reporter was invited into the ‘jungle’ by Asmol, with the promise of a berth in a lorry bound for Britain.

An Afghan in his early twenties, Asmol came to Calais five months ago with the intention of going to Britain. But instead he decided to become a smuggler himself. He had met the reporter at the Hospitalier de Calais, a general hospital which runs a daily surgery for illegal immigrants. Initially pretending to be a ‘musafir’ (traveller) himself, Asmol quickly established that the reporter was originally from Bangladesh and had just arrived in Calais. Asmol asked: ‘Have you had a chat with anyone yet?’ He meant to find out if the reporter had already been approached by a rival smuggler. In fact, the reporter had already been approached twice by competing agents. Asmol quickly disclosed he was involved in the business himself and when the reporter said he had no money with him, but had an uncle in London who could pay, Asmol replied that one of his men would pick up the fee from him. Asmol explained that it was common for relatives in Britain to pay for immigrants in Calais. Within minutes he gave a mobile phone number for his associate Rahulla, who was based in Birmingham.

The next day a second undercover reporter, posing as the cousin of the would-be immigrant, travelled to Birmingham to meet Rahulla, an Afghan in his late twenties who worked as a waiter at a run-down Asian fast-food outlet in the city. It is tucked away among the Asian clothes shops and restaurants that line Alum Rock Road. Rahulla took the undercover reporter to the kitchen. A colleague, speaking on his behalf, explained how the human smuggling business works: ‘When he [the cousin] will come in London, he can come in any truck. You know, any truck; loading trucks. So when he comes in London, so just jump from the truck.’ When the reporter handed over the money, Rahulla reassured him that his ‘cousin’ could come to Britain inside a lorry within a day to a week. He added: ‘There’s no time guarantee. But within one week it will be sorted out.’ This weekend Rahulla refused to speak on the phone about his role as an accomplice in a people smuggling network. Another Afghan smuggler, who called himself Jawad, also approached the first reporter in France for his business. He said that he had set up his ‘jungle’ with three Kurdish smugglers and offered to get him into Britain for £800. Jawad discussed business in Urdu with the reporter as they sat outside Calais police station last week with 100 other immigrants who were protesting against the police. Jawad gave the contact details of his associate, Derwish Jalat Khan, in Birmingham.

When Khan was approached in Britain, he handed over his Barclays bank account details and asked for the agreed fee to be paid into the account immediately. This weekend Khan hung up the phone twice when The Sunday Times approached him for a comment about his role in people smuggling. West Midlands police said: ‘We will thoroughly investigate any crimes reported to us.’ Jawad also boasted that he had smuggled himself in and out of Britain inside lorries when things had become ‘hot’ for him with the Calais police. The charities refuse to accept that their assistance may contribute to the build-up of migrants. Jacky Verhaegen, head of migrant welfare for Secours Catholique, said: ‘These migrants don’t leave Afghanistan because they heard that the soup we provide is good.

They come here to go to England. We have to help these people because they are poor.’ The new welfare centre, to be paid for by the French authorities, will open this autumn. Critics of ‘Sangatte Two’ accuse the French of reneging on the spirit of the deal struck in 2002 between Nicolas Sarkozy, now a candidate for the French presidency, and David Blunkett, then home secretary. This made it clear that no such centre would be built again in Calais. Blunkett said this weekend: ‘Given the much tougher border controls and surveillance put in place since closure, it is amazing that local, as well as national, French politicians do not appear to have sufficiently recognised the danger of conflict that such a centre will present.’ Unlike the original Sangatte facility, the new centre will have no overnight accommodation, say its creators. A spokesman for Jacky Henin, mayor of Calais, said: ‘For three years we have asked the French, the European and British governments to do something but no one has done anything.’ He blamed Britain for the presence of illegal immigrants. ‘Why do the British government give work to migrants? Why is it possible to get jobs in Britain without identity cards?’ he said.

