This migrant problem is going to let Reform in isn’t it?

Train drivers go on strike to get better conditions for train drivers, such as train driver pay and the continuing role of train guards.

Doctors go on strike to get better pay for doctors

Blue-eyed people don't go on strike to get better working conditions for blue-eyed people - because there are blue-eyed train drivers, doctors, dentists, shop assistants and unemployed people. They all have different needs, different pay and different leverage. What they have in common to each other and different to other people - blue eyes - isn't significant.

Likewise it doesn't make sense to suggest that all immigrants would go on strike. What would they be striking for?

Easier asylum conditions? That would suit asylum seekers, but would mean nothing to your Iraqi GP. Asylum seekers might strike for easier asylum conditions.

Not deporting non-citizens who have committed serious crimes? Pretty insulting to think your Iraqi GP would strike for that!

International undergraduares/language students might strike to be allowed to bring dependents on the study visa (postgrads still can). Not really sure why your GP would be more likely to care than my English one, if she studied in Iraq.

Assuming that all immigrants have the same wishes and common ground - and would strike for that - is a nonsense if you think about them as individuals rather than as a mass. It's you who is the racist for not thinking of them as individuals.

You know who really hates illegal immigrants (specifically all the economic migrant men rather than genuine refugees)? Those who've done everything right, come here legally and integrated.

How about we stop treating invaders like kings when they get here? Even Macrom has told Starmer this because he doesn't want these unknown men in Calais either.

It's really very simple. You need to actually read the posts. People haven't virtue signalled 'of course this profession' is OK' because it's completely obvious from the concerns we're talking about and the solutions we're suggesting.

The only person conflating a hostel of 180 men - of nationalities documented as having up to 20 times the rate of conviction for sexual offences as British men - parachuted into a village of 2000 with your female Iraqi GP is you.

Why do you think she's more likely to go on strike than any other GP in your surgery if the UK brings in a law to refuse asylum to anyone arriving illegally (as Australia has fone successfully)? Why do you think she's less likely to be concerned about the exponential increase in illegal immigration and it's cost than any other UK resident and taxpayer? 20k in 2015 at a cost of £0.5billion, 40k in in 2019, and now £100k people per year costing £4billion and rising.

Why do you think she's more likely to go on strike than any other tax-payer if the UK tightens the conditions around skilled worker visas? Why do you think she'd be less concerned than any other parent about the reduced employment prospects for our young people caused by an influx of legal migration who don't have any particular skills, and a large number of dependents each? Why do you think she wouldn't be concerned that the teachers have no time for her bright, English-speaking, child, because they have to focus on the kids with EAL who can't access the lessons?

The only person pretending that there's no difference between different types of immigrants - the only person othering immigrants as being all the same - is you.

I don't believe the most important thing about immigrants is their race. That would be absurd when this country has immigrants from an enormous variety of ethnic backgrounds. But the title of this thread includes the phrase "the migrant problem" (not a nice term) and post after post is about "stopping migrants" and describing them as "an invasion". I haven't seen many posters make a distinction between immigrants based on their professions. Not that the UK only needs highly-paid professionals. Care and agriculture are two sectors that would be in dire trouble without immigrant workers. By the way, the last Eritrean I met was a taxi driver in Bristol. You might not particularly value his work, but he wasn't unemployed and in a good month he probably earns more than me.

Also, I don't like the implication on this thread that immigrants from the Middle East and Africa are a problem. A GP at my local surgery is Iraqi and qualified in Baghdad. Her English happens to be native-level. One of the obstetric consultants who treated me during my pregnancy is Egyptian. And our local hospital trust also has staff from Morocco, Libya, Mauritania, Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Bahrain, the DRC, Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia and Kenya, to give just some examples. If all of the immigrants working in the NHS went on strike, we would definitely feel the impact. I'm still puzzled by your idea of a "more realistic" strike whereby the immigrants that you value would carry on working, but the ones you don't value would stop.

