The recent landmark legal ruling handed down by the President of the Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber highlighted a number of issues in the current migrant crisis that has been widely reported.
In that decision, Mr Justice McCloskey questioned whether those in the 'Jungle' at Calais are actually refugees? After all, 'refugees' are those who are forced to leave their country due to a well-founded fear of persecution whilst 'migrants' are those who move voluntarily (for economic or social reasons). At what point, in the relative safety of Europe, does an individual stop being a 'refugee' and become an 'economic migrant'? And perhaps more interestingly, does this judgment mean that the Dublin Regulation is no longer fit for purpose?
Mr Justice McCloskey, President of the of Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber, described the Jungle as “bleak and desolate place” and said others have called it a “living hell”. Thousands have ended up there from around the world in their desperate attempt to reach the UK rather than claiming shelter in France. “It seems likely that there is no real basis for many of its occupants remaining indefinitely in the ‘jungle’ and enduring conditions that obtain there. Many are probably not refugees in any general sense or any sense entitled to recognition. Rather, they are migrant nationals of a number of countries outside the European Union, who, while intending to make a claim for refugee status, decline to make the claim in France due to perceived advantages, correct or otherwise, of doing so in the United Kingdom.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/12130081/Many-of-Jungle-occupants-not-refugees-says-top-UK-immigration-judge.html
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