The English Channel

dowie said:
Seems they're able to arrest these people rather quickly when there is a more pressing need to do so, perhaps they should have put a bit more effort in beforehand and something like this could have been avoided. I mean where are all the boats coming from - they're not necessarily cheap but with the volumes of people, we're seeing cross that needs a serious supply of boats.
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Yes 100% agree, this was exactly what crossed my mind when I read that part of the article.

The English Channel is a tiny stretch of water, it should not be difficult to police it and stop these boats being in the water in the first place.

I don't want to see people drown, but they took the risk and it cost them their lives. Their choice, their problem.
 
visibleman said:
It sounds good on paper but even if you ignore the many controversies around Australia's processing centres, leading to closures and compensation, it'll still be a fairly difficult thing for us to implement as i can't imagine there will be many EU countries sticking up their hands to allow us to construct and operate processing facilities.
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Albania isn't in the EU though - IIRC there were proposals to simply fly claimants there for processing. If they are approved then back to blighty they come, if not then repatriated with less faff and less of an issue trying to find them etc..

Not much incentive for the obvious chancers and people who just want to disappear in the UK while their claim is processed.

Albania has now denied it would allow it though, but I guess the idea in principle is there, just need to find the appropriate country and try to implement the Australian solution:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...o-process-asylum-seekers-abroad-raab-confirms
Albania has strenuously denied it is willing to process people crossing the Channel to Britain, after the UK deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, confirmed that the government is exploring ways of processing asylum seekers abroad.

Edi Rama, the prime minister, said he would “never receive refugees for richer countries”, after a report in the Times suggested Albania would be willing to host an offshore processing centre for people arriving in the UK from France in small boats.

Priti Patel, the home secretary, opened talks on the proposal when she signed an agreement in July for Albania to take back criminals deported from the UK.

Ministers see Australian-style offshore processing centres – to which migrants would be flown within seven days of arriving in the UK – as a key potential deterrent to stem the record surge in Channel crossings. The Home Office is due to confirm that more than 1,000 reached the UK on Tuesday.
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If you're genuinely seeking Assylum, in fear of your life/want to be reunited with relatives then a stay in a processing centre is meh, something to do still. If you're a chancer/economic migrant then there will be easier options than the UK and it provides an obvious disincentive.
 
Fatboy123 said:
But isn't that the problem..... these people know they won't qualify for asylum hence people smugglers, dinghies abd large sums of cash.
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From what I understand of it, generally no that isn't the problem. They need to get to the UK to be able to start an asylum claim, but can't travel by legitimate means.
 
thenewoc said:
I'm covering all bases as even in the event they could work, why should they be allowed to take a job from a UK citizen.
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In my industry the employers have actually started treating us with respect and there have actually been pay rises previously it would be if you can't do it there are plenty of others who will, the supply of foreign labour has dried up lately.

Lets be honest here the reason the majority voted for Brexit was to regain control of our borders but all thats happened is we've replaced mass legal immigration with mass illegal immigration instead and Boris is so utterly incompetent and so totally useless as to be able to do a single thing other than throw money at the French they're going to find their support massively eroded something the rest of the party are only now starting to realise. Middle class comfortably off Guardian reading lefties don't want it of course because it impinges on their comfortable lifestyle relying on cheap labour to whom they can toss crusts and sympathy from their tables and virtue signal how superior they are.
 
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cheesyboy said:
How so?

People without documentation could be processed through immigration control and filtered into the asylum process, if that is their intent. Their claim is assessed and either accepted or rejected.

Can't see why anyone would be against that tbh.
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Why on Earth would you risk bringing people in with no documentation? They could be criminals, terrorists. No way of knowing they are who they say they are.
 
cheesyboy said:
From what I understand of it, generally no that isn't the problem. They need to get to the UK to be able to start an asylum claim, but can't travel by legitimate means.
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The point is they don't need to come to the UK in the first place because they pass through other countries to get here.

What should happen is that the asylum process occurs in the first country they get to, and done unilaterally with all countries agreeing the terms, and then once accepted, the immigrants are spread fairly between all the nations. At this point, they can then travel by legitimate means across Europe to their final allocated destination.
 
danlightbulb said:
What should happen is that the asylum process occurs in the first country they get to, and done unilaterally with all countries agreeing the terms, and then once accepted, the immigrants are spread fairly between all the nations. At this point, they can then travel by legitimate means across Europe to their final allocated destination.
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That might very well be a better solution, but it's not how things work.

