A failed asylum seeker who was deported at a cost of almost £800 to the tax payer is plotting to return to the Black Country from a controversial new ‘welfare’ camp in France.

Afghan Yama Maradi is waiting in Calais for his chance to slip back into England. The 31-year-old was sent back to his home country last February after years of claiming benefits and legal aid. Now he is planning to illegally return to Britain – and head for Walsall.

In 2002, he smuggled himself on a train for London, claimed asylum and began legal proceedings to stay in Britain. He claimed legal aid and his bills were picked up by the tax payer.

When his asylum application had been reejected, he cut his wrists and ended up in hospital.Eventually deported back to Afghanistan, he has spent twelve months making his way across Europe to Calais, intent on returning to Walsall. He said: “I love Walsall. I lived in Station Street, not far from the post office where I collected my benefits.

“I spent the money at Tesco and the days in the local cafe. I know I can get back into Britain again; it’s just a matter of being lucky.”

Maradi managed to live in Britain for four years after paying people traffickers to get him as far as Calais.

Now there is controversy surrounding France’s plans for a new welfare centre for asylum seekers which it is feared could become a second Sangatte camp, which closed in 2002. It was seen as a ’stopping off’ point for thousands of illegal immigrants.

In three years it housed 70,000 as they waited to make illicit cross-Channel journeys. Maradi, who claims to be a carpet fitter, first arrived in England in 2002. He says he sold a carpet shop in Kabul for £7,000 and paid a trafficker to take him to Calais.

The new welfare centre, dubbed Sangatte 2, will provide showers, free meals and clothes but no bed.

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