AIBU to be worried about the next Refugee crisis

[Gin96]

The numbers are starting to accelerate again, the poor people stuck in Greece camps but people from the EU have lost interest, I wonder how this is going to end? Will the EU open the borders again?

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jan/16/catastrophic-conditions-greet-refugees-arriving-on-lesbos

The other problem as I see it (and fail to see a way out of as I don't know enough to even begin to comment) is the lack of democracy in these countries. Also religions.

Our leaders can easily sell us a war when they have a dictatorship and horrific injustices occurring. But our intervention seems to make matters worse. Don't ask me the answer to that conundrum.

I know I feel like I come from an enlightened age/area of the world. But as usual, religious persecution and hatred is rife in the Middle East and East. We don't have to look too far from home either to see that it exists - without any basis in our case imo.

How do we solve this?

It's not a refugee crisis. Europe is more than capable of handling the relatively few who actually arrive here.
3.5 million refugees in Turkey- that's a crisis
1 million plus refugees in south Sudan. - that's a crisis
I million refugees in Bangladesh- that's a crisis
5 million displaced from Venezuela- that's a crisis.
Europe needs to get a grip and do the right thing. Its not a crisis - the numbers are small and the countries are rich.

You mean it's not a refugee crisis for us. We're far enough away being an island to be able to pick and choose rather than to have millions landing on our shores.

Exactly certainly isnt anywhere near a crisis for the uk. Although I'd argue it's not one for Europe either. The numbers are manageable and there are asylum systems in place to give protection to those who need it. This is an political failure, not a crisis of numbers.

The problem is people don’t trust who is coming into Europe, some of these people have been ISIS terrorists, it’s very hard to check. I don’t think anyone in the UK would have a problem with genuine lone refugee children coming to the UK but again there is no authorised checks in place to say they are definitely children. Men taking children’s places is just wrong, even if it’s just a few. There’s no reports telling us the true numbers of genuine refugee children that come to the UK. It’s not telling the general public the truth. Look at Rotherham, the lies the state told for multiculturalism, lies make it harder for the genuine cases. My heart brakes for these families they should in my opinion be let through to Europe. Children should be reunited with their families in the UK.

Those who want open borders and say it is not a crisis, if we announced open borders as Merkel effectively did and then got 1m (which may be quite helpful to Germany in the end as Germany has a shortage of people issue the UK does - partly because the UK let in earlier huge numbers of people and we have been having more babies than Germany does), then those currently making do with Mexico after they leave parts of South America or sticking with Greece on first entry or those stuck in Turkish camps might then want to be here and we certainly don't have the resources to take every refugee in the world.

a lot of which goes on the NHS which I don't use

Your children go to a private GP for basic care and preventative treatment such as vaccination?

The private GPs here won't treat anyone under 18. So you must shell out a lot of unnecessary cash?

Dont have the resources to take every refugee??

You know then vast majority of the world's 20.5 million refugees stay close to home in neighbouring counties?

The UK has NEVER taken 'massive' numbers of refugees..Never. it's quite a traditional actually.

The burden is shouldered by much poorer countries and the UK does the minimum requited under international law

No one wants to be a refugee. Its shit. Most refugees just want to go home.

we certainly don't have the resources to take every refugee in the world. but is anyone talking about taking in every single refugee in the world?

I don’t think anyone in the UK would have a problem with genuine lone refugee children coming to the UK but again there is no authorised checks in place to say they are definitely children. so perhaps start with younger children?

You mean it's not a refugee crisis forus. We're far enough away being an island to be able to pick and choose rather than to have millions landing on our shores

^ This is going to change dramatically with Brexit. At the moment the French government is activly helping to stop many migrants / refugees from crossing the Channel....

Why is it ok for turkey to host 3.6 million refugees while we, a far richer country, have only a few tens of thousands. How is that fair or just?

(My children are over 18 now. I have not o ften used the NHS and used it once in the last 15 years for example for a 10 min GP appointment but nor have I used private care either - I just look after myself and/or am very lucky).

Life is very unfair eg that I don't seem to get ill and others do. Each country decides the extent to which it wants to even things up or down. Turkey has taken a lot of refugees. The UK spends £13.4 billion on foreign aid a year - lot more than many countries which means my tax bills are very high etc and I work 6 or 7 days a week - working now sas i take a break to come on here and half of this day and every other day will go in direct tax and of the second half a good chunk will go in indirect tax).

As a nation the UK dose not choose to take in 3.6m refugees. It is our choice and most people in the UK don't want that number either. We do apparently have 1m people who chose to break the law and come here - I am not sure we really want law breakers but we certainly consider people abroad in camps who apply to the uk lawfully.

According to google we spend 70p in every £100 earned on aid. That really doesn’t sound very much considering people are dying from very basic lack of food/medicine/shelter. How much money do you honestly need with all your children grown

Sorry that was incorrect, it’s 70p of every £100 of tax.

