Off Topic The Migrant Crisis

Are you asking us to actually believe it was a genuine question from a genuine friend?

 

You’re assuming that, but on this occasion I showed someone this thread.
I wanted to know someone’s opinion looking in on this board.

 

Well you've convinced me and I am sure everybody else on here.

 

What is the point of the question?

 

You're just a wum.

Fyi
The legal migrants fine - ie Afghans who helped our forces against the Taliban.
The maybe 1,000s from Hong Kong who have our passports.

The chancers - no chance.

 

So that'll be about 98 or 99% of them then?

If those potential "benefit" figures you quoted earlier are correct, it would still take them a long time get back their alleged upfront £10,000 "passport" fee for a dangerous channel crossing in an overloaded inflatable deathtrap. The benefits are undoubtedly a lure, but I doubt many of them even know that when they pay the people smuggler for the crossing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no leftie do-gooder (far from it in fact) and certainly don't want them here, but something has to be done on the Europe/World stage. The unanswered question in all this is Jiffies' very valid one - why us over here and not France and the rest of mainland Europe?

The vast majority of these migrants (not 1 or 2% FFS) are fleeing the turmoil wreaked by super powers fighting proxy wars in their countries. They're vying for influence for strategic/economic reasons and certainly not humanitarian principles. Solving that is the secret to end all this, but I wont hold by breath.

 

I can't provide a firm answer to the question 'why here' given the wide open spaces afforded by the likes of France, Spain, Germany etc. It can only be word of mouth or rumour that the UK is indeed the most generous to migrants ?

But the point from my original post still stands. There is a limit to the number of people that should be permitted to live here, especially from abroad, and the migrants, even if offered UK citizenship in true asylum cases, aren't going to want to live in the highlands of Scotland.
Priti Patel and the Home Office need to sort this mess out, and quicker than ever. There are now reports of RNLI staff being verbally heckled by bystanders when bringing migrants ashore and frustration is growing day by day at the lack of action, despite the money being given to the French who are clearly still not doing a decent job and I understand all of that.
So for me, Patel needs to get our Police chiefs along with their French/Belgian counterparts in a very small room along with Interpol, with no food or drink, and stay there until they work out how to stop the feckers who are making hundreds of thousands of pounds per trip from the migrants. That would put an end to it and it surely can't be beyond the will or wit of man !!

 

'The unanswered question'.

The Calais Mayor said years ago - 'it's your own fault, the UK social welfare system is the best in Europe'.

 

You are correct the unanswered 20 year burning question has been lost lost in the midst of time and not fitting the left wing BBC agenda.

With all due respect I suspect that is just wishful thinking, if they were escaping war or persecution any safe haven (as per the United Nations protocols) would suffice but still the goal is unreservedly the UK.

I am, was and will always be pro immigration, but my proviso would be that UK citizenship should be a precious and hard earned achievement and people who transgress either in a petty but prolific manner or by an incredibly violent or serious manner whilst attempting to achieve that status should not be protected by human rights laws.

 

As this thread transcends football and therefore isn't subject to football tribalism, I commented on it just to give an opinion on the subject. There's little point in carrying on discussing (arguing?) as individual opinions are not going to change, so instead I leave you with best wishes for the coming football season.

 

Wiz
Banksy wouldn't go as far as that.

 

This thread is entitled “the migrant crisis”.

There isn’t a migrant crisis. This year around 12k will rock up in rubber dinghies. Last year around 500,000 visas were granted to people to work, study or stay - one of the lowest figures for years due to the pandemic.

12k is a drop in the ocean (excuse the pun) - it doesn’t make much difference.

I agree that this method of entry into the UK is wrong & must be vigorously discouraged, but it’s not a “crisis”. If anything, it’s just another example that Priti Patel is a bloody useless Home Secretary.

Let’s face it, the vast majority of the millions of refugees stay in Turkey, Jordan or any of the European countries between here and the Middle East/Africa. We only get a few thousand.

It’s pointless demonising these people who are only trying to make a better life for themselves and their families.

 

Yes exactly, but not permanently, only while waiting to find out if you'll be granted asylum. That's not exactly the land of milk and honey is it? It's giving someone a shelter and some food while they wait to find out. You and I may disagree but I don't expect a family from a war-torn country to go and sleep on the streets and beg for food while we wait. We're bigger than that.

The numbers also just don't add up. Articles claim that these migrants pay £10,000 to come over and access these 'riches' from our welfare system. Firstly, as we've seen above, they are not riches, they are just about enough to live. And secondly, how do you suppose these people afford £10,000? A huge chunk of asylum seekers are from Sudan, Albania and Eritrea, where the average salary is between £3,800 and £5,800 per year. If they're migrants, you can probably safely bet they're earning less than that, if at all.

£10,000 is a figure they can only dream of, and they'd spend that, to risk death, all for just £40 per week in the slight hope they'd get asylum? I don't buy it. It makes much more sense that they're desperate and fleeing.

I'm not an expert on this at all so happy to be proven wrong but this 'land of milk and honey' argument is a nonsense to me. And as I've said before, Brexit stripped us of the right to return migrants back across the channel, which I've no doubt is causing much of these issues. Maybe they should have put that on the side of a bus.

 

Not nearly as lucrative as the French one though. Presumably another lie from the papers.

https://assets.weforum.org/editor/r..._VazTNmDgU5djX7MxbWSfnmuFTuBA6Hkd0rGVk9o.webp

 

Fair point but it needs context.

Firstly try living in France and accessing those benefits? and also how many were in receipt of those benefits before crossing the channel?, secondly back to the mayor of Sangat nearly 20 years ago, he referenced the fact that the French benefits system was at least the equal of the UK's, but the migrants were only focused on going to the UK, why is that?

 

I've no idea and genuinely as someone on the 'other' side of the argument this is the main point I don't really have an answer for. But it clearly isn't for the 'riches'. They just don't exist. That £40 per week they're given equates to £5.64 per day, for food, sanitation and clothing, as they are not allowed to work. It's not much at all.

I also don't think it's due to ease of gaining asylum either. France and Germany grant asylum to far more people than we do. So I honestly don't know.

 

Also how many were in receipt of those benefits before crossing the channel? most receive sweet FA because accessing the system is deliberately difficult, most survive on food charities,

I would have thought that the ongoing 'left's' proclamation of the UK being and institutionally racist country and 'left' MP's proclaiming that anybody who voted for Brexit was a racist (a huge reason the labour Northern red wall collapsed) would be enough to deter migrants.

But there has to a reason or a perceived reason.

What is certainly true is that the United Nations asylum seeker/migrant protocols are not working and are not being enforced.

 

Yeah and we need a better Home Secretary, absolutely useless she is. She gives off this vibe of being tough and strict to migrants to appease the masses but in reality she and her government have done nothing but make this worse over the past decade. To put it bluntly, we're now in the ****ty position of not being able to get rid of the migrants that we 'don't' want (asylum seekers) and not being able to get enough of the migrants that we do want (lorry drivers, waiters, etc). Not exactly the control over our borders that we anticipated is it.

I agree there has to be a reason they want to come here, of course there has. Maybe we are an ideal country to set up business in once granted asylum, something like that, I've no idea. But it really isn't down to the benefits, how can it be?