LONDON:
As authorities crack down on them, some are paying traffickers to smuggle them out of Britain before being smuggled back in to avoid being deported to their original countries, according to BBC.
The key in this, however, is to exploit a legal loophole in British laws. If the immigrant is first registered as an asylum seeker in a country like Italy, they would not be deported to their country of origin in the event they are caught in the UK. Rather, they will be sent to Italy to process their asylum cases.
To prove this, an undercover journalist had himself smuggled out of Britain for as little as£300, to human traffickers in Walthamstow, London.
The journalist was transported in a truck along with seven other illegal immigrants to Detling, Kent. There they changed vehicles to a lorry which had 14 more illegal immigrants from Birmingham and Manchester, drove to Dover port.
Having easily evaded detection from Kent police, British and French immigration, the immigrants, waited for the early morning Dunkirk ferry.
The journey for the immigrants, mostly from Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, finally ended at Veurne, Belgium.
From there, some of the immigrants chose to take off to other European destinations, or Italy, where they could seek asylum.
Others, like the journalist, were told they could make their way back into the UK for a modest fee of £1,200.
Interesting but I don't think it would be a new development. In early 90s, I went to Istanbul, Turkey and was invited to a dinghy sailing to some place in Greece. The inviter was young man, hardly 18, and perhaps himself a victim of illegal immigration. I got curious and asked how? He explained at length way and means by road, by rail and by sea. According to him a combination of fishing boats and rubber dinghies was the best bet.
I told him I was not interested as I was going back to Karachi, Pakistan. I saw a shine in his eyes and he, in confidence, gave me a chit scribbled with his family address. One return, I got busy and one day I got hold of his “chit” and traced his family. On telling him that I met their dear-one in Istanbul, they started weeping as he had lost his life while touching the land of “fruitful jobs”.
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