Some of the protesters have gone on hunger strike; others have blocked a passenger walkway; a few threaten to kill themselves. This is the scene unfolding at the ferry terminal in Calais where a large group of Syrians are mounting a demonstration to demand entry to Britain as refugees.
Some might say that this protest shows the tragic impact of the civil war in Syria. But that is to draw entirely the wrong lesson. For what the Calais stand-off really shows is how Britain is viewed as a soft-touch right across the globe. Thanks to lax borders, the human rights industry, the state's obsession with multiculturalism and our obscenely generous welfare system, our country has become the world's capital for freeloaders. The group at Calais is a symbol, not of Syria's inhumanity but of Britain's utterly chaotic, self-destructive immigration policy. The protesters' demand for asylum could hardly be less convincing. If they were really just fleeing persecution they would have sought sanctuary anywhere outside Syria.
Indeed, under the laws of both the UN and the EU, refugees are not entitled to claim asylum except in the first safe country they reach. But these Syrians have travelled across Europe, through a host of stable nations, because they only want to come to Britain.
They are not interested in settling anywhere else. One admitted that he had gone through Jordan, Egypt, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Italy before arriving at Calais. It shows how it is the lure of Britain that drives them. "Once there, we will be well treated and can bring our families too," says another.
Britain's reputation as an easy, subsidy-rich haven has been created through years of mismanagement and misguided ideology. The Syrian asylum seekers are absolutely right to think that once they make it to Britain they will never have to leave, no matter how bogus their claims.
The administration of the asylum system remains a shambles, with a backlog of more than 350,000 cases. The 1998 Human Rights Act has made it excessively difficult to deport illegal immigrants, even when they have committed serious crimes.
Nor are the Syrian protesters wrong to think that they will be supported by the British state on a scale far beyond anything that could be experienced in the Middle East.
In most European countries, welfare handouts are based on past contributions through taxes and insurance. But here social security is based largely on need so even foreigners who may have given nothing to our society are entitled to lavish claims. That is why our benefits system has become such a honeypot for parasites.
The idea that all immigrants come here to work is a myth cultivated by the Left. In fact, according to the latest figures, there are 407,000 foreign nationals here living on benefits, while more than 10 per cent of the entire social housing stock goes to foreigners.
Apart from money, the other great attraction for asylum seekers and other migrants is that there is no pressure on them to integrate into our society.
Thanks to the pernicious doctrine of multi-culturalism the impulse to uphold our British identity and heritage is treated as a form of racism. So new arrivals are encouraged to cling to the customs, superstition, and even language of their homeland, while developing their own enclaves in our urban areas.
Much of this cultural baggage is deeply misogynistic, as we see in the current controversies over the Islamic veil, sharia law, female genital mutilation and forced marriages. But then misogyny is all too apparent in the hordes of asylum seekers that have continually gathered at Calais in recent years. Tough young men predominate, a complete inversion of the traditional civilised doctrine that, in any bid for safety, women and children should come first. If the persecution these men are fleeing is so terrible, why did they leave their wives and families behind?
It would be absurd to cave in to the emotive blackmail from the Syrian protesters. We have no responsibility towards them, just as we had no duty to become involved in their country's civil war. We should be neither the world's moral policeman nor its social worker. If we tolerated such a step it would only open us up to a new tidal wave of asylum claims at the very moment when we face a vast influx of migrants from Bulgaria and Romania.
Britain has always been renowned for tolerance.
But that open spirit has been grievously exploited in recent years leading to profound public disillusion with the process of asylum and immigration. The overwhelming majority of so-called "refugees" have turned out to be economic migrants with no right to be here. As a result, the very term "asylum-seeker" has been badly tarnished.
That despair has been exacerbated by an extraordinary catalogue of crimes perpetrated by asylum seekers, most notoriously in the killing of police officer Sharon Beshenivsky in 2005 by two Somalians. On a wider level police figures for 2011 show that one-fifth of all people charged with rape or murder were immigrants.
It is no wonder that there is a profound feeling of social dislocation in Britain. We should not add to it by opening our doors even more widely.
