To think we will never know the true numbers

[NovoJester]

... of migrants who have died whilst crossing the channel. I’ve just seen Ahmad Al Rashid’s (trustee of Refugees at Home) Interview and his Facebook post on his own journey where people died alongside him in a refrigerated lorry. A few others have shared their stories. I firmly believe not enough has been done to reduce these deaths and wonder if they have been grossly under counted and reported to authorities now.

Those poor people and their poor families.

^You are so full of strawman nastiness I am not even going to attempt to counter your ridiculous assertions.
Of course I don't have any data on illegal immigration and that doesn't mean I am as so so fucking charmingly put it "just spouting shit."

Jesus Christ.^

bye then.

Again, more evidence that these people can't sustain any kind of cogent argument.

My point remains one of sheer practicality.

We have no more room or resources to keep supporting influxes of other countries' people in the UK. We have enough problems here already. It's no good middle class rich people continually trying to tell us that there is room and resources when we know damn well there isn't, and that we're all racists when we point out facts. I haven't mentioned the colour of anyone's skin ffs. Let me know when you've given your own houses and jobs to these people abroad and taken your place in the foodbank queue behind someone here working full time for a pittance already, or when you have sorted this country's housing and economic directions out.

I know there's no point, I've posted the statistics on threads before and been completely ignored, but I feel I should at least attempt to convey the facts! Maybe one person reading will learn something new.

We have no more room or resources to keep supporting influxes of other countries' people in the UK.

Lebanon has managed in infinitely greater numbers with far fewer resources than we have.

Mamamia456 is a world of difference between saying someone is categorised as having gained illegal entry and dehumanising them by calling them “illegals”.
ImGoingToBangYourHeadsTogether HMRC have no jurisdiction outside the UK.
Very poor people often get additional support and are frequently better off than those whose parents are slightly higher earners. It is not a debt like other debts and no payment is required until you are earning over a certain amount. I don’t necessarily agree with student debt but that’s a different argument. Debt is used as an excuse not a reason to avoid gaining qualifications. Why should you not have to contribute towards gaining qualifications that lead to a better life?

mumsnet does of course lean toward the middle classes, the home owners,those who hire staff etc. I guess they dont live in inner city areas. If you ca afford to send young Jocasta to the montessori and live in suburbua then competition for such things as school places,jobs and housing might not be high on your agenda. I know several areas of Manchester for example that were once proud working class areas,victorian terraces all proudly kept,families brought up in them in a traditional manner . Those areas have slowly been decimated by the likes of BTL landlords and similar. The Mayor of Manchester Mr Andy "open arms" Burnham, welcomes migrants and asylum seekers to manchester. Many southern authorities have rejected them and so are only too keen to shunt them up north well out of the way. Those same once proud areas are now being over run with migrants. They dont settle in the so called nicer areas of Didsbury and Chorlton as the middle classes live there. The housing lists swell and we have homeless people out there tonight in the cold but we CAN accommodate newcomers many of whom have tenuous claim to be here and are simply here because of economic reasons and they know the UK is a soft touch.

Again, more evidence that these people can't sustain any kind of cogent argument.

Your referring to me as "these people" is extremely offensive but you're supposed to be the tolerant one?
As for your "cogent argument" copy and paste - don't make me laugh.

Cherry Pavlova - What would you like to call someone who has entered the UK illegally if you don't think they should be referred to as an illegal immigrant?

@KnifeAngel and others who said we give too much..
If you arrive in the UK as an asylum seeker you receive £37.75 a week
£3-5 more a week if you have a newborn - 3 year old.
You will receive housing but:

“You’ll be given somewhere to live if you need it. This could be in a flat, house, hostel or bed and breakfast.

You can’t choose where you live. It’s unlikely you’ll get to live in London or south-east England.”

All this information is from the government’s own Asylum Support website. Find it here:
www.gov.uk/asylum-support/what-youll-get

I can’t imagine how anyone with a shred of humanity could think that’s “so much”.

Housing and in work poverty won't be addressed by immigration policies because those are domestic social and economic issues.

As for new entrants into the UK I would argue, using my example upthread of descendants of the black conscript killed fighting for another country and descendants of the white soldier doing the same, that legality isn't always a full picture as to whether someone is or isn't where they 'should' necessarily be. People move where they move for multiple reasons whether they are legally entitled to or not and motivation is broadly the same - to improve their economic status and safety/quality of life. I get that globalisation brings about a fortress mentality but at the same time there are many anomalies and inequities built into UK immigration law so I don't know how useful it is to see it as some kind of arbiter of truth.

If someone migrates here illegally they've presumably got their reasons, it's pretty difficult to do and they're not entitled to public funds anyway so the impact is fairly low.

If someone comes here as an asylum seeker again they've presumably got their reasons, they're entitled to minimal state help and the numbers aren't huge given the global number of displaced people.

