2010-07-18 Daily Mail: Britit maksavat £3500 Calais'n mamuille kotiin paluusta

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Britain pays Calais migrants £3,500 to go home - before they even get here

By Tom Harper
Last updated at 8:40 AM on 18th July 2010


British taxpayers have paid out more than £1?million to persuade hundreds of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants to return home – before they even enter the UK.

Foreigners attempting to cross the English Channel at the French port of Calais are offered free flights and awarded up to £3,500 to help start businesses back home.

The Home Office-backed Global Calais Project has persuaded 468 'irregular migrants' to return to their countries of origin at a cost of £1.2??million to the UK Exchequer.

Among those to take up the offer were 50 Afghans, 20 Sudanese, eight Libyans and five Indians – none of whom had a legal right to travel to or live in Britain.


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Heading for Britain: Illegal immigrants board a lorry at Calais - the British taxpayers have paid more than £1m to send immigrants home

Last year, 281 illegal immigrants took advantage of the generous offer, a rate of more than five a week. The bizarre incentive is equivalent to 14 years' wages for a worker in Afghanistan.

The Home Office claims the payout scheme, which began in 2007, helps avoid long, costly legal battles once the migrants arrive in the UK.

The payments emerged in a Freedom of Information request to
the Home Office by The Mail on Sunday. The department spent a year battling the release of the figures and agreed only after an intervention by the information watchdog.

The Home Office also admitted paying out almost £80?million in resettlement grants to 21,506 people who had already reached the UK. The sum is equivalent to the annual salaries of 800 family doctors or 3,200 teachers.

Immigration Minister Damian Green said: 'It may look unpalatable to pay money to people who have not even arrived in the country, but ultimately it makes our borders safer and saves the taxpayer money. It is the least-worst option.

'I will continue with the programme but I am reviewing it as I am determined to drive down on any waste.'

Taxpayer-funded repatriation schemes began under Labour
in 1999 but were widened dram­atically in 2005 when Ministers raised the maximum payout from £1,000 to £4,000 in an attempt to combat the soaring number of illegal immigrants.

All the schemes are operated by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), an independent body that organises migrant removals for governments around the globe.

Created in 1951 to cope with the 11??million people uprooted by the Second World War, the IOM now employs 7,000 people in 127 offices worldwide. Since 2007, IOM officials have been paid by the Home Office to approach illegal immigrants stranded in Calais and tell them life will not be easy if they manage to get to Britain.

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Concern: The Mail on Sunday report of the killer who got £4,500

They offer to transfer them to Paris, pay for flights home and promise retraining or business grants of up to £3,500 if the migrants agree to halt their journey into
the UK. The grants are distributed from IOM offices in the migrants' countries of origin once they return home.

Charlie Elphicke, Conservative MP for Dover, said: 'There is a real risk that people will hear of this and it will create a bizarre incentive for people to try to smuggle themselves into Britain. The solution could be worse than the disease.'

Back in Britain, the IOM administers other Home Office-backed schemes from its plush head offices in Westminster, Central London.

The Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme (VARRP) pays failed asylum seekers who are already in the country up to £4,000 to drop their appeals and return home voluntarily.

Almost 17,000 failed asylum seekers from 122 countries have taken advantage of VARRP so far, including 1,597 Albanians, 289 Indians and 39 Poles.

In total, the Home Office admitted paying the IOM a total of £79.2?million over the past five years. Last year, this newspaper revealed that an immigrant convicted of the horrific killing of a 17-month-old baby was given £4,500 by the Government as a 'bribe' to leave the country.

Malaysian Agnes Wong, 29, was jailed for five years in 2008 for
the brutal manslaughter of a toddler she was supposed to be child-minding.

She was let out of prison in July last year and four months later was put on a plane at Heathrow and sent to Malaysia with a 'voucher' worth £4,500 to spend when she got there.

In 2007, it emerged that asylum seekers had used British taxpayer-funded grants to set up dozens of businesses, including an ostrich farm in Iran.

In addition to the resettlement payments, the Freedom of Information request also revealed that the Home Office awarded £6.2??million to foreign countries to help them improve their own border controls – including £1.4??million for training border officials and buying fingerprint scanners in France, Turkey and China.

A Home Office spokesman said: 'Helping France remove irregular migrants from the Calais region is integral to reducing intake to the UK.

'The vast majority of the funding goes directly on providing and promoting reintegration, which persuades those barred from entering Britain to go home.

'This ultimately saves the British taxpayer from the cost of enforcing a removal.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1295629/Britain-pays-Calais-migrants-3-500-home--here.html#ixzz0u1cJYIbS