Maximilien Carlier // Photo credit: Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP 6:42 a.m., February 3, 2024
Fewer migrant candidates to reach England. This is what emerges from the figures for 2023 from the maritime prefecture. 36,000 crossing attempts, a drop of 30% over one year. 12 migrants died last year. Crossings, as dangerous as ever, now departing south of Pas-de-Calais.
36,000 crossing attempts were undertaken during 2023, which represents a drop of 30% in one year. Crossings that are made in makeshift boats. Zodiacs increasingly loaded, sometimes with 80 or 90 migrants on board. A new phenomenon: some exiles, even though their boat is in distress, refuse to be helped during the crossing.
“Rescue can only be cooperative”
“People who go to Great Britain want to go to Great Britain, they do not want to come back to France,” explains Marc Véran, maritime prefect of the Channel and the North Sea. "They don't want to go (in a rescue boat, editor's note) on board. They see it, they become violent. And on the other hand, I make my rescuers take risks and themselves, they could slip or fall at the water".
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In the overcrowded boats, the exiles, for the most part, do not know how to swim and there are no life jackets on board, which puts them in great danger of death in the event of a problem at sea. "At the moment , the water is less than ten degrees, the life expectancy is less than an hour in these conditions. The rescue can only be cooperative."
Another difficulty noted by the officer is that migrant aid associations lure emergencies at sea to facilitate crossings: "Calls from associations saturate the CROSS lines to report false emergencies. There are hundreds of them , alas, which will divert resources from those who really need them at sea.” And it’s a crime, he insists. We do not play with human lives, we must not play into the hands of smugglers.