TRUCKER, DANGEROUS JOB * France - Hundreds of illegal immigrants armed with knives and crowbars swarm round Calais trucks heading for Britain

Desperation: It's just another week in the relentless assault on Britain's borders...

Calais,France -Mail On Line (UK), by Tom Rawstorne -11 May 2009: -- Just half a mile from the ferry terminal in Calais, a UK-bound lorry driver at the weekend makes the mistake of slowing down to a crawl on the A26 Autoroute des Anglais dual carriageway... At a signal from their fixers, around 100 illegal migrants arise from the wooded verge where they have been concealed and try to swarm aboard the vehicle, and others behind, desperate to find somewhere inside or underneath they could stow away to reach the UK... So intent are they to get to what they see as a land of easy asylum, council housing and generous benefits that they risk being crushed by the trucks' wheels. Some carry crowbars or knives to try to prise open a chink in the lorries' defences...This time the traffic speeds up again and none gets aboard. The migrants melt back into the woodland to await the next chance of an ambush... In a nearby industrial area, on the Rue des Garennes, a dozen stowaways were discovered last week hiding inside an empty tanker... Workers were about to fill it with concentrated sulphuric acid when they heard muffled cries coming from within. Another few seconds and the migrants, Afghans and Kosovans, would have been horribly burnt to death...(Picture 1: Immigrants wait to jump onto lorries as they slow down in traffic on the route to the ferry terminal in Calais - Picture 2: A riot police officer faces immigrants in Calais last month after a morning raid, just two days before a visit of French immigration minister)