Migrants crossing the Channel

[fmgod]

Two observations;

Firstly, Labour tried dispersal about twenty years ago . The locals in Glasgow (? - it was definitely Scotland) murdered one of the new arrivals.

Secondly, why would the new arrivals stay dispersed? The evidence is that people left to their own devices will huddle together in a community that builds an infrastructure they are familiar with, where they share a common language and a common culture (e.g. similar places of worship).

Whilst dispersal seems the sensible per capita and integrationist answer, there are so many natural reasons why it does not happen, at least in any sense of the immediate or short term. Over generations, it changes though.

Salient points, also you are going to go towards where the greater jobs and resources, transport are, out in the sticks in some Welsh town or London, Bradford etc big cities and tons with far more work and opportunity,

[Turns to Stone]

The bigger issue in Kent schools is actually families moving out of London. Some international, some British but it’s a problem caused by both. By the way though, No Yr 8 students are being removed from their schools.

Yr 7 is a problem and has been for a long time. Kent is close to London and lots of people live here and have families here. We have a brand new school down in my town with 1000 kids - it will be full next year but only about 5% of it’s students are migrants.

I can’t help but think that students being bussed to different schools in Kent, has been used as a way to add emotion to an already emotional situation. Kent is struggling to deal with the migrant situation in lots of ways. Our schools are struggling to deal with a population problem. But I don’t necessarily believe that the two are as related as this article makes out.

[Monkeybubbles]

Salient points, also you are going to go towards where the greater jobs and resources, transport are, out in the sticks in some Welsh town or London, Bradford etc big cities and tons with far more work and opportunity,

So not Kent, after all?

This debate seems to have disappeared up its own behind.

[likemydreams]

Getting beyond a joke now

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -bill.html

[smuts]

Getting beyond a joke now

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -bill.html

A few days at Pontins and they'd be looking to hire a boat back.

[Danny's Dyer Acting]

Any plans to speed up the decisions process?

Or beef up the policing operation?

Or get a process set up for people to apply outside of the UK?

No? Thought not. Easier to leak some drivel to Fat Harry Cole or whichever minion Dacre has given today's front page to.

[delbert]

You overlooked an important one.

Any improvement on removing those whose asylum claims have failed?

[EvilC]

The government is going to be furious when it finds out about this.

Source: Economist.
Why small boats are a big problem for Britain
A crisis in the Channel disturbs every part of the political spectrum

Nov 2nd 2022

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On saturday october 29th, 990 people set off in 24 dinghies from continental Europe to make the short, dangerous voyage across the English Channel to beaches on Britain’s Kent coast. The day after, another 468 arrived, crammed onto eight boats. That same day a terrorist, who had gorged on far-right memes about the country being overrun by immigrants, threw a series of petrol bombs at a migrant-processing centre in Dover. In Parliament on the day after that, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, labelled the people arriving on British shores an “invasion”, triggering outrage from critics and support from backbench Conservative mps waving dictionary definitions of the term.

Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.
These were perhaps the most depressing few days in a crisis that has evolved from a curiosity into a political nightmare. Since the start of the year, 38,000 people have made the trip across the world’s busiest shipping lane, the maritime equivalent of sprinting across a motorway. Small boats pose an intractable problem for every part of the political spectrum. They reveal a miserable tale of incompetence, cruelty and complacency.

The crisis is most humiliating for the government. Politicians such as Ms Braverman have repeatedly pledged an era of stronger borders, lower immigration and more sovereignty. They have achieved the opposite. As a member of the eu, Britain had the right to deport asylum-seekers if they had previously been registered in another of the bloc’s member states. But Britain left the scheme when it left the club. Instead it tried to recreate a harebrained version, paying Rwanda to accept asylum-seekers on its behalf. The courts have so far stymied this idea. In short, the government replaced a scheme that was practical, moral and legal with one that is impractical, immoral and probably illegal.


In a slapstick version of geopolitics, the Conservative Party’s attempt to boost British sovereignty has instead left the country entirely reliant on its neighbour. When it comes to small boats, Britain is the demandeur. France has to be sweet-talked, cajoled and bribed into helping solve the problem of breaking up sophisticated smuggling networks and, ultimately, of keeping in France people who do not want to remain in France. Rather than being a sovereign, Britain is a supplicant.

The small-boats crisis caps off a decade of failure by the Conservatives when it comes to the numbers of immigrants, too. At each of the past four elections, the Tories have promised lower immigration. At each election, a plurality of voters has backed them. Yet immigration has not fallen. Instead, the Tories have ended up mimicking New Labour. Under Sir Tony Blair, Labour combined a liberal immigration policy, welcoming people from eu member states in central Europe and beyond, with performative cruelty designed to deter asylum-seekers. This government has done something similar, liberalising the rules for skilled migrants while cramming 23-year-olds from Afghanistan into crowded facilities.

