PARIS, Nov 25: Last year, they numbered almost 1400, this year, the figure could climb to 1700, indeed 2000. The problem of parentless minors who arrive at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport, their principal point of entry into France, has become a major problem for French immigration authorities.

So important that the French Red Cross, already strapped with a major refugee problem in Calais where three years ago it established a special shelter for DPs, decided to open in September a Lieu d’Accueil et d’Orientation (LAO), a facility specially intended for underage DPs at Taverny, a short trip away from the airport.

Every month between 20 and 30 immigrant minors are sent by airport police for a two-month stay at the LAO facility, in hopes that the Red Cross will be able to come up with a way of locating host families for the immigrant children or finding a way of reuniting them with their own families, who have usually stayed behind in Romania, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, Iraq or Turkey.