A migrant has warned other asylum seekers hoping to cross the British Channel in small boats “not to come to England” as there is “nothing here”.
Alaa Eldin, who came to Britain two years ago in a rubber dinghy after fleeing the Syrian civil war, says he has been homeless for months and has been unable to work under the UK’s “broken” asylum system.
Eldin said he has been sleeping rough for five months after having his asylum claim withdrawn.
The migrant now says he wishes to head to Germany to find work and is desperate to leave Britain.
Migrants aboard a small boatPAAccording to Eldin, he is forced to play a “cat-and-mouse game” with Dover police as he tries to sneak aboard a lorry heading across the channel by ferry.
“The police spot me and bring me back to my boat on the beach,” Eldin told Mail Online.
“Two months ago, I was stopped by them when I was trying to get on a lorry.
“The police put me in a cell for a day and then set me free.
“'Last Monday night, two officers caught me in the lorry park near the beach where I live.
“I was spotted on CCTV and they marched me back to my boat.”
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Upon arriving in the UK, he headed to Leeds but discovered that asylum seekers cannot work while their claims are being processed.
He told Home Office officials that he had run away from the Syrian civil war as a teenager but that returning to his home country would mean a call-up to the army, where his life would be endangered.
He said: “I originally left Syria nine years ago. I travelled on my own to Germany by going through Turkey and paying for a traffickers' boat ride to Greece to enter the European Union.
Small boat crossings from France have continued in 2024PA“I went to Germany where I had family members. But three years ago, I rowed with them because they are devout and they say I am not a good Muslim because I smoke and drink.”
He later applied to voluntarily leave after he noticed the asylum process dragging on but as a result, was no longer entitled to any form of state benefit or accommodation.
He continued: “I don’t have money. I don’t have anything. I’m tired and I want to leave. Because I don’t have a home I have to sleep on the beach and sometimes it’s so cold I have to light a fire.
“Don’t come here any more – the system is broken. England has come down. It’s not like before. There is nothing here.”