Calais countdown:

Spring 1999: Kosovan refugees arrive in Calais en route to Britain and set up a shanty town
August 1999: Police move refugees to a disused warehouse in the coastal village of Sangatte, administered by the Red Cross
February 2001: Riot as Afghan immigrants clash with Kurdish people smugglers
July 2001: Eurotunnel demands closure of Sangatte refugee centre
September 2001: David Blunkett, home secretary, asks French to shut it
February 2002: Full-scale riot
December 2002: Nicolas Sarkozy, the French interior minister, shuts the camp down
2003: Calais charities provide food to migrants
April 2007: Mayor of Calais announces welfare centre for immigrants to be opened in autumn

2. MIGRATION TALLY REVEALS BRITISH BRAIN DRAIN

Just as Britain is being flooded with cheap foreign labour, the resulting decline in Britain’s quality-of-life is driving out our best and brightest!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/08/nskills08.xml

International migration is eroding Britain's skills base with an exodus of professionals matching the arrival of low-skilled foreign migrants, the Government is to be warned. The number of Britons emigrating has jumped in recent years, with a growing proportion leaving professional or managerial jobs to work overseas. By contrast, the number of immigrant workers - many of them manual workers - has risen sharply. The extent of the problem will be revealed in the annual report on international migration from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), to be published this summer. The section on Britain has been written by John Salt of University College London, an expert on migration and an adviser to the OECD and the European Union. In it, he says: ‘The evidence suggests that migration flows are tending towards a deskilling of the UK labour market, which is gaining manual and clerical workers but losing professionals and managers.’ The finding will call into question claims by ministers that immigration boosts the economy by helping employers to tackle skills shortages.

MPs and trade unions have already claimed that the arrival of migrant workers is driving down pay and reducing job opportunities for the established work force. Prof Salt's report is also critical of the new points-based system for assessing the skills of would-be migrant workers, due to be launched by the Home Office later this year. Under the new system, checks on candidates will be carried out by entry clearance officers and case workers based in the countries where the applications are made. However, the report says: ‘A major concern is about the capacity of such a geographically distributed system to meet the criteria of objectivity, consistency and -transparency.’ Until recently, business leaders were broadly supportive of the Government's position on migration. However, a report last month by the British Chambers of Commerce revealed that seven out of 10 of its members are now opposed to unchecked immigration. David Frost, the organisation's director general, said: ‘Outside London, we are increasingly seeing large numbers of white, unemployed males wandering the streets.

‘This is not pointing to a bright and positive future. We need to engage with these people once more and get them trained up. ‘Immigration is not solving today's problems but actually postpones them.’ Between 2000 and 2005, a net total of 272,000 Britons emigrated, while a net total of 639,000 non-Britons moved to the UK. Findings from the Government's international passenger survey, cited by Prof Salt, show that in 2005, 34 per cent of immigrants were professionals or managers before entering Britain, 29 per cent were in lower-grade jobs while 37 per cent were not in work. By contrast, 42 per cent of emigrants were professionals or managers, 25 per cent were in other jobs and 33 per cent were not in work - often because they were retired.

3. TURKISH AND KURDISH COMMUNITIES CLASH IN BELGIUM

Thanks to immigration, we are now importing the civil wars of the Middle East into Europe.

http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=24&story_id=38356

The police have brought five people before an administrative judge and one has been legally arrested for throwing projectiles at police in the incidents between the Turkish and Kurdish communities in Sint-Joost-ten-Noode on Sunday afternoon. The man who was legally arrested was handed over to the Brussels public prosecution department. The police say the area was calm last night. The incidents took place after the deliberate setting of fire to a Kurdish cultural centre on the Liedekerkestraat in Sint-Joost-ten-Noode in the early hours of Sunday morning. A Kurdish centre was also set on fire in the Booneelsstraat in the same municipality in 1998. On Sunday the Kurdish community started gathering in front of the community centre from about 10 am and a spontaneous protest arose. Police had to use water cannons on the crowd in the afternoon. At about 8 pm police had to intervene once again in order to separate smaller groups that had becoming engaged in fighting. The area was quiet last night, say police.

4. LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT 'AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS'

Further proof that the concept of ‘human rights’ isn’t about rights at all, but about destroying the nations of the West. Turkey must never be allowed to join the EU.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,475839,00.html

Turkey has criticized a German draft immigration law which stipulates that if spouses wish to join their partners in Germany they have to possess a basic proficiency in the German language. In an interview in Thursday's Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper the Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gül, said ‘I wish that all Turks in Germany could speak German. But making it compulsory is against human rights. And it doesn't solve the problem.’ The German cabinet approved the new immigration bill in March, but it still has to be approved by the Bundestag, Germany's parliament. Among other measures, the law stipulates that in the case of immigrating spouses, the person coming to Germany must be at least 18 years old and be able to speak at least basic German.