I don't find the 20 % of the NHS being fireign-born that surprosing, because it isn't far from the 16% of the general population who are foreign born.

We get extra medical staff. But we need them to care for all the extra people who have come alongside them.

Now 50% of London's social housing going to foreign-born heads of household is significant. Because social housing stock isn't very elastic to reflect the growing growth population: we just run out.

You're being racist when you imply that most important thing about immigrants is their race - that they are non-British - and that this makes them all the same.

You're still doing it:
Nice try😂😂😂But no, that's not how strikes work

Why on earth would an Indian doctor strike for an asylum seeker from Eritrea?!? What do they have in common?

An Indian doctor or programmer has far, far more in common with their UK-born colleagues than with some unskilled random, just because they have also immigrated to the UK.

It's a huge failure of clear-thinking to conflate all immigrants. To consider them as a single group. To consider their economic impact only as a single block. If you're right that 'successive governments' have done likewise, then shame on them for not bothering to think beyond the very shallowest, skin-deep surface.

So to make your suggestion a bit more realistic, let's divide all immigrants into those 2 groups - the ones we want and the ones we don't - and only have the second group go on strike.

Nice try😂😂😂But no, that's not how strikes work.

The UK is still very welcoming to the former group.

Some are, some aren't. A PP on this very thread described the fact that nearly 20% of NHS workers aren't British as "an appalling situation" and "proof of absolute failure".

Why are you pretending you can't tell the difference? Don't you see that it's you who is being racist with that?

The UK is home to immigrants from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and I believe that overall, they make a positive contribution to this country. I've no idea how I'm "being racist with that".

I think that successive governments have also believed that immigration has been a net positive for the UK economy, which is why they have chosen not to restrict it as much as they could have done.

Well so did probably they!

Imagine crossing half the world. Finally your first glimpse of Britain; its my backside 😭

No wonder half of them do not want to integrate. They probably think wtf is this depraved country we have ended up in! 😂

But in all seriousness I do hope they are ok. I forget about it periodically but now I am reminded it will probably haunt my conscience again for a while.

I would have shit myself too!

One on my relatives was a long distance lorry driver throughout the 90s and 00s. He had lots of tales to tell about finding migrants in the back.

I remember crossing through Calais whilst towing a caravan back when they would sneak onto vehicles as they queued for the ferry. It was scary seeing them standing by the road waiting to sneak onto something. I was convinced the caravan was full of men all the way back to Britain.

There's a way to avoid the authority. Once an immigrant is in southern Ireland. They can cross the border into NI catch a ferry to Scotland and they're in silently and invisibly. Mind you there's no accommodation and pocket money waiting.

About 10 years ago walking back from drinking in town I walked across a forecourt of a closed petrol station in the dead of night to piss behind a lorry.

I started pulling my pants down, crouched, turned to the right to kind of rest my head. And there was about 50 people staring at me. All sat around the edges of a huge articulated lorry with the back doors fully open.

It scared the living daylights out of me. I had to do a double take. I was literally metres from the lorry.

I never did anything. Just got up and skeddadled and ran down the road thinking I was going to be killed or kidnapped by dangerous traffickers. I think about it every time I pass. Should I have done something? These people seemed calm. Perhaps they were ok. Perhaps they weren’t. There’s no way the garage owners didn’t know. Traffickers living amongst us in quiet midlands Britain.

Theres a whole other world in this country that most people do not see. I have seen quite a bit since moving from the sheltered luxury of the Home Counties down south.

I don’t know why I am writing this but the talk of Lorrie’s reminded me again.

They were arriving on lorries, as you pointed out. Some still do, but there was a crackdown after some awful deaths. The method of transport then largely changed to small boats.

I just don't see Brexit as the cause. I voted remain btw. Other EU countries are facing the same, nothing to do with Brexit.

