'We want to work': refugees tell France why UK is so attractive

Asylum seekers continue to flock to Calais in the hope of reaching Britain because France does so little to help new arrivals find work, retrain or integrate, a group of immigrants has told MPs.

Four refugees, including three Sudanese men who are the subject of our 18-month project, The New Arrivals, spelled out how desperate life is for newcomers in France in a letter to their MP during consultations on France’s new immigration and asylum law.

Ahmed, Ali and Mohamed also met their local MP, Bénédicte Peyrol of President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling party, to set out their frustrations with the “bureaucracy and indolence” of the current system.
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More than 1.2 million people sought asylum in Europe in 2016. How are they adapting to their new lives? What do they miss? What’s it like to swap Homs for Hamburg, Kabul for Croydon, or Mosul for the Mosel?​.​ Which European countries are best at helping refugees settle? In this series, the Guardian teams up with Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El País to get inside newly arrived communities in western Europe to assess whether promises are being kept, whether European society is changing the new arrivals – and vice versa.

“Lots more people will go to Calais because they are hearing stories like ours: it takes too long to get work in France, and so people prefer to leave,” the letter said, according to a copy seen by the Guardian’s partner paper in the project, Le Monde.

Source: theguardian