The public have just voted in a government who will be taking a hard line on immigration.
Genuine question - has immigration decreased under ten years of Conservative rule? (I haven't voted in many years). There always seems to be talk of tougher immigration, but it seems to be something said to win votes.

We can’t just throw up our hands and say we don’t have enough housing for people already living in this country. The country is rich enough to provide for everyone living here, but due to the vast inequality between the rich and the poor (which is vaster than any other country in Western Europe) we leave British families to rear children in poverty, living in B&Bs and relying on food banks.

And also May's "JAM"'s. I agree to a certain extent. So get it sorted then, and maybe those of us who seem to be working harder than pervious generations to be rewarded with rather less will become a bit more generous.

However it is not that simple. Someone asked why Turkey is taking in more refugees than the UK. Quite apart from it's the nearest place, here's a few population density statistics. Turkey, 110 people per square km. France 119 people per square km. Germany, 232 people per square km. UK, 274 people per square km, and of that, England, 430 people per square km. Actually the agriculture in Britain is not rich enough to provide for all of its current population. Taking in a few children is one thing, but we cannot take in many more. We're already overcrowded.

On the question of net immigration it is currently about 250,000 a year to the UK of those people we know about and are lawfully here (plus the estimated 1m who are here illegally).

"In the year ending June 2019, long-term international migration continued to add to the UK population, as an estimated 212,000 more people moved to the UK with an intention to stay for 12 months or more than left the UK (net migration). Over the year, 609,000 people moved to the UK (immigration) and 397,000 people left the UK (emigration).

Long-term net migration, immigration and emigration have remained broadly stable since the end of 2016.

Since 2016, there has been a decrease in immigration for work; over the same period, immigration for study has been gradually increasing." www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/migrationstatisticsquarterlyreport/november2019

Not sure Turkey 'chose' to take 3.6 million refugees

And ffs the population density argument hardly flies. Bangladesh took 1 million Rohingya - one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the world.

Point is that uk doesnt have to take them all but is not exactly showing solidarity with other countries with a much higher burden.

And, @Xenia, since you're so concerned about the tax bill, refugees (if allowed to work) can be net contributors too.

That will be the Rohingya who fled across the border to the next country, are housed partly in camps, and who Bangladesh keeps trying to send back? The ones they’ve told the UN they can’t keep any more of, although it can’t be easy to close a land border? Are you asking us to provide camps for refugees then on a temporary basis only, rather than absorb them into the settled population? How are you going to get so many here? The ability to feed people matters. When our rich set the example by sharing more wealth with our own poor again, then perhaps you’ll be in a position to ask modern ‘rentier economy’ people to share their food.

No, I'm not, I am providing perspective. Yeah, Bangladesh's response hasnt been perfect but it's one of the poorest and most densely populated counties in the world. Plus they are trying to push back on Myanmar's (and increasingly indias) narrative that the Rohingya are bengali illegal migrants sent home.

But I do think the UK should take more and stop moaning as though.theres some kind of crisis - theres not. There are far poorer countries doing far more.

I wouldn’t criticise Bangladesh’s response. As you say they are dirt-poor. Unfortunately there is just no solution. No one is making more land. The human race has over bred, and there is no room anywhere, certainly not on this overcrowded island, for the kind of numbers you’re talking about - a million here, 3 million there. Entire nations of peoples who will not alter their laws and customs to ours, lose their identity and subsume. We can take a handful of kids easily enough, but what they’re asking for effectively is nations with national territory.

The only thing we can do is help fund the international efforts against the kind of hate that spurs genocide, but we could not stop that in Yugoslavia. The growth of violence against women and girls here and deteriorating relations with the Celtic countries suggests we can’t even do it for ourselves.

And keep up exoplanetary research of course, with ESA and NASA. Some hope.

There's plenty of room in the UK. Similar kinds of arguments were made when refusing to take Jewish refugees in the 1930s. Nice.

There is not plenty of room in the UK. I do not know what Jewish refugees were told in the 1930s nor do I greatly care as I didn’t tell them. I am interested in now, and the fact that our nation is already one of the most densely populated in Europe, 2nd only to the Netherlands, and can only feed 2/3rds of the population here already. The problems with our distribution system are real and mean we have quite enough homeless already. How high does the population have to go, how high do the food poverty stats and homelessness stats have to go before you would call it quits? What do you see as a sustainable level of human population here?

Not to mention, which part of the country are you going to give these - to reiterate - entire nations of peoples who have their own laws and customs and have no desire to subsume into ours? How are we going to create borders and what will the arrangements for them be? We seem to be having some trouble negotiating one set of those already, and as you mentioned the Jews, so is that last nation imposed on local populations.