Yesterday on the BBC News Channel, Professor Alexander Betts was interviewed regarding the ‘Calais migrant crisis’. He began by setting the crisis in the wider context – while there may be 3-4000 people in the Calais camps, this needs to be seen in the context of over 60,000 people arriving in Italy and over 60,000 arriving in Greece this year – figures that will continue to climb. Professor Betts highlighted that “At the moment, the public debate has been exaggerated to see this as a UK problem. It’s not a UK problem, it’s a European problem and it’s a global problem.” He continued by noting that the public policy response so far has had far too much emphasis on criminalisation and on cracking down on smugglers, and “not enough on ensuring the human rights access and the humanitarian access to protection” that people fleeing countries such as Syria need and are entitled to.
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