On the back of Nassir Khan Nassiri's black jacket are emblazoned the words "Rough Soul." The letters, stitched in a death metal font, glow in the dark as he makes his way through the cold, wet streets of Calais, France.

Afghani immigrants in Calais, France, watch a ship departing for their intended destination in the United Kingdom. Photo by Don Duncan.

After interviewing Nassir, 25, under the city center bridge where he is sleeping, I brought him a hot meal. He was shivering and his eyes looked weary. The stories he told explained the weariness — three months on the road from Afghanistan and seven fruitless months living rough in Calais, trying almost nightly to make it across to the U.K. under one of the thousands of trucks that pass through the port every day and night.

"I have tried for seven months but couldn't pass the border. Every night I go," he says. He even takes care to take a thorough bath before he tries, in a bid to avoid the border dogs' keen noses. But so far, the tactic hasn't worked.

But his troubles didn't start on the road, he says. He came from Kabul after his family was killed by the Taliban. He was at a friend's house and returned to find them all dead. And it is the vision of his massacred family that comes to him in his sleep now, he says, when he manages to get rest under the bridge. The past is a torment.

The situation of Nassir and of Calais is not a French immigration issue, per se. "The Jungle" was perhaps the ugliest manifestation of the continuing failure of pan-E.U. immigration policy as enshrined by the Dublin II accords, signed by member states in 2003.

The accords sought to standardize Europe's immigration policy and avoid multiple asylum applications from individuals across various states in the union. But its implementation has created problems. The accords established a fingerprinting database mandating that the first E.U. country where a migrant's fingerprints are recorded be obliged to process that migrant's application. By virtue of their location on the periphery of the E.U. and on the main migrant routes from Asia and Africa, this has put undue pressure on Greece and Italy, which, overwhelmed by applications, have developed the lowest asylum granting rates in the union (under 1% of applications are approved).

For any migrant seeking asylum in the E.U., it is in their best interest to penetrate as far West in the E.U. as possible without having their fingerprints taken. Whereas Europe seeks to end illegal people-smuggling, the inequity of the Dublin II accords — in practice — promotes intra-E.U. state smuggling and the de facto extension of global migrant routes that make their way to the borders of the union.

In addition, for those who have been detained and fingerprinted in other countries, the heavy bureaucracy of shuttling migrants found in one E.U. country to another E.U. country, where their fingerprints are recorded, is lengthy, and the backlog has created situations of limbo like that in Calais.

"In order to solve this problem, you need to look at it from a wider point of view and a wider European point of view," says William Splindler of the UNHCR. "As long as we have war. As long as we have extreme poverty and instability, people will continue to come."

What do you think? Europe has just passed the Lisbon Treaty and is further consolidating the union. Should immigration reform be a more burning issue? How do you think the E.U. can deal with the issue in a manner that is fair to its member states?

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