Calais migrants ‘willing to die’ to come to Britain, says the French town’s mayor

The Mayor of Calais (a major ferry port in northern France) has claimed that many migrants are “prepared to die to come to England” because they had heard that asylum seekers received £36 (N9,576) a week subsistence in the United Kingdom (UK).

Mayor Natacha Bouchart told the Commons’ Home Affairs Committee that part of the problem was that the British government had failed to tell potential migrants that there was no ‘El Dorado’ (city of fabulous riches) for them in the UK. She appealed to British Members of Parliament (MPs) to move the UK border control back to Dover (Kent, South-East England).

In recent months, Calais has struggled with increasing numbers of migrants arriving and trying to get to the UK.