Calais Mayor threatens to block port if UK fails to help deal with migrants

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Any of the thousands of holidaymakers or lorry drivers passing through the port of Calais this summer on route to Dover will not have failed to notice the throngs of people, many from Africa, waiting to try to enter the UK. Calais itself certainly has – as this article shows. The mayor has threatened to close the port if the UK doesn’t come to the town’s aid to help deal with the migrants. Additional security, requested by the UK, is costing €10m a year, claimed the mayor, while some 1,300 immigrants were waiting at the port at any one time. Police stopped 400 potential migrants over the weekend from boarding vehicles, both commercial and private, while lorry drivers were told to avoid the port altogether and use Cherbourg, Boulogne and Dunkirk instead. One trucker said being at Calais was “like being in a war zone”.