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.

Sounds like the perfect place to concrete over and build a big new estate, @LakieLady. How many houses do you think we could fit on there - 500? 1,000?

Tens of thousands, I should think, but the national park authority would fight it tooth and nail.

You'd need to massively upgrade the tiny rural roads that run along 3 sides of the area, too. The 4th side could have a feeder road onto an existing dual carriageway (and a flyover, and/or a roundabout).

For those saying that they travel through other countries (so called safe countries) , well many countries in Europe are not safe for Muslims and/or black people.

The UK is racist but nothing on the scale of some other countries. Migrants and asylum seekers know this. It's nothing to do with benefit system etc, Germany, France, Holland, and UK are far more desirable than Spain, Bulgaria and Eastern bloc countries. Italy is racist but not on the scale of Poland or yugoslavia, for instance. This is discussed and known among migrant communities and people fleeing war torn countries.

Haunted mess - Stop being so dramatic and trying to twist what has been said on this thread.

Go and find something useful to do.

@Mamamia456

It's called calling out fascist thinking. I find it a very useful thing to do. Thanks

It's called calling out fascist thinking. I find it a very useful thing to do. Thanks

In actual fact it's a load of erratic claptrap. Culling a population is quite separate from managing immigration, which is what all modern Western welfare states must do in order to remain modern Western welfare states.

I agree EntropyRising. As long as you're not murdering millions of people, intolerance and xenophobia are probably fine.

People have come on here and come out with the usual nasty shit:

(i) they come here and take our jobs
(ii) they don't want to work, they just sponge off our benefits
(iii) the country is full up

And each has been dismantled using facts and arguments. The apologists have been challenged to counter each of these and have refused to engage; they've just said things like 'you're being ridiculous' , you're spouting 'claptrap', and telling us to 'fuck off' Tells you all you need to know about that side of the argument.

How am I shutting down debate? If you think the facts people have advanced are incorrect, or the arguments can be rebutted, then explain how and why. I won't hold my breath.

And show me where the abuse flowing the other way is. Specific examples please.

Last, no-one is say that all borders should be open. All people are doing is challenging the usual xenophobic tropes:

(i) they come here and take our jobs
(ii) they don't want to work, they just sponge off our benefits
(iii) the country is full up

that get repeated over and over, here and elsewhere.

dancingbear you've shown yourself to be rather unpleasant, but I will answer your points.

Last, no-one is say that all borders should be open. All people are doing is challenging the usual xenophobic tropes:

(i) they come here and take our jobs
(ii) they don't want to work, they just sponge off our benefits
(iii) the country is full up

So if you're not proposing open borders, then you're in agreement with limiting immigration. How would you limit it?

There's no evidence that immigrants rely on benefits any more than native populations. I haven't seen any mention of this.

As for the country being full up, well, there was a 10% or so increase in population in the noughties and that's overwhelmingly down to immigration. The UK now has amongst the highest population densities in Europe. Quite separately from immigration, the UK really needs to focus on developing other corners of the UK so as to redress the SE/rest of UK imbalance but it's not on to suggest that we just build all over open fields to accommodate immigration.

Does anyone care about declining biodiversity? I certainly do.

As for immigrants 'taking our jobs', the point that has actually been made is that a freeflowing tap of cheap Eastern European labour has impacted communities enormously. Someone made a point about the Lake District workforce being broadly supplanted by Eastern Europeans over the past years, and the response is 'oh well that's the rise of the super-rich and second home ownership driving out the locals', as if the current work force doesn't need to house itself? Of course they do, they just accept a lower standard of living i.e. they have driven down real wages.

Immigration on the main is good for the economy, but firstly, there are winners and losers and secondly, people are quite right to worry about the effect of a growing population on the environment.

The fascist sentiment that has no issue with people being trafficked in horrific circumstances and then sold into modern slavery (so there are jobs to do but done as slaves) is the same fascist mentality that is able to quickly jump to other groups being viewed as less than human, a burden and disposable. Like the disabled, the sick, the elderly. We then get to the undesirables, like Jews. Which opens up a whole can of nasty thinking.

It's where that thinking on here that is readily espoused by many rapidly leads to. We're full up. It's Us against Them.

It's fine when you're part of the Us but you can just as quickly become Them under fascist thinking.

The fascist sentiment that has no issue with people being trafficked in horrific circumstances and then sold into modern slavery (so there are jobs to do but done as slaves) is the same fascist mentality that is able to quickly jump to other groups being viewed as less than human, a burden and disposable

Yeah, it's only you that cares about the 39 people who died in a refrigerated truck. The rest of us are pleased.

What a load of sanctimony on this thread. Please try to get a grip.

@EntropyRising

Are you pleased? I do hope not. Certainly you come across as indifferent and reluctant to unpick where your right wing thinking is coming from and the reasons that lead to such desperate measures from desperate people.

Keep asking why and you might just start to tap back into your repressed humanity. It is in there, somewhere.

I hope