Worth noting that a "fair share" for the UK would probably involve us taking more than we currently do.
 
inferno said:
We have a family friend who is fighting for custody of her grandchild. The daughter can’t look after the kid, the child’s father is from abroad, has been in jail abroad and still has not proven that he is legally allowed to stay in the UK. Social services have said his drinking problems are cultural since he is from Eastern Europe. The child’s father has been appointed a solicitor to fight the grandmother. You can’t make it up. It’s a total shambles.
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Disregarding for the moment the custody fight, although I feel for the kid in the middle of it all, how in the Sam Hill can the fact that the guy’s from Eastern Europe mean that his drinking problems are cultural?
There are plenty of canards about Scots and Irish enjoying a drink, is the suggestion that any problems they may have with drinking are cultural too?
I like a drink from time to time, but in all my life I’ve only been drunk maybe four times, as a guy born in England but with a soupçon of French blood, is my getting drunk four times in my life a cultural problem?
 
danlightbulb said:
The point is they don't need to come to the UK in the first place because they pass through other countries to get here.

What should happen is that the asylum process occurs in the first country they get to, and done unilaterally with all countries agreeing the terms, and then once accepted, the immigrants are spread fairly between all the nations. At this point, they can then travel by legitimate means across Europe to their final allocated destination.
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Yeah, like how the EU are supposed to deal with it. But we left.

And yeah, it would also involve us taking A LOT more cases.
 
cheesyboy said:
That might very well be a better solution, but it's not how things work.

Worth noting that a "fair share" for the UK would probably involve us taking more than we currently do.
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Well if its 'not how things work', and no-one makes an effort to improve the system, then I guess we just continue to accept the deaths don't we?

Fair share would depend on a range of factors, land area, housing cost, population density, jobs available, strength of economy, saturation of public services, skills needs, cultural factors, views of the existing residents.


inogen said:
Yeah, like how the EU are supposed to deal with it. But we left.
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To me, irrelevant. Asylum should be an international strategy.


Oh also we should be trying to fix the problems in the countries these people are coming from too. And yes, that means military intervention if needed. We should be removing governments, killing paramilitary and terrorist groups, and restoring democracy and order in these countries that can't do it themselves.
 
inogen said:
What you were suggesting about forcing people to claim asylum in the first country they land in is directly in contravention of it. As is not providing people with safe passage.
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The first safe country they land in, is perfectly sufficient for their safety, which is what they seek right?

Any country deemed not safe, we (civilised countries) should be making safe, through whatever means necessary as I indicated above.
 
danlightbulb said:
Well if its 'not how things work', and no-one makes an effort to improve the system, then I guess we just continue to accept the deaths don't we?
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Oh absolutely, and perhaps I took your previous post in the wrong spirit. I took your "they passed through safe countries" as a criticism of the asylum seekers, rather than a critique of the system.

A joined up strategy within the EU+UK is absolutely better, but seems politically impossible in the UK. Being hard on asylum seekers is seen as a political boon (and perhaps it is among a wide, nasty, base of the electorate).
 
cheesyboy said:
Oh absolutely, and perhaps I took your previous post in the wrong spirit. I took your "they passed through safe countries" as a criticism of the asylum seekers, rather than a critique of the system.

A joined up strategy within the EU+UK is absolutely better, but seems politically impossible in the UK. Being hard on asylum seekers is seen as a political boon (and perhaps it is among a wide, nasty, base of the electorate).
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Its a delicate balance. We should be hard on asylum seekers in a sense (and so should other countries), because the need for asylum should be genuine and beyond doubt. This is to protect our own country and people, which should come first.

But I firmly believe we should be trying to move away from reactively dealing with asylum seekers towards proactively intervening in their home countries to fix the problems that is making them leave in the first place. This would benefit far more people who never leave despite terrible conditions, rather than just homing the tiny proportion that do leave.
 
danlightbulb said:
proactively intervening in their home countries to fix the problems
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Tbh, intervention is what's caused an awful lot of the instability in the past couple of decades.

But, yes, tackling asylum by helping bring stability / human rights protections to areas of the world where asylum seekers are fleeing is absolutely a better solution in principle.
 
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