CHERBOURG: Like dozens of other dreamers camped out near the port of Cherbourg, Amir has tried many times to reach the “English Eldorado” by secreting himself under a ferry-bound lorry.

But each time he is caught, and forced to start all over.

On this night they are about 40 in number, including three women and a child of 12. Like Amir, they have come thousands of miles to live in this makeshift camp made of tarpaulin and wooden pallets.

Most have come from Iraqi Kurdistan, and some from Iran and Afghanistan.

They live on the hot meals handed out each evening by local charities.

“What we want is work. In England they give you a roof over your head and you can work on the black. Here we get nothing,” Amir, 28, complained.

Ahmed is one of the few to have asked for asylum in France, but it has been refused. “If I go somewhere else in Europe, they bring me back to France. And if I go back to Iraq, I am killed. So what do I do? I am going mad,” he said.

He also is trying his chances at the ferry port.

It is a risky business, and costly. Some say they have paid $11,300 to middlemen — the notorious “passeurs” who control the clandestine people traffic.

Despite the closure in 2002 of the Sangatte Red Cross Centre near the port of Calais — from where hundreds of immigrants tried to make it to England — there are still plenty of people willing to chance their arm at a crossing.

They are distributed along the many ports along the Channel coast, all looking across at the English “Eldorado”, says Father Paul Gaillard of the Itinerance charity.

Most have no legal existence. They are regularly detained, but released because French law bans the deportation of people to countries at war or where they may be at risk of their lives.

—AFP