Every port in northern France could be fenced off to prevent Europe’s migrant invasion further spilling across the Channel – and British taxpayers will be left to foot the bill.
French police are so bewildered by the human influx that the only answer is to erect permanent concrete and barbed wire partitions to ring fence coastal towns that are seen as launching points for an attempted entry into Britain, according to UKIP MEP Mike Hookem.
Mr Hookem said the entire coastline of Normandy will need to be turned into a “fortress” to defend Britain’s borders as migrant smugglers increasingly target smaller ports with less security.
France has been reticent about shouldering the financial burden of securing its northern ports, with Britain shelling out £7 million towards state-of-the-art fencing around the port of Calais earlier this year and more UK money will be needed to complete the project.
Similar measures are required at nearby Dunkirk and Dieppe, with some Britain-bound illegal migrants travelling as far as Le Havre to breach porous security arrangements, according to Mr Hookem.
He told Express.co.uk: “Down in Calais it’s now known that they [the migrants] are moving towards Dieppe and Dunkirk because they are smaller ports with less security.
“The police chief in the area told me that he has just 60 officers investigating immigration crime in an area that stretches from the north coast of France right down to Paris.
“When we visited Calais there was new fencing which the port official was very pleased with. But it stretches for only 1.3km, which is nothing because the queues for lorry drivers can stretch back six or seven miles from the entrance to the port.”
Mr Hookem’s call for partitions follows months of chaos across the once-borderless Schengen zone as countries try to stem the influx of illegal economic migrants leaving the Middle East for a new life in Europe.
Breitbart London reported yesterday on the most recent call for better fences across the European Union (EU) as German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said EU countries should have “more control again over who is entering and leaving Europe.”
More than one million migrants have crossed into Europe this year, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has confirmed, with more expected in 2016.
The number is four times larger than the total for last year, with the majority crossing the Mediterranean from Turkey to Greece.
The IOM says more than 800,000 travelled this way, most of them originating in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Those who have not settled in Germany choose France and a French judge recently ordered the national government to vastly improve conditions at the sprawling Calais ‘jungle’camp, raising fears it will become a permanent mini-city situated on Britain’s doorstep.
Mr Hookem believes that Calais is symptomatic of a broader problem in coastal France. He added:
“The CRS [French riot police] have lost control of it, they’ve lost control of everything. It’s going to get worse. How far do we go with the security and with the fencing? Does it become fortress Europe across all of the coast of northern France?
“Because at all the small ports they are going to have to build the same kind of fencing and security there. At the back of my mind all the time is the security of British truck drivers who are under massive threat.”
The Yorkshire MEP revealed that he is planning to significantly beef up the security surrounding his next trip to Calais in January, because many migrants are becoming increasingly violent.
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