Queue here for Britain: Meet the thousands of young men fleeing North Africa - with the UK (and its benefits) in their sights - 30th Apr 2011

A big smile spreads over the Tunisian’s handsome face as he stands among the shoppers outside the magnificent old railway station in the chic city of Nice on the French Riviera.

He’s one of the lucky ones who made it here, dodging the French police and their batons by hiding on a night train to cross the border from the Italian coastal town of Ventimiglia.

Karim Messaoudi is 26. He wants to go and live in Birmingham, where he has relatives and friends. Any day now, he will start his next journey by train up towards the northern coast of France.

Once in Calais, just 21 miles from the white cliffs of Dover, he will take his chance where he can find it. ‘I may have to smuggle myself on a ferry to your country. But I will do that,’ he says in near-perfect English.

‘I need a new life. I was a tourist guide in Tunisia, but now there are no jobs because there are fewer holiday-makers after our uprising. I plan a good future in England.’

Karim, who speaks four languages, including German, may have a chance of that.

He is just one of many thousands of migrants from North Africa who have fled the current turmoil of their own countries by sailing in ramshackle boats to the island of Lampedusa, off the southern tip of Italy.

A flood of nearly 26,000 Tunisians (and hundreds of Libyans) began to arrive on the Italian island two months ago. It was quickly overrun, and in recent weeks Silvio Berlusconi’s government has shipped most of the migrants to mainland Italy, where they have been given six-month residency visas. Read More