The government says it wants to improve the integration of foreigners, while also attempting to reduce the number of forced and fake marriages. Addressing the issue of Turkey's ambitions to join the European Union, Gül said that he didn't consider Turkish accession to be ‘automatic.’ He said Europe should not fear Turkey and that on some issues the country was further ahead than a few EU member states. He pointed, for example, to the Maastricht criteria which determine a member state's eligibility for the euro. Turkey, he said, had already fulfilled the five benchmarks. Gül was quick to praise the current German EU presidency. ‘Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, supports us. We now hope for some progress in the negotiations with the EU.’ However, the minister was critical of the decision not to invite Turkey to the EU's 50th anniversary celebrations in March. ‘It says something about Europe's vision.’ Enthusiasm for the EU has dropped significantly in Turkey, he said. He put this down to the tone of the debate within Europe about Turkey, which many Turkish people find offensive.

Gül met with his German counterpart in Berlin on Tuesday and after the meeting Steinmeier said that there was movement again on a possible entry of Turkey into the EU. The two men talked about the possibility of opening further chapters in the accession talks between Brussels and Ankara. Turkish EU membership talks had been partially suspended for eight of the 35 accession chapters in December 2006, due to Turkey's reluctance to open up its ports and airports to ships and planes from Cyprus. Brussels gave the green light to open one of those chapters -- on enterprise and industrial policy -- with Turkey last week. At the news conference after the meeting Gül said ‘Turkey always appreciated support of Germany ... when Turkey-EU relations are in question.’

5. EMIGRATION HARMING THE BALTIC STATES

Not only is immigration bad for Britain, it is bad for some of the countries the immigrants are coming from.

http://www.cafebabel.com/en/article.asp?T=T&Id=10608

Boxes full of provisions are tucked away just under the roof of a deep refrigerated warehouse in Clondalkin, 20 minutes outside of Dublin, the Irish capital. Temperatures here are below 15 degrees Celsius. Bytautas Sikvinskas is wearing special clothes to protect him from the cold. Today his job is to repack pizza and ice-cream for different branches of one of the biggest supermarket chains in Ireland. He is preparing them for shipping with ten other Lithuanian colleagues. 3.5 million people live in Lithuania today. About half a million emigrated after independence in 1991. There are no exact figures, but many are illegal immigrants. 100,000 Lithuanians live in Ireland alone. Other countries targeted by immigrants include Spain, the UK, and America. Following a survey by the Public Policy and Management Institute, the reasons for immigration are attributed to poor working conditions and low pay. 'In Ireland I earn 500 Euros (after tax) per week,' says the 21-year-old. 'A friend of mine back home in Vilnius works as a forklift truck driver. Translated into Euros, he earns 140 a month.' Slivinskas came to Ireland two years ago: 'I wanted to be free and no longer dependent on my parents. I found myself bored with study, so I gave it up.' Many Lithuanians had already left for other parts of the world during the time of the Tsar, in order to avoid the compulsory year of Russian military service.

The first big wave of emigration began shortly after Lithuania’s independency. The country consequently underwent a big economic crisis with unemployment rates rising to 20%. 'Many Soviet public enterprises were run with a complete lack of efficiency and took on too many employees. However this was not the case in the economical market, so many businesses either had to close or let a lot of their employees go,' explains Jonas Cicinskas, Professor of Economics at the University of Vilnius. Ten thousand lost their jobs and many left Lithuania seeking prospects abroad. In the long run, this has had a positive effect on the economy as those who left still today send hundreds of millions of Euros home ever year. They are therefore helping to once again give some impetus to the country’s economy. Since Lithuania became a member state of the European Union in 2004, even more people are moving out. It's giving rise to concern amongst politicians and economists, who are viewing the increasing development with consternation. Meanwhile the economy is gaining momentum, being 7.5% up on 2005. The small Eastern country is suffering from a severe labour shortage.

As with many new EU member states, the average wage has now increased so much so, that in 2006 almost 20% of the population was earning a monthly salary of 479 Euros. Because the economy today is particularly employment-intensive, goods such as furniture and textiles are being produced, which in the long run means a loss in over-competitiveness with products which are being produced cheaper still in Romania and Western Russia. Professor Cicinskas believes that Lithuanian businesses badly need to bring new innovative products to the market. Other than this though, the country relies upon investment in future technology of foreign firms. 'In particular, the emigration of highly qualified academics (the so-called 'brain drain') has hindered the modernisation of the economy enormously.

