THE looming threat of a one-way ticket to Rwanda will not put off every migrant en route to the UK – but Ahmad Mahmoud has changed his mind and will now stay in France.
Others still plan to take their chance, maybe hoping the new policy will not be implemented, as left-wing lawyers prepare an onslaught against it.
Either way, Home Secretary Priti Patel’s announcement that single male asylum seekers arriving on small boats can no longer automatically expect their claims to be processed in the UK is big news in the infamous Jungle camp near Dunkirk where migrants continue to amass.
When people hear my British accent as I walk among the rickety tents, makeshift shops and discarded shopping trollies on the French north coast, I am continually stopped and asked about the policy.
It is clearly a matter of concern to them. Will the UK now, at last, start taking back control of its borders?
The view the Government will want to hear is that of Ahmad Mahmoud, from Erbil, in Iraq, who says if the new regulations come in he will stay in France.
Read more on the Rwanda deal
Ahmad, 30, a former lab worker, said: “I won’t go to Rwanda. It’s like Iraq II, I won’t get a job there and Africa has war, like my own country.
“But I won’t stay here in the Jungle either. I’ll go to Paris instead.”
Iraqi Zyran Ahmad will, however, have a crack at reaching Britain’s shores.
I met disabled Zyran, 25, as he was being wheeled in a shopping trolley by his wife Shoxan, 23, and mum Gulala, 46.
His withered leg resting on a lifejacket for comfort, and cradling daughter Hany, three, he reveals he plans a FIFTH bid for our shores.
When I asked if the policy to send him to East Africa would deter him, he said: “As I understand, it’s only single men who will be taken there.
“I’m with my family, I’m disabled from birth and I believe Britain is a compassionate country.
“Twice we have tried by boat to reach the UK and twice by lorry, but each time French police have arrested us. We will try again.”
Like others in the ramshackle latest incarnation of the Jungle camp, at Loon-Plage, Zyran is keen to know all he can of the UK Government’s latest ploy to stem the flow of boats.
Iraqi Kurd Sarkawt Hakem, 34, told me: “Some people here fear being sent to Rwanda, but they’ll still go to the UK and take their chance.”
News travelled quickly through the camp last week after the Rwanda plan was revealed.
Boris Johnson said the decision to transport migrants 4,000 miles to Africa would “over time prove a very considerable deterrent”.
The £120million pilot scheme, aimed at men arriving by lorry as well as boat, would see migrants claim asylum in Rwanda and be given long-term housing and employment rights there if successful.
But the backlash has been fierce, to say the least. Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said the charity was “appalled by the Government’s cruel and nasty decision”.
He added it would “do little” to deter migrants from coming to the UK.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said in his Easter sermon that the plan was the “opposite of the nature of God”.
I’m with my family, I’m disabled from birth and I believe Britain is a compassionate country. Twice we have tried by boat to reach the UK and twice by lorry, but each time French police have arrested us. We will try again.
Zyran Ahmad
He added that Britain was trying instead to “subcontract out” its duty to migrants.
The public, however, has welcomed the plan, a series of polls showing it has more supporters than opponents.
The tide of small boats crossing the Channel daily has enraged many, not least because lives are at risk.
What is compassionate about just flinging our arms in the air, they ask, and simply letting these deadly crossings continue without any new attempt at a deterrent?
The new Jungle is spread across scrubland also used as an open-air latrine.
Most migrants are from Iraq and Iranian Kurdistan. I also meet people from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Vietnam.
Kebab joints and grocery stores skillfully made with tree branches and tarpaulin have sprung up.
There are two barber shops, with mirrors and electric clippers.
Tattooed Paywand, 24, from Iraq, is offering short-back-and-side cuts for £8, adding: “I’d like to have my own barber’s in Britain.”
People smugglers are doing a thriving trade and prices even seem to have dropped.
The charge for a seat on a dinghy to the UK was widely quoted to me as around £1,500, with children going for half price or free.
One migrant who said he had lived around the various camps in northern France for five years told me he could get a place on a boat for £770.
Some people here fear being sent to Rwanda, but they’ll still go to the UK and take their chance.
Iraqi Kurd Sarkawt Hakem, 34
Last August the going rate was £2,000, while at the start of 2020 it was £3,800.
The cut-price fares suggest a rise in demand, as gangs now use super-dinghies carrying up to 70 people.
Last year, 28,526 people crossed the English Channel in small boats, up from 8,404 in 2020.
It has become a touchstone issue for a Government that pledged to take control of Britain’s borders after Brexit.
A recent poll by Ipsos Mori found 62 per cent of voters were dissatisfied with our immigration policy — more than half citing the Channel crossings.
Despite the Government’s hardline Rwanda pledge, the small boats have continued to arrive.
More than 1,000 migrants have come across since last week’s announcement of an asylum deal with Rwanda.
Since the start of the year more than 6,300 have made the perilous journey, a figure not reached last year until early July.
On Saturday a party of British fishermen passed to The Sun video of migrants in a grey dinghy being buffeted by waves some seven miles from Dover.
This paper has also received film from a British fisherman of the French Navy escorting migrant dinghies toward UK waters on Sunday and Monday.
He told me: “It’s business as usual for the French. They are escorting the dinghies through French shipping lanes and dropping them off mid-Channel.
“The British Border Force then picks them up. I can’t believe it’s still going on and the French don’t stop the boats.”
It’s business as usual for the French. They are escorting the dinghies through French shipping lanes and dropping them off mid-Channel.
A British fisherman
Revealing the Rwanda scheme, Mr Johnson said up to 1,000 migrants a day could soon be crossing as the weather improves.
The Prime Minister added: “Our compassion may be infinite but our capacity to help people is not. We can’t ask the British taxpayer to write a blank cheque to cover the costs of anyone who might want to live here.”
At the Jungle, shopkeeper Mujahid Ali, 27, from Ethiopia, is selling 80p cups of tea, and eggs at 40p each, from his rickety handmade store to save for his passage to the UK.
Fleeing separatist fighting in his home region of Oromo, he said of the Rwanda plan: “I don’t want to go back to Africa, there’s too much bloodshed there.”
Mr Johnson has described Rwanda as one of the world’s safest countries.
But last year his Government voiced concern at the United Nations over Rwanda’s “continued restrictions to civil and political rights and media freedom”.
Real Madrid fan Godwin Nwadizeme, 26, a sound engineer who fled his native Nigeria when his life was threatened by a religious cult, said of the Rwanda policy: “Believe me, if they do this, many people are going to commit suicide.
“If I’m taken back to Africa I will kill myself. I’ve suffered a lot there. I used my life savings to come to Europe. You can’t take me back there.”
Read More on The Sun
But another Nigerian, Chelsea fan Thomson Utomi, 33, a former owner of a phone firm who fled political violence, told me: “Boris Johnson said some people will be flown to Rwanda, not all.
“I’m young, full of energy and a hard worker. So I’m not afraid. I will try my luck.”
