AN illegal immigrant given a taxpayer-funded home after sneaking into the UK in a deadly 3,500 mile journey said he expected Britain “to be better” than it is.

By JON AUSTIN

The migrant crisis has seen coach loads of asylum seekers shipped in the Longford near Heathrow
The Eritrean Pentecostle Christian, who fled persecution from his country survived nearly drowning at sea, faced kidnap by ISIS, starvation and dehydration and made it to Britain by hanging on to the outside of a Eurostar train.

But he has turned his nose up at the UK and its goodwill by telling Express.co.uk he expected MORE from the country putting a roof over his head at the expense of the taxpayer.

The asylum seeker is one of scores of migrants who have illegally entered the UK and are being housed in properties owned by a hotel magnate in a quaint village near Heathrow, while their applications for asylum are processed.

They stay in picturesque Longford, outside west London, for initial asylum processing.

The Eritrean risked dehydration or kidnap by Isis travelling in a crammed truck across the Sahara.

After a few weeks the migrants are then moved to more affordable homes in the northern cities of Manchester and Liverpool, before the next new arrivals are brought to the 14th-century village.

Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk inside his new Longford home, a shared house with four other refugees, the 33-year-old, who did not want to be identified, described a perilous trek across Africa, then Europe, that also included a two-week stay in Milan, Italy, on the way.

He said he had to flee from his native Eritrea to escape persecution as a practicing Pentecostle Christian.

In Eritrea, since 2002, most religions have been banned apart from Islam, Catholicism and Orthodox and Christian evangelical ones.

Anyone engaging in unrecognised religions such as Pentecostal Christianity has faced imprisonment, including imprisonment, harassment, and beatings unless they sign papers denouncing their religion.

This form of persecution is said to be rising.

The United Nations (UN) said nearly a quarter (22%) of people who entered Italy by boat last year were from Eritrea.

An interim report by the UN’s commission of inquiry on human rights in Eritrea said human rights by the Government and a dire economic situation were urging hundreds of people to leave daily.

Those who do leave face a torturous more than 2,000 mile journey just to get to Libya, after paying the equivalent of thousands of pounds to dangerous human traffickers whose job it is to get them into Europe by any means with safety at the back of the priorities list.

Those fleeing Eritrea do so hanging from the back of crowded trucks with tens of other people which are driven by traffickers through the remotest areas to avoid detection as they cross into Sudan, then Libya.

Aside from falling off, being shot at, lack of food and water, the first major hazard is surviving the scorching heat of the Saharan desert which they cross in Sudan and southern Libya.

In April 2014 it was reported ten migrants died in this desert after 300 were abandoned by the people smugglers in desperate conditions.

Next comes the threat of of kidnap by ISIS in parts of west and north Libya where the militants have strongholds.

In April 79 Eritrean and Etheopian Christian migrants were kidnapped by ISIS in western Libya, with 30 later beheaded.

He then had to be rescued by an Italian Naval crew. Then in June, 86 of the Christians were pulled from a smugglers convoy in Tripoli after they failed to convince their ISIS captors they were Muslim like the rest of the group.

The Eritrean we spoke to in Longford got through without being intercepted by the Jihadists, who as a Christian, he would have been a key target for.

He said: “I came here for religious reasons. I was under threat because I am pentecostal. In my country they do not allow you to be pentecostle. My uncle, he was in prison for 14 years because he was pentecostle and would not stop.”

It has been estimated by officials that up to 75% of migrants travelling through Europe after boarding boats in Libya and Turkey.

The 33-year-old said he had also come alone and did not bring any family members with him, adding: “I left everyone there.”

He paid “a lot of money” to traffickers to spend days being driven in trucks across dangerous desert and through areas in Libya where kidnap by twisted ISIS jihadists posed a risk. He then boarded a crowded boat bound for Italy.

He and everyone on board the crammed vessel nearly became the latest casualties of the migrant crisis when it ran into difficulties prompting another international rescue.

The 33-year-old was in the notorious jungle for five days.

We expected more. The first thing…well, this place is clean and they are a good service.

33-year-old Eritrean migrant after a week in the UK

He said: “The only way from Libya is by boat. I was on the boat for five hours, but it sunk. After five hours the rescuers came from Italy.”

After being rescued, he and hundreds others were held in Italy for six days before being allowed to move on through Europe by train.

He said: “Two days after the rescuers came, we moved somewhere for days and then we go<sic> Milan (by train).

“I stay Milan two weeks.”

The migrants mainly stayed within the city’s central railway station, where humanitarian workers fed and aided them, while they sought onward travel.

The journey from Libya to Heathrow would be another around 1,500 miles of travelling – by train to Calais via Paris before spending five days in Calais’ notorious Jungle - the huge makeshift refugee camp near the Eurostar and Channel ferry terminals.

He waited for a chance to join one of the much publicised groups of up to 150 who storm their way into the Eurotunnel and stowaway aboard freight and passenger trains, again risking life and limb.

This year 10 people have died after being electrocuted or falling off the trains which travel at speeds of up to 100mph

But the asylum seeker said: “If you get on they do not throw you off.”

Once at Dover he and other “successful” migrants were arrested and held before Home Office contractors arranged transport to and lodgings at Longford.

He arrived there on October 21.

Now he spends days in the west London village where a three bedroom semi-detached property costs about £400,000.

But explaining what he thought of the UK so far, he said: “We expected more.”