Having said that, the UK has an institution designed make life very difficult for asylum seekers: The Home Office. They can find themselves on a Kafkaesque legal labyrinth where their documents are regularly lost by this government agency, their cases may take years to be resolved and there is always the threat of being sent to a ‘removal centre’ for deportation. They may be in one of these prisons for years. While waiting for their cases to come up they have to live in a hostel with others, they are not allowed to work and they live off vouchers that can be cashed at the local supermarket.
If they avoid the authorities and try to find a job on the black market, they live in fear of a raid by the Border Agency and deportation. The same applies to accommodation. They live in fear of the dawn raid by a team of Robocops smashing down the doors looking in the early morning looking for suspects.
Despite all this, the number of police in the UK is far less than in France, the principle of community policing by consent ensures the police are naturally better behaved, they don’t have guns and they are sensitive to the established immigrant communities who have political influence. They may have family networks that show them how the system works and how to keep your head down.
The UK benefits from this by having a large number of people working under the radar doing all the shitty jobs no-one else wants to do. I am sure some businesses would grind to a halt of they did not have the ability to hire people at below the minimum wage.
Living in illegal and over-crowded houses, being charged a ridiculous rent for squalid conditions and having deductions from your pay for some bus service that ships people out to do back breaking work in agriculture or meat packing. Sending your money home to pay for off the large debt paid to the people smugglers.
The UK government has passed a lot of laws aimed at illegal immigrants trying to make life more difficult. Landlords, employers, hospital staff and teachers are supposed to check the immigration status of tenants, employees, patients and students to ensure they have legal status in the UK. Funnily enough, landlords and public employees are not at all happy about being turned into immigration police.
It can be a grim life for a refugee. But look at the countries where they come from and it is not difficult to see the reasons why. Libya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria. These are dangerous, war torn countries.
Other European countries have their own policies for refugees and asylum seekers and they all agonise about what is the best policy. In fairness, many do accept much larger numbers through official channels. The UK is not particularly generous in this respect but it does have a functioning health, welfare and education system. Public polices are rather more laissez-faire and far less regulated than is usual with the Continental regimes. Southern Europe especially has very poorly developed social and welfare services.
Refugees head for the northern countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, UK and Germany. However, if they get arrested en-route, the arrangement is that they are supposed to be returned to the EU country they first landed.
This is a major issue. Greece, Italy and Spain on the main migrant routes are not at all happy about this. If they can get into the UK, without coming to the notice of the authorities in the countries en-route, the UK has to take responsibility for them. Many of the other countries of the EU are in a free movement area known as the Shengen area, so there often no checks at all when crossing borders. The UK does not partake of that has full immigration checks. At Calais there is an arrangement for UK officials to check travel documents and for French official to do the same at Dover before people and trucks cross the channel. If you can dodge that and make it to Dover, that is a home run.
Dover-Calais ferry services and Eurotunnel and is the major channel crossing handing big trucks carrying goods between the UK and Europe. Lots of potential hiding places in the trucks and big finger pointing exercise between the UK and French authorities regarding who has to pay for all the security. Truck drivers can be fined £2000 if they are found with stowaways.
There is also the issue of French industrial disputes at Calais over pay. When they French go on strike some workers have a tendency to resort to vandalism and they have broken through security fences and made fires on the road at the entrance to the Eurotunnel.
It is a nightmare at the moment and is really causing a lot of problems for businesses and holiday makers who use this route.
At least the UK does not have to deal with hundreds of dead bodies of drowned refugees that Italy has washed up on its shores.