The only issue with both groups are the criminal gangs associated with them, but that's what you get when you have immigration policies. You can't make an activity (going to live in a different country) illegal when it's an activity that is perceived as personally beneficial and expect that everyone who wants to benefit from it will shrug their shoulders and say oh well, that's that then. Of course they're not going to do that. They'll just break the law. But they are unlikely to succeed on their own, so you get the traffickers and slavers. It's a predictable consequence of limiting entry.

Lebanon has managed in infinitely greater numbers with far fewer resources than we have.

I can't tell if you're joking? The refugee crises have practically broken Lebanon. They're not managing at all.

To those saying what about countries they passed through, a young Kurdish lad was explaining on the radio. He speaks English (as well as most natives), has family here and knows how badly they are treated in some other countries. (He has asylum and is rebuilding his life)

To reach the same population density as the UK Germany would need it's population to increase by 15 million, France 83 million, Italy 22 million and Spain 91 million.

Yes, there might still be room in the UK and many EU countries are currently taking in more than the UK but it isn't a level playing field.

No one should have to make the decision to cross the Med or the Channel on an inflatable and I pity anyone who is that desperate.

IMO the lorry driver involved in the current incident is a small link in a very long chain. I hope that he tells everything that he knows and the the people who profit the most are brought to the justice they deserve.

Discussing the lorry driver may get the thread deleted as he hasn't been found guilty of anything yet.

Turkey is also at crisis point. This is a country that doesn't even have national provision of potable water ffs.

As for your "cogent argument" copy and paste - don't make me laugh.

I'm very willing to have a conversation with you based on facts and arguments. If you can explain to me:

(i) why you think the Eurostat data that shows we take fewer refugees per capita than other larger EU states is false

(ii) why you think we may have more unaccounted for illegal immigrants than other major states, when they are in Schengen, whereas we have a sea border that you have to cross inside a refrigerated lorry or on the outside of a Eurostar

I would actually be interested in hearing that. We might both learn something from the discussion. I'm not holding my breath though.

Turkey is also at crisis point. This is a country that doesn't even have national provision of potable water ffs

But according to some here, that's as it should be. Because Turkey is next door it should take ALL the refugees, apparently. An accident of geography absolves the rest of the world from helping.

Jeeze, it's depressing to read some of these posts.

That table shows we are 5th out of the EU 28 for asylum applications for the period shown.

Yes, but we're the fourth biggest country. We are taking less than our 'fair share'.

What are you on about @thedancingbear? Geographically we’re the eighth biggest country in the EU, not the fourth.

Arnoldthecat, I spent my formative years on a rough estate in South Wales and am unlikely ever to go near a montessori nursery.

The thing that ripped the economic and social fabric out of where I grew up, as well as big swathes of the north-west and north-east, was the dismantlement of heavy industry in the 80s and 90s. This had nothing to do with racism but the policies of the tories, and subsequently new labour who did too little to fix things.

If you go to the Welsh valleys, or Teeside, or any of these places, you'll see they have gone (further) to shit despite being almost exclusively white British. It's true that in some of the bigger cities lots of immigrants have moved into these areas, but that's because they can afford to live there.

In other words, there are immigrants in the areas because the areas have gone to shit, not the other way round. Of course they're not going to live in fucking Altrincham or Didsbury, because they don't have a pot to piss in.

It's another example of (particularly right-wing) politicians shafting ordinary people, then holding their noses and pointing at the foreigners.

But relaxing our immigration policies isn’t the answer either, as far as I can see.

I'm on about population - we're actually the third biggest (I thought Italy was slightly bigger than us but I think I was thinking just of England and Wales).

By population density we're somewhere mid-table, but weirdly unbalanced - the south-east and north-west are overcrowded but there are other parts of the UK that are relatively empty. We are not 'running out of space'.

Yeah I know. Not only on here either. For weeks the media has been full of condemnation for a country with limited infrastructure taking action when it's next door to a brutal war that has seen millions of refugees arrive in its borders and face daily cross border, domestic and neighbouring threats while other actors engage in, to be charitable, nebulous activity in relation to those threats. Meanwhile the same people who condemn it completely lose their shit at the prospect of relatively miniscule small numbers cross the channel referencing the imminent social and economic collapse that this will lead to if it continues.

That was @saraclara.

Remember this,,every single person entering this country is competing with you,your children and your grand children for housing,healthcare,school, food,water,energy,jobs and indeed space

That's a really horrible way to look at humanity. What about all the migrants who create jobs? Who have the better educations because they have applied themselves? Who start their own schools? Have ties to energy companies in their own countries where we source a lot of our energy needs?

Meanwhile the same people who condemn it completely lose their shit at the prospect of relatively miniscule small numbers cross the channel referencing the imminent social and economic collapse that this will lead to if it continues.

Quite. I think, a while ago, the Home Office raised the alarm that as many as 1000 illegal immigrants per week were crossing the Channel. This figure is, by definition, almost certainly an exaggeration. But even if it's true, it adds up to around 1m people - or a medium-sized city - per century. Of course the reality is probably that the figure is a lot lower.