What happens to Afghan migrants when they reach the UK?

Migrants continue to cross the Channel and to reach Britain by other means. But what happens once they arrive? The answer for many is a new life of boredom and endless waiting. Dotted around the south coast are hotels where these people are housed, hidden out of sight. I went to meet some of them.

A dozen Afghan families have ended up at a hotel three miles from Canterbury. The new arrivals numbered about 35 in all, including children, and the hotel seemed delighted to welcome them. ‘We are proud,’ said a poster in the lobby, ‘to be part of the programme to resettle the Afghan community in the UK.’

I got chatting to the men by offering free cigarettes in a porch outside the lobby. There I met a 39-year-old Farsi speaker from Afghanistan’s Bamyan province, where the Taliban famously destroyed two effigies of Buddha in 2001. He had made his way to Kabul where ‘British forces’, as he called them, transported him to Dubai with his wife and two children.