[Picture from the same article - copyright bbc.co.uk,
17/11/2012 - Getty images]
17.11.2012.
Ten years ago, French authorities decided to shut down the Sangatte Red Cross
asylum centre near Calais because they said it had become a magnet for illegal
immigrants hoping to come to Britain. But it seems migrants in the city are as
keen as ever to cross the English Channel.
The seagulls
bicker and squabble in the open yard of the soup kitchen, impatient with the
migrants who - crouched on the concrete, mechanically spooning pasta - rarely
flick them a crumb from their rations.
It is a damp,
dull day and the sun and sky seems to have sapped the colour from everything
beneath it. The huddled men in their dirty hooded tops and jackets make a solid
block of drab misery. Even the seagulls are granite, grey and greasy. A young
Afghan man is begging the elderly woman handing out small plastic pots of
pasta, for more. There is not enough, she tells him firmly, shaking her head.
