To think people who want "safe routes to migration" into the UK are hopelessly naive

[ForestGoblin]

We could spend every penny of public money on bringing refugees to the UK in comfy and safe boats and planes. We could make it mandatory for every home to provide accommodation and food. We could ban healthcare for anyone except refugees.

And there would still be thousands and thousands of boat crossings every year and millions more people languishing in bad situations and trying to figure out how to get here or elsewhere in northern Europe.

It's a crap situation. Life is bad. I feel dreadful for them.

But "safe routes" is a load of glib nonsense that can't work.

I agree. Does anyone advocating safe routes want to say a figure yet?

Since no one has answered I’ll start with 500k applications, 100k yes 400k ready to pay a smuggler and use international law

Any increase?

That’s one country, how many others

@Eleganz

you said it spot on.
and the Tory (sorry Brexit party) don't want people to know or see loads of the issues are to do with Brexit.

You said it .

@cheezncrackers
Your point might be interesting if it wasn’t based on a total fabrication.

https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-on-the-uk/
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/#

i can only assume you can read because your views come straight from the DailyMail fan club. Hope this helps.

I think I read somewhere that overall deaths have remained about the same as usual over the last 5 years or so, including the pandemic years. There was a big spike in 2020 but it was followed by a trough the following year.

But in terms of reducing the population, 228,000 is a tiny number. The world population would need to reduce by at least 50% (i.e. by about 4,000,000,000) in order to ease pressure on the natural environment.

The only reasonable answer to that is to tell you to try reading a history book.

The right is there now, in August 2023, yes. At some point in the future it will certainly no longer be there because states can only maintain the imposition of laws on a population against their will for a limited period of time. In the meantime, the laws producing that right remain illegitimate and immoral.

If we have to count all the British women who are "raped and don't even realise it" to make up the numbers...

(By the way, I don't object to migration personally, but I think we need to be honest about limits, which is something that those who say "there should be safe routes" never really acknowledge.

What would the "safe routes"/ideal system look like?

• a (quota? Unlimited number?) of people who could apply from any countries where their lives are shit and they suffer persecution? (From which countries? Current refugee conventions just provide for freedom from persecution, which means if you are from a persecuted minority in Gujarat, you can apply - India is not overall an unsafe country itself, but life is hard for minorities in specific places. How do you select those who should have safe routes?). If we turn them down, can they appeal? Is it just a ballot? Do we send anyone else home or to an agreed EU hub if they come illegally and lose documents?

• an additional set of people who can apply more easily for skilled professions or shortage unskilled professions - do they have to stay working in such professions? Do they get deported if they do not?

How should it work? I am honestly really interested!)

You don’t get to choose the country, only to seek asylum away from the place of persecution

It is within international law that protection can be in another location.

Germany is still paying ongoing reparations to Holocaust survivors - €1.3Bn this year alone.

WorldCuppa

Are you sure you have read your Migration Observatory link? They take a balanced view - half of the studies in table 1 show a positive fiscal impact of immigration and half show a negative effect. They also point out differences between migrant groups and the limitations of available data etc.

Not true. As a country, we don't make laws by having referenda on every law, therefore every time we have an election we are holding a democratic vote on the laws in place. If there is a groundswell of opinion for or against any change in the law, it will find its way into a manifesto and if the electorate wants the change in question it will vote for the party concerned. If a government keeps laws in place against the wishes of the electorate, they will be voted out. That is how democracy works.

We have been signatories to various treaties obligating us to take refugees for decades. Hence the fact, amongst other matters, that we took Jewish refugees in the 30s. Governments have repeatedly been elected and re-elected over that period despite freely complying with those obligations or making it clear that they intend to do so. Perhaps most significantly, political parties that want us to depart from or water down those obligations have not been elected.

Frankly, if you don't understand basic constitutional reality like that, it throws a very clear light on just how little weight should be attached to your views.

JanieEyre
the refugee crisis is vastly different now to what countries signed up too, decades ago, I can never remember small boats with men in crossing the channel to try and claim asylum.

@JanieEyre

The vast majority of people in all western countries have no idea what the actual laws on asylum are and, again, that's not accidental. The idea that elections are votes on the laws currently in place is therefore a farce. Nor is it true that laws are changed when a 'groundswell' of public opinion wants it. As I've already said many times, mass immigration has been a cross-party consensus in every western country for decades. That's why it has continued regardless of which party is in power.

Majorities of all western countries have wanted an end to mass immigration for decades and those majorities are bigger now than ever. Yet the laws that implement that policