The UK Border Agency (UKBA) has today admitted that it has been using the Channel Tunnel as a storage facility for immigrants, after complaints from Eurostar.
Some 14,000 applicants, growing at a rate of 700 a month, have already been refused the right to stay in Britain, but are still pleading with the UK Border Agency to reconsider. UKBA started offering those awaiting their cases temporary shelter in the tunnel in 2008, where they had access to their case notes, handily presented in cardboard boxes. Since then the problem appears to have grown.
The tunnel has become so constipated with refugees and boxes of paperwork that trains won't fit down the hole any more. The French authorities meanwhile, are complaining that their own illegal immigrants escaping from holding centres, handily close to the border, are being turned away from the tunnel as it is too full and the doors won't close.
"The smell is like rotten eggs", sniffed a gallic official, appreciatively.
Another 2,100 cases were still waiting for an initial decision at the time of inspection, with some dating back a decade, although the UKBA says these have now been cleared. A spokesman has strenuously denied that the individuals were 'trafficked' to a shady organisation fronted by a Professor Brian Cox, who is alleged to have 'vanished' the immigrants into the Large Hadron Collider.
