system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why are there huge numbers of Africans and Asians living rough trying to sneak into the UK from France? Isn't France a similarly wealthy country?
gpt
France has national ID cards which are necessary to do anything involved in living an ordinary life i.e. open a bank account, get a job and so on. Britain doesn't have these, and also has a larger black economy because it doesn't aggressively pursue and punish the use of off-the-books labour to the extent that many other European nations do. There is also the fact that most of these migrants, excluding a few from Francophone Africa, are likely to have better linguistic survival skills in English than in French, and certainly than in Italian or Greek or whichever nation they landed in. Contrary to popular perception in Britain, asylum claimants are actually not especially well-catered to by the British government but they may receive a paltry amount of cash and/or food vouchers each week and be given hostel accommodation if it is judged that they have the right to have their claim heard. While this is very little it does still compare favourably with France where they get no assistance or accommodation except from the charitable sector, and are living outside exposed to the elements. It's these factors that create the popular perception among the migrants that they'll be better off in the UK. Some have through word of mouth sadly acquired delusional notions of making their fortunes here easily, others know that realistically they'll still be outside society and just existing, but under better enough conditions than France to make the last leg of the journey worth trying.