UK government confirms plan to build anti-refugee wall in Calais
The UK government confirms a plan to build a 13 feet (3.9 meters) wall in Calais, saying the work will begin soon.
Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill told British lawmakers on Tuesday that the wall was part of a £17-million package of joint Anglo-French security measures to minimize refugee flow.
The government refused to confirm the cost of the wall, but reports suggest a £1.9-million price tag.
"We are going to start building this big new wall very soon. We've done the fence, now we are doing a wall," Goodwill told a parliamentary committee.
Despite being called a “joint Anglo-French” project, the wall will be funded by the British government as part of an agreement struck at a summit in March.
There is already a security fence put up around the port and an entrance to the Channel Tunnel.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd told MPs that while the UK provided money to help secure Calais, it was up to Paris to decide which measures to use.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas called the wall "monstrous" while campaign group Citizens UK said the money could be better used to transfer child refugees with families in Britain from Calais.
Wall construction is expected to start this month and due to be finished by the end of the year.
A squalid camp of tents and makeshift shelters in Calais, branded "Concrete Jungle,” is home to some 7,000 refugees
Many of the refugees living at the Jungle and other camps in northern France attempt to reach the UK by getting on trucks as they approach ports or the Channel Tunnel.
The wall will be the latest barrier to go up in Europe as the continent struggles with its biggest refugee crisis since World War II.
When the trucks slow down, refugees try to clamber into the trailers to stow away aboard.
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