This is the real danger for the future of our country,' he says. Gabrielius Zemkalnis, a representative of the Lithuanian World Community in Vilnius, an organisation which represents the interests of Lithuanian emigrants, is of a similar opinion. Zemkalnis has an office far from the gaze of the Lithuanian parliament – not without reason, as the 78 year-old former expatriate is first and foremost a lobbyist. 'I would not be very happy if our organisation was to be redundant anytime soon, because all emigrants return home eventually,' laughs Zemkalnis. In explaining what the state must first do in order to achieve this goal, he slams the country's bureaucracy. 'There's too much. We do not gain any foreign investors. We scare off any fledgling home-grown businesses,' says a man who spent half a century in Australia. Politicians in Lithuania have known for a long time what the problem is. Barely a month goes by without new proposals being made as to how to put an end to emigration.

At last Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkiklas has demanded a decrease in income tax, so that all Lithuanians stand to make more money. This is the only measure which can avert further emigration and secure the return of existing Lithuanian emigrants. Many Lithuanians are terrified that their national identity will be lost along with their fellow inhabitants. Their thinking is that if even more of their people leave so their language and customs will soon fall into oblivion. This means that a lot is riding upon Lithuanian emigrants maintaining their culture whilst living abroad, so there are many Lithuanian festivals, which take place at regular intervals. In Spain, eleven Lithuanian schools have already been opened. 'The children have to learn to speak in their native tongue. Only then will they be able to find their feet again in Lithuania,' explains Zemkalnis. 'They will only return if there is an improvement in living conditions in this country.' Vytautas plans to leave Ireland shortly to pursue a particular development in his homeland. 'Each time I come back home for a holiday, I find that so much has changed for the better. I miss Lithuania and now is the time to go back,' Vytautas says. He will still meet his Lithuanian friends one last time in Clondalkin for a pub-crawl. Vytautas has no idea what will happen in the future: 'I have many plans which I want to put into practice in Lithuania immediately.'

6. RUSSIA GETTING TOUGH ON IMMIGRATION

Reserving jobs for actual Russians is not ‘racism’, as liberals say, but common sense. The BNP strongly endorses the determination of Russian Government to put the interest of Russians first.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10432210&ref=emailfriend

Migrant workers in Russia found themselves legislated out of a job yesterday after a controversial new law reserving retail jobs for ethnic Russians came into force. The legislation, which has been described as state-sponsored racism by human rights activists, bans non-Russians from working in large swaths of the country's retail sector. It will affect Russia's food and clothing markets and the thousands of roadside kiosks that sell anything from newspapers to cosmetics . Until yesterday it was not uncommon to visit a market staffed exclusively by migrant workers from across the former Soviet Union.

Now hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from countries such as Georgia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan are looking for new jobs. In Russia's Far East such positions have typically been filled by Chinese migrant workers and many of them appear to have already returned home. At Ussuriysk's vast market near the Chinese border almost all the stalls were reported to be deserted. ‘We had hoped good sense would prevail ... This could disrupt the economy and bring many problems,’ said Sergei Simakov, a district councillor from Ussuriysk. Some commentators have raised fears that prices may rise as employers are forced to pay higher wages and wonder if ethnic Russians will be willing to take up jobs that entail working 12-hour days. At Moscow's famous Dorogomilovsky food market several stalls were denuded of their usually exotic mixture of fruit and vegetables from across the former Soviet Union. In their place hung signs that read: ‘Wanted: Salespeople. Must be Russian.’ Officials from the migration service raided a Moscow market in a sign that the Kremlin expects the new law to be scrupulously followed.

A spokesman for the Federal Migration Service said the raid proved that the new law was effective. ‘Considering that this particular market has 1200 trading stalls and only four foreigners were detected you can conclude that in general the law is working.’ The Kremlin insists that there is nothing racist about the law that it says is intended to protect the rights of ethnic Russians who have complained of being squeezed out of the retail sector by migrant workers. But human rights activists say nationalism is on the march ahead of crunch parliamentary elections in December and a presidential election next March and have accused the state of pandering to racists. Allison Gill, head of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, said in the Soviet era Russia was famous for promoting ‘friendship between peoples’, hosting large numbers of students from the developing world. ‘But now that slogan seems to have been turned on its head. It is now Russia for Russians.’