The storm of media attention surrounding the French port of Calais has started up again over the last few months. This is perhaps symbolic of an inherent British selfishness being depicted through the media – the migrant crisis has worn on since around 1999 yet only makes it into the British media as the subject of complaints regarding traffic delays and potential disruption to Brits’ holidays.
The so-called ‘Calais crisis’ exists as a result of migrants congregating in Calais as they flee their home countries – which are often war-torn, underdeveloped or ruled by dictatorial regimes – and attempt to travel the Channel Tunnel in the hope of starting a new life in Britain. The issue for the media appears not to be that there is an abundance of migrants whose quality of life is so poor that they are compelled to make this arduous journey – often having to resort to bribery or the sale of personal possessions just to make it to the refugee camps in Calais -, they instead focus on the impact on Britons, twisting the narrative in order to villanise people whose socio-economic situations are often the result of British foreign policy.
One only has to look at David Cameron’s insensitive comment this week that a ‘swarm of people’ were coming to Britain in the hopes of finding a better life, to see how poignantly the reality of the situation has been neglected. Rather than discuss the root of the problem, evaluating how British foreign policy can move in a progressive direction in order to improve the political and economic situations in their countries of origin – the Middle East and Eastern Africa in particular – the Prime Minister instead chose to dehumanise the migrants, the semantics making it easier to regard them with a lack of empathy or humanity.
It appears hypocritical that now – at a time when numbers of asylum seekers are at their highest – the government is at its most reluctant to actually grant asylum, despite their sustained narrative having been that migrants seeking asylum will always be prioritised over economic migrants. The notion that an immigration policy can exist simply for show is, frankly quite terrifying, it’s clear to see that being bombarded with facts and figures has prevented our government from seeing these migrants as anything but numbers on a page.
The government has a moral responsibility to grant asylum to those fleeing countries often made inhabitable by the actions of our politicians. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, have done nothing to temper the racially motivated violence in the Middle East, if anything they have further motivated ISIS and other extremist groups to create increasingly cataclysmic living conditions for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Therefore, Britain’s hypocrisy in turning the other cheek when it comes to actually helping those whose lives they have destroyed, is unjustifiable.
The ‘crisis’ has been poorly misrepresented as simply a hindrance to British holidaymakers and to lorry drivers who depend on the Channel Tunnel for their trade. It is a crisis, but it’s not a crisis for those looking to sun themselves in the south of France – it’s a crisis for those building homes out of tarpaulin, risking their lives simply to be able to start over again. The crisis has been poorly handled and misrepresented, until the government begins to take responsibility for the well-being of these migrants, their suffering will be exacerbated.
Historically, Britain has taken in those suffering corrupt government, political persecution and genocide… when did our morality leave us?