Welcome to the Jungle

Gateway to Great Britain

By Kimberly Griffin, Marketing —

There is a jungle in the outer reaches of France. This jungle has no leaves. A broad, deciduous canopy has never been known to the ground the jungle inhabits. People live in this jungle. They live in a city of dilapidated cement. They have left their homes, their families, and their livelihoods to make it to the jungle. They sneak their way out of the jungle just as quickly as they came.

The Jungle

This “jungle” is the jungle of Calais, a refugee camp on the border between France and the United Kingdom. Thousands go there each year in hopes of perhaps ever so discretely passing over the border of France into Great Britain. The refugee camp has long been known as an access point for migrants.

Unregistered Prisoners

Recently, a group of children were bussed away from the partially demolished “jungle” and transported to temporary living conditions in France. The migrants reportedly didn’t take the right steps in registering at the camp while they waited to go over the British border.

There were hundreds of children in the camp that were unregistered. The bussing process was a week long affair. By the end of it, the camp still had not thrown out all of the unregistered children. For those that still had not been bussed away, bystanders at the scene of the incident reported that administrators told the children that they should leave immediately. Where and how these children would get accommodations was irrelevant to the French authorities.

Several organizations, including Care4Calais and UNICEF were critical of the operation and believed that French authorities could have done a much better job at handling the children.

Fixing the Problem

EyeDetect, a highly reliable lie detection instrument, could be a perfect remedy to this problem. Rather than requiring registration of each child, authorities could instead help them take a lie detection test. Since EyeDetect detects fabrication through pupil dilation, it is extremely free of invasive maneuvers, and would take less than half an hour for each migrant to take advantage of.

EyeDetect could be a simple, economical solution to many migration problems world-wide. It would prove sufficient in this case as well. Rather than welcoming more migrants to stay in the “jungle,” perhaps we should take the opportunity to make innovative changes to help these children cross the UK border once and for all.