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.

The other issue with WW2 (and I speak as someone who had family members directly affected) is that we did all pull together and help, but it was intended to be temporary help. Yes in the event there were children whose families all died and they remained in the UK, but the original hope for most was very much that those children would be kept safe for the duration of the war and would then be able to return to their homes and their families (whether direct or extended families).

That's a completely different scenario to what we are facing today which, lets not kid ourselves, is not about young homeless unaccompanied children however much some might like to focus on those few in order to pile on the guilt.

zzzzz and what 'plenty of space' is that exactly? We are already in a housing crisis where more homes need built to cope with the amount of people already citizens here, if we take every person at Calais (and then the rest who will follow and so on and so forth) what would your answer be then? Oh it's fine we will just built over every green space available, obliterate every village and town and farm in the uk to build houses for these people, it's fine it's not as if we need farm land to have food on the table or anything

i still want to know who you think should pay for this zzzz
or do you want the most vulnerable to pay again

Also a lot of our idyllic country sides are what pulls tourists and visitors here making revenue, I live in a village in Scotland, I love it and I chose to live here for that exact reason, it's a small close knit community, with a shop and a small school, I can honestly say I would be moving if the countryside where I live ceased to exist

Fundamentally though Calais is really the tiniest tip of the iceberg. The 'Calais situation' can't be solved in isolation, because it's a product not just of conflict in the Middle East but of globalisation. Many of the people at Calais are not Syrians but Afghans, South Asians, North or West Africans. There is conflict and persecution all over the world: millions of people meet the criteria for the Dublin convention on refugees, and millions more know this fact than used to. It's also easier to travel than it used to be; information travels more quickly than it used to, via social media and mobile phones; and capitalism has lifted millions more just enough out of poverty to be able to see that others elsewhere have a nicer life than they do, and to scrape together the money to attempt the journey. This is only going to escalate. The Great Migration is just beginning, and it's a product not of poverty but of relative wealth.

Those who are arguing that we should be kind and human and let all the poor suffering people-who-we-are-equal-to-and-therefore-have-a-duty-to in: how many do you really, truly think we should take? Because there are not hundreds, or thousands, but millions, or hundreds of millions. Do we really believe that we can meet idealistic refugee standards that were set in an age when refugees numbered in the mere tens or hundreds annually? Those standards, I'd argue, are so generous precisely because the age that created them knew they would never be invoked at any kind of scale. That's changed now. As someone said upthread, the response needs to be a rational one, not an emotional one.

Still no answer to the FC problem. It's difficult to place teen male refugees, how can we take these unaccompanied children in Calais? Why are the French not helping these children?

I'm not saying that we should take everyone in Calais, indeed as Ive already said, many of them have sort asylum in France. Some of them don't meet the UN definition of a refugee. But these people cannot be left to rot where they are. They need to be processed and those who have a legal right to be allowed to seek asylum in the UK should be allowed in. Those who don't either need to be returned, where that is possible, or if it is not they need to be housed humanely.

This problem will not go away by clamping down on all the borders. All that will happen is that at every border there will be these awful camps.

Its not going to be easy. Our homeless issue in the UK is down to complex issues, not down to government finance issues But of you dont accept that argument, then its difficult to move on from there.

There is no way that we can find all of the solutions in a discussion on mn. With climate change and growing conflicts we are in the early stages of this crisis. And it is a global crisis to which I have no idea of what the answers are. All I know is that our response needs to be humane and not just about protectionism.

As to the French not helping the children? I don't know why. I think they are stuck in the middle being used as a political football.

Not very many would have a legal right to asylum in the UK. The rules are that they have to seek asylum in the first country they arrive at - this is never going to be the UK if they've travelled across Europe.

Actually, I think it does need to be about protectionism to an extent - otherwise you risk creating serious problems elsewhere in your own country which solves no problem whatsoever.

We can't provide a home for these children either, as foster carers are reluctant to take male teen refugees. Unaccompanied children in Calais are not five year old girls.

How are we paying for it ZZZ? Please answer because I'm genuinely interested. Does every person in the UK have to "donate" a particular amount? For how long? for ever?

I have great sympathy for the Syrians in refugee camps and I do think Britain should be taking our fair share of them.

However, I do not have the same sympathy for the economic migrants from Morocco and Algeria. Their lives are not in danger although the social and economic conditions in those countries are challenging. I don't blame them for trying but they are not true asylum seekers. They should be sent home unless they can show a specific risk and I say this as someone who is married to a man who came to Britain as an Asylum Seeker from the violence in Algeria in the 1990's (DH had been recognised as Refugee under the 1951 Convention when I met him).

you say we...
but the reality it won't work like that, the government have slashed councils budgets, social care is in free fall. SEN and SN provision is being cut.
so you want already stretched to breaking point councils to be stretched further.
the most vulnerable will be the ones that will pay.

Some of those 'young' teen boys aren't that young though as pointed out upthread. Some of them are pretending to be younger to gain entry

zzz Why don't you spend a weekend at Calais helping out at the camp? Or will you come up with a reason to be exempt?

Kitten, as soon as you take any number from Calais the numbers there will swell up. People hear what the want to hear, the information that will travel is that people are taken in and it will travel far and the camps will only become more and bigger. How about Dunkerque?

It's not solving the problem although it will provide relief for the few accepted. What about the others?

We need a sort of recovery for the whole ME region, but then of course that's all mess now.

I scared of the future, I think the world as we know it will be over soon.

Redhat:

Germany's finance minister has recently proposed a European union wide petrol tax to help fund the migrant crisis.

He floated the idea and it was swiftly rejected by his own party leadership.

The headache of imposing a Europe wide tax would be phenomenal. You have to have everyone buying in since it has be to be administered country by country.

Pay for it how?

zzzz I think you are being deliberately goady

The thing is, if we let everyone in the camps at Calais in it wouldn't solve the problem - next week there would be another camp full, and another and another. At what point do we stop taking people? I think the kindest thing is to not take any in the first place - build more refugee camps nearer to their home countries and just keep returning people back to them. That way they will get the message and stop risking their lives in boats.