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My week in Europe
From the Bolton Evening News, first published Wednesday 12th Jul 2000.
By Gary Titley, Bolton's MEP THE snow-covered landscape was desolate, just like a scene from a John Le Carre spy novel.
I was surrounded by the latest high-tech equipment for detecting people, such as thermal imaging cameras and night-sight binoculars. I was on Lithuania's border with Belarus -- a country with a harsh, oppressive government.
Soon, if Lithuania joins the EU, it will be Europe's border too. But first, Lithuania must make its borders watertight. And, thanks to help from Finland and Sweden, the impressive new detection devices are deterring illegal immigrants.
Of the 57 caught last year, I was shocked to find most were from the Far East. The Lithuanian border post was merely a stopping-off point in a very long chain of human misery.
Illegal immigration is big business. People, desperate to escape their poverty, pay huge sums to cross the globe for a better life. But this vile trade often ends up in dead bodies, piled up in a lorry at Dover docks, or washed up on Spain's Mediterranean beaches after fleeing from North Africa.
Standing on the Lithuanian border brought home to me that illegal immigration is not just a British or Spanish problem. It affects us all.
To combat it, we need closer co-operation between police and border control forces. That is why EU money is helping to train Lithuanian border police -- often by British officials.
We must all work together to end this evil trade in human misery, rather than simply throw our hands up in horror -- and do nothing.
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