To think that the 'Calais Camp' situation needs to be resolved ASAP!

[Kreacherelf]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3413566/Port-Calais-closed-migrants-storm-harbour-make-Spirit-Britain-ferry-desperate-bid-reach-UK.html

This is just getting ridiculous now. France need to take this problem to the EU and ask for help dealing with it immediately. It has gone on for too long and needs to stop.

I don't know what the answer is. I think the UK should take anyone under 18, and their family members. Other than that, everyone else should have to apply for asylum in France or risk arrest. Not a perfect solution, but the only one I have.

Twisted, I have no doubt that the volunteers will suffer ptsd. They have seen terrible things. How they coped being there and seeing what they saw I have no idea and I admire them so much. Europe has not responded well and the amazing thing to come out of this is the spirit and strength of ordinary people to save lives and refuse to accept inhumane treatment. I have heard this described as a 'compassionate revolution.'

It seems when people are unable to provide an answer to my posts, they sometimes resort to spurious claims. I've never experienced it before on mumsnet and find it unpleasant.

There are children in the camps. If we let the children and their parents into the UK, the first thing I would want is for the parents to be arrested. They purposefully put their child in danger. They should be prosecuted for that.

MumsnetHelen, inventing lies about what my other half does is a bit of a personal attack in my opinion.
emily, you are in NO position to complain about personal attacks.

I think the majority of unaccompanied children in Calais are 15 year old males travelling with older brothers.

Elsewhere on the journey out of Syria, children are on occasion orphaned at sea for example.

It seems when people are unable to provide an answer to my posts

To be fair Emily, I'm still waiting for you to answer my last post. There's a lot of emotive rhetoric coming from your keyboard, but little in the way of pragmatism.

Oh for gods sake keeacher, so if the men come without women and children they are bad people, and shouldn't be allowed aslyum, because they left their children in danger. If parents bring their children with them, then they were bad people for putting their children in danger and should go to prison.
They are trying to do what they can in a situation where all options involve danger and suffering. Nobody would choose to rot in Calais, or risk drowning and freezing to death on a boat, or risk suffocation by hiding in a lorry, unless their alternative was felt to be even worse.

Onewing agree with your post.

In the strictest analysis, those encouraging illegal immigration actually have blood on their hands: encouraging more and more people to make the sea crossing, in the full knowledge that a proportion of them will die during it, is stupid and reckless. The Government's policy of establishing safe camps on the borders of conflict zones is far better.

Exactly this.

Emilybohemia, based on your contribution here and on the Cologne threads you seem to have a rather distinct agenda

Thanks once again for your feedback, emilyinbohemia.

Thanks Sonya and OTheHuge - I just get so frustrated at people who claim that there is only one perspective that can possibly be considered 'moral'.

TwistedReach

'Nobody would choose to rot in Calais, or risk drowning and freezing to death on a boat, or risk suffocation by hiding in a lorry, unless their alternative was felt to be even worse.'

The people in Calais are in France, for goodness' sake, not a warzone in Syria. You're telling me that seeking asylum in socialist France is a worse alternative than suffocating on a lorry? Really?

Have you read any of the many previous explanations about why people are scared of claiming in France?

My husband works with the refugee children aged 15 to 18 here in Sweden. l remember my husband waving to a guy when we were out in the Town and I asked if that was someone he worked with, he replied 'No that is one of the refugee boys' I was shocked. He was a grown man with a receding hairline. I guessed that he was about 30. My husband said they thought he was around 23/24. They do try to make checks but there is no real way of knowing how old they claim to be without papers. In our small village the there so under age refugees that the local primary (there is one primary and one senior school) cannot cope with the numbers so from year 5 the last two years have to go the senior school. So in a couple of years my children will have to move the same school with unchecked grown men posing as teenagers. Had I have known this I am not sure I would have moved over here.

The situation here is crazy. Adverts on papers to take refugee children into family homes. People are being paid to take them in without the background checks you would need to foster a child. I can think of two families where they re-homed two of the boys due to mental health issues that were not flagged before hand. In order to do the right thing the situation has become a ticking bomb.

TwistedReach

'Have you read any of the many previous explanations about why people are scared of claiming in France?'

No genuine refugee who has fled an actual warzone would be 'scared' of claiming asylum in France, one of the richest and safest countries in the world. Wanting to leave France for the UK pretty much self-defines you as an economic migrant.

Is that the reason there is a reluctance in UK foster carers to take teen male refugees?

have you read any of the explanations about why they feel frightened and risk their lives again?

OK Twisted - explain why they don't see France as preferable to a war zone?

Quotes from deleted posts that were not personal attacks stand.

Thanks for your reports, VertigoNun, we have been through the thread again and feel that we have struck the right balance between sense and fairness, and we have already made clear that we did not delete because of personal attacks.
We do realise that this is an emotive subject and these have been a long-ranging few threads, but we must ask again that you all stick to the discussion at hand and minimise the personal nature of the comments.

Allthe, I don't think I've called anyone on this thread racist.

We can't leave them to rot. They are people just like you and I, who were once doctors, engineers, bin men, nurses, with jobs and schools and now they have nothing and there is no hope for them back home.

ohyoubad, I agree, but I need to you to think about something.

Suppose we agreed to take in everybody from that camp.
What do you think will happen to the camp?

What will happen is this:-

Within weeks the camp will be FULL again

What then?

We take yet more?
The camp will empty briefly, then it will
Fill Up Again.

And so on and so on.

If people really stopped to look at the bigger picture, its an unsolvable situation.
No matter how many people we take in, there will be more to take their place.

The only thing that could work, would be for countries to get together ad help fund camps in their home country, so that when things hopefully settle, they are where they really need to be.