To think that UK bound lorry drivers should boycott Calais?

[Libitina]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33240475

The local police would soon do something to protect them then. If it was my husband (he's not a lorry driver) I would be so worried about his personal saftey. How long before someone is hurt or killed?

My parents have travelled across the channel (Dover to Calais and back again) since before I was born. They are due to get a ferry tomorrow back to the UK. This is the first time Im a little worried.

I just have the fact that they are in a laiden down car so can lock the doors and just drive is making me feel better, but I fear that one day it will not just be lorry drivers targeted and threatened - perhaps that is me being sucked into what the media show us.

DrHarleen - is not just lorry drivers targeted.
There was a woman recently who arrived at her home in Kent and an immigrant jumped out of her car. He had climbed in while she was parked in Dover and hid in the footwell of the back seats. She called the police, he was arrested, but immediately claimed asylum - another drag on the UK taxpayer.

parked in Calais

Maybe the Schengen Area should be looked at again?

If you truly believe that the UK should accept anybody in the world who wants to come live here, then you campaign loud and hard for safe and free ferry services from Tripoli, Bengazi, Calais, etc, no questions asked. At least that would stop the carnage and loss of children's lives.

ps: it tickles me to bits that I seem to have been called a right-winger. OmG. Only on MN.

Many of these migrants do probably qualify for refugee status. So why haven't they claimed it in France, or Italy or Switzerland or any of the other countries they've passed through?

These are not people looking for safety, they are in a safe place. They are people looking for money. Big difference.

radio 4 today program - interviewed an Afghan who had tried many times to get to UK. He had been in Germany but wanted to come to UK because he thought he would get a house, and money, be allowed to study, and the people are very friendly, and he speaks English (not well but a bit). He was determined to keep trying. He had been told it was this golden land of opportunity by people who had already got here (he said).

On a number of levels it made me uncomfortable - where does this idea of utopia come from ? It is not what I see as a UK resident - and certainly not from all those people who are camping out on roundabouts, or living 10 to a shed in the back of a London garden. The implication was he would get a free (adult) education - even kids born here don't get that as adults. His English was very basic - I kind feel if he can learn English - then he could also have learned German, or French or whatever other language was appropriate to any country that would offer him asylum.

In my perception the UK is no better a place to live than most other countries in Western Europe.

Do they all really want to come here - or is it just that we only see that side - and happily ignore all those others that go to Holland, or Spain or wherever else ?

Dunno (on so many levels).

It's a complete myth that they "all want to come here" - many prefer to go to Germany, or Scandinavia. Mostly they want to go somewhere where they speak a bit of the local language, where there are already communities of their compatriots, and where they think they have a chance of working. Some of these people are highly qualified - I read an article last weekend about refugees/ migrants attempting to get into Hungary, and the guy interviewed was a surgeon who had fled his country (can't remember if it was Afghanistan or Iraq), along with his young kids, after being stabbed in the chest four times by extremists.

Many migrants are probably very misinformed about what life as a refugee or immigrant will be like in the UK. The sort of desperation that drives people to leave their homes also makes them vulnerable to misinformation.

I think Britain comes 6th in Europe when it comes to taking on migrants. I know Germany and Sweden are up there at the top.

It's far from true that "they all want to come here". Many have friends / family in other countries, may be drawn to a country where they already speak the language. But many of the ones that decide on Britain seem to have this perceived reality that they will get a house, a job, an education.. A lot of the time, the reality turns out to be very different and they find themselves homeless, or at the mercy of criminal gangs.

Two men on the BBC last night were saying they wanted to come to Britain for education and university. They did not seem to have any idea about tuition fees etc, and being illegal it will be a long time, possibly never, before they could qualify for a student loan. They will not find the dream that they imagine here.

The deputy mayor of Calais, Philippe Mignonet, told the BBC that the UK government had to take more responsibility for the situation and that local authorities had effectively been left in the position of policing the UK's border.

The UK border begins on UK territory. If the French have the attitude that other countries should take responsibility for their border, then no wonder the situation is so bad. Of course the UK is not a party to Schengen, which is why the migrants have reached the French border in the first place and then are struggling to get any further.

I see it like this.

Scenario A

You are awoken in the night by the sound of breaking glass. You go downstairs and find a bloke in your lounge who tells you that he is homeless and jobless, so he will live in your house and when he gets a job (but he wants to learn English first) he will pay you some rent. In the meantime he will share your food and you will give him money to find work/study.
Do you -

1. call the police, or
2. say Ok, and go and make up a bed in the spare room. Poor person has nowhere else to go and you feel sorry for them.

Scenario B

You have a spare room that you want to let. You advertise the room and interview the potential tenants. You do background checks to ensure you are not inviting a criminal into you home. You chose an appropriate person who you feel you will get along with to your mutual benefit.

Would ANY of you go for 2) ??? Honestly? If you think we should let anyone in and that we are disgusting and heartless if we do not, can you please tell me what the difference is to Scenario A?

It’s natural that immigrants already here will want to look successful to the people left behind so they are likely to talk up the reality. George Alagiah found that Mirpuri Asians living in poor conditions in Bradford were having big houses built back home that no one would ever live in, just to impress the “home” community. Wouldn’t it help to get footage out there of immigrants living in tents on roundabouts to try and change the image of what to expect?

I saw something similar on tv a while ago. A man living in one of the Calais camps was sending photos home of him standing next to very expensive cars making out they were his and he was living a very rich and successful live. He didn't want them to see how he was really living in poverty and with no prospects.

Its not surprising that many would be migrants think Europe is the land of milk and honey.

I think the people smugglers who take a lot of money for selling a dream of the streets of Britain being paved with gold have a lot to answer for. and as said above, the fact that English is spoken more widely than other languages also makes Britain an attractive destination.

that these people are being sold a fantasy is apparent from the desperation - look how many of them say, "I will not stop until I get to Britain." at no point do they care that Britain may or may not want them; they see it as their goal at all costs. stopping benefits etc will not stop the dream that they are being sold, often at the cost of everything they have.

it's a horrible tragedy. on the one hand, these are PEOPLE. with LIVES. not just figures on a piece of paper. on the other hand, we can't take everyone. we're just not that big, and certain parts of the country are already struggling with schools, water supplies etc. and it's not as it's just a case of taking these 3,000 people; if we do, there will be 3,000 more by next week.

I have no idea what the decent solution is.

I think unfortunately it will get to a point where we will attempt to close our borders. I hear a lot of talk on here of a No vote when the referendum happens, but I suspect it will be a Yes vote, unless DC manages to broker a deal with Europe over free migration.

People have lost sympathy unfortunately. Yes there are many asylum seekers who are desperately fleeing persecution but they are intermingled with economic migrants and of course European migrants who have the right to be here. I rarely hear an a English voice when I go into the high street in my two local towns. I know it sounds like an exaggeration but it isn't, it's very very evident on the ground.

I am caught between wringing my hands at the horrendous atrocities that so many people are having afflicted on them and of course they have a right to find a safe place to run to, and thinking the situation is out of control and if nothing is done we are going to be absolutely fucked with 80% of the worlds population trying to live in Europe.

I too was a bit puzzled by the news reports! The French they interviewed were blaming us for paying benefits and thereby attracting them but I thought all EU countries were obliged to do this? Perhaps a big pull factor from those interviewed by the Beeb is that many have learned some English as the international lingua franca and hence it is sensible to go to an English-speaking country which none of our EU neighbours are obviously!
At the moment this is an EU problem but were we to leave this strike in France may have given us a clue as to what it could be like - and that would not be good for trade or pleasant for holidays.

Fyrefly Lolz. Can you not see the hypocrisy? 'They want to go to Scandinavia, not here', then 'they want to go somewhere they know the language'. I never knew there were hordes of Swedish speaking Africans in need of asylum.

Aer I doubt there are, but that is not the sole deciding factor. Many may have family already there, Sweden may be more open to taking migrants - there are a whole host of reasons. I know Sweden and Germany take the most, that's all.

In 2014, the UK processed 32,000 asylum applications. This compares with 81k in Sweden, about 65k in both Italy and France, and over 200k in Germany.

The idea that the UK is uniquely overrun by asylum seekers is a myth.

But what you're saying FyreFly flies directly in the face of what asylum is supposed to be about. It's supposed to be to protect people from harm. Not some kind of immigration supermarket where you get to select which language and political system suits you.

These people in Calais are in a safe country. It discredits the entire asylum system when people like this are tolerated.

Are the lorries not locked?

It's not as simple as that! Many lorries are just cabs, to which a customer's trailer is hitched. Some are trailers with shipping containers loaded on top, some are a frame work loaded with crates and covered with tarpaulin. They're not all giant transit vans.
The fines (around £2000) are usually paid by the haulage companies rather than the drivers. So then that's another expense to up the cost of the end product.
Self employed drivers have to find the money themselves, depending on the kind of contract they're working. The only advantage here is that they may get to choose their route and will sail from Belgium or the Netherlands instead.

The problem is that it's not realistic to leave certain countries on the "front line" (eg Italy, Greece, Hungary) to shoulder most of the burden. The result is what is happening in Italy now, with the Italians threatening to issue Shenghen visas to migrants because they feel they are shouldering an unfair share of the burden, or in Hungary, where the government is proposing to breach international agreements on refugees.

France already receives more than twice as many asylum applications as the UK, as does Italy. Hungary, with a population one sixth the size of the UK and a GDP an order of magnitude smaller, receives 50% more asylum applications.

why so many to Hungary ?

Because Hungary borders non-EU countries and as such is a gateway to richer EU countries.