I don't see any evidence to suggest that these migrants would not be arriving on our shores if we were still EU members.

@BurntBroccolican you say which country within the EU is using the DA to resolve the migration issue?

Exactly. On each thread on this. Have pp looked at those still within the EU and who still have the Dublin Agreement. It’s not resolving anything on this.

Unless they want to suggest where it has.

Read this:
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/02/17/small-boats-the-post-brexit-migration-story-the-media-doesnt-report/Small Boats: the Post-Brexit Migration Story the Media Doesn't Report – Byline Times

Because they were coming by lorry. The channel tunnel security was improved and now they come by boat.

So why were there hardly any boats before Brexit?

Yes exactly. It's really easy to find the info on this.

I think the exponential rise we have seen over recent years would have happened with or without Brexit.

The Dublin agreement never worked.

It's amazing how people imbibe these supposedly clever talking points without bothering to check the reality.

https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/UVokfRC613HeqtJVTsVAv

Yes they used to come when we were in the EU as well but not in these numbers

I think some of them were in Holland then came to the UK as the Dutch got fed up with them being non productive but then we get stuck with them

DA has been debunked. We barely sent anyone back and EU are facing the same problems with irregular migration.

Is there any evidence that the migrants crossing in boats would not have started if we had stayed in the EU? Or would they have come anyway?

If it wasn’t for Brexit there would be no/little issues with boat crossings. I bet a lot of people complaining on here did actually vote for Brexit!
Heres why.
The Dublin III agreement meant we couldn't use our island status to avoid our responsibilities under the refugee convention which we not only signed but co-wrote.

There have always been people smugglers as there is a ready market for cheap or free labour. Backs of lorries used to be the favoured method and, here is the essential difference, those people disappeared into the black economy or to slave labour or to brothels. It is vile and it needs stopping but it didn't result in commandeered former barracks, commandeered hotels or the Bibby Stockholm to house thousands of asylum seekers.

Brexit and leaving the Dublin Agreement changed all that. It opened a huge new market for people traffickers and cross channel rubber boats became the norm after January 2020. Almost all of these people now hand themselves over to border control as asylum seekers. The previous government had no alternative but to house them, there was nothing else legal that they could do. They gave up assessing claims and the problem just multiplied. At least the Labour government has begun assessing claims again, accepting those successful and allowing then to become useful members of our society and, where they legally can, they have deported those who were unsuccessful.

I'm afraid you have to accept that Brexit caused the small boats crisis and the massive accommodation bill.

International maritime law mandates that ships at sea assist individuals in distress, regardless of their nationality, status, or the circumstances leading to their peril. This obligation is a fundamental principle of maritime tradition and is enshrined in treaties like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS). Search and Rescue (SAR) operations are also coordinated by coastal states, with international cooperation encouraged.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
Universal Obligation:
All ships are required to render assistance to those in danger at sea, provided it doesn't seriously endanger the rescuing ship.
International Conventions:
The UNCLOS (Article 98) and SOLAS (Chapter V) explicitly outline this duty.
SAR Conventions:
The International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) establishes the framework for coordinating SAR operations, including the establishment of SAR regions and the role of coastal states.
No Exception for Cause of Distress:
The duty to rescue applies regardless of how the person came to be in distress.
Coordination and Cooperation:
Coastal states are responsible for establishing and coordinating SAR services within their designated areas.
Safe Place of Disembarkation:
SAR conventions emphasize the need to ensure rescued persons are taken to a safe place.
No State Can Prohibit Rescue:
A state cannot legally prohibit its vessels from undertaking rescue operations.
Is turning back migrants at sea compatible with international law?
13 Sept 2021 — Article 98 obliges states to require all masters of a ship to help anyone in danger at sea, so long as it does not also cause serious danger to the ...

The House
of Commons Library

And we are the authors of this international law.

In the last 7 days alone, 1004 migrants have crossed the channel.
That's just the ones who were detected.