The government’s decisions are increasingly treated in the same way as the weather. Rather than an active choice, they are cast as a fact of life. Asylum policy is no exception. That it took 449 days to process an asylum claim in 2020, compared with the 233 days it took in 2017, is discussed in the same way people complain about a tree in their garden being blown over. Britain once aimed to handle such decisions in six months. It scrapped the target in 2019. Since then the backlog has ballooned from under 40,000 to over 100,000. How unfortunate. Oh well.


If small boats demonstrate the incompetence and cruelty of the right, they also show up the complacency of the left. For a country of 67m, runs the argument, some 40,000 people turning up on its shores should be little problem. It is a small number in the scheme of things. Except this same line was deployed, almost exactly, when only a few hundred people made the trip in 2018. That year, the arrival of under 100 people in a few days forced the home secretary at the time back from holiday. It was possible to dismiss the reaction then as hysteria. Now? Not so much.

Back then most people were—in a phrase that causes liberals to wince—genuine asylum-seekers. Until this year, about two-thirds of those who arrived on small boats qualified for asylum. But this ratio may be shifting. Dan O’Mahoney, the grandly titled Clandestine Channel Threat Commander responsible for monitoring small boats, estimates that about half of the arrivals now are truly seeking refuge. It is a waste of talent to prevent real asylum-seekers from working while their claims are processed; by the same token it is necessary to skim off those who abuse the rules.

Muddled masses
Proposed solutions to the crisis abound. Some think-tanks emphasise co-operative ideas. Britain could forge a new agreement with the eu, which would include some sort of deal on responsibility for asylum-seekers. A proper system of identity cards in Britain would meanwhile reduce the allure of the country’s black market for labour, and so stem the flow. Hardliners propose tougher options, in which arrivals are imprisoned on cruise ships, breaking asylum law in the process.

Each resembles the old joke about an economist stuck on a desert island with a tin of food but no can-opener. Their solution? “First, assume a can-opener…” Every solution is impractical in its own way. Britain is unwilling to embrace genuinely liberal solutions to mitigate suffering, nor is it inclined to reshape its relationship with Brussels. The government is thwarted from ditching its international obligations, as the failure of the Rwanda scheme attests. The result is paralysis, misery and, inevitably, death.

As winter looms the seas will turn choppier. Sometimes 60 people are crammed into a boat designed for a fifth of that number. Last November 27 people drowned in a single incident. Another such tragedy is bound to happen. It will discomfort every wing of British politics. But it will be far worse for those on the boats.

[Danny's Dyer Acting]

You overlooked an important one.

Any improvement on removing those whose asylum claims have failed?

Agree completely

[Hammer1966]

The government is going to be furious when it finds out about this...

That last line is chilling. There's absolutely no doubt more and more will die as they attempt to cross the channel.

[likemydreams]

Hopefully less try and make the journey then

[Crouchend_Hammer]

Hopefully less try and make the journey then

I doubt it
If you have spent months living hand to mouth in various camps as you have travelled thousands of miles across Eurooe, or given all your life savings to some dodgy people smuggler, I doubt you are going to be put off by a few deaths when you get to the Engkish channel

You would still take your chances

[Macca1973]

https://news.sky.com/story/migrants-at- ... s-12745200

Lovely.

[likemydreams]

https://news.sky.com/story/migrants-at- ... s-12745200

Lovely.

All paid for by us !

[EvilC]

A+

[smuts]

France must love getting another 10 or so million out of every Home Sec who comes along.

[DaveWHU1964]

ITV news just said that we’ve given France £168 million since 2018. Add this latest initiative and we’re up to around a quarter of a billion quid. We’re utterly reliant on the French to help us try to ‘take back control’ of our borders. We are weak.

[YGNB]

ITV news just said that we’ve given France £168 million since 2018. Add this latest initiative and we’re up to around a quarter of a billion quid. We’re utterly reliant on the French to help us try to ‘take back control’ of our borders. We are weak.

People pointed this out at the time of the referendum. There were under 10 people per year detected from small boat channel crossings prior to leaving the EU.

Farage spent years trying to get out of the EU, now Farage spends his time with a camera at the Kent coast watching small boats come in and complaining about it. It really is a funny old world

[chelmsfordhammer91]

ITV news just said that we’ve given France £168 million since 2018. Add this latest initiative and we’re up to around a quarter of a billion quid. We’re utterly reliant on the French to help us try to ‘take back control’ of our borders. We are weak.

I don't understand why we pay them if there is no target/review of the impact the 'service' has. How do they quantify this? (I'm being rhetorical, I appreciate we don't know).

I can't see an incentive for France to prevent letting economic migrants cross the channel. Essentially throwing money away by the looks of it.

[bubbles1966]

I don't understand why we pay them if there is no target/review of the impact the 'service' has. How do they quantify this? (I'm being rhetorical, I appreciate we don't know).

I can't see an incentive for France to prevent letting economic migrants cross the channel. Essentially throwing money away by the looks of it.

The deal is an £8m uplift for 40% increase in staff.

The French stopped around 30,000 attempts last year.

The UK also refused entry to the UK to five times as many Europeans since 2019.

This proves it is perfectly possible to work with a neighbour without letting them neuter your parliament.