“Today, people who want to seek asylum in England have no other means than to cross the Channel. This is because there is no legal way for immigrants to go to Great Britain and because you can work without identity papers in England and that creates a demand,” Darmanin told BFM TV.
He added that
France accepted 150,000 asylum applications a year, compared with 30,000 in the UK.
France’s European affairs minister, Clément Beaune, also hit back at the UK, accusing it of having “an economic model of, sometimes, quasi-modern slavery” that he said encouraged desperate people to attempt perilous Channel crossings.
“We’re asking the British to change their [legal] framework,” Beaune told France Inter. He said exploitation of illegal workers was “more prevalent in the UK because there are fewer checks” and the UK needed “more humane” labour market regulation to discourage migrants.
I think when I mentioned this at the time someone on here tried to suggest I was coming from an anti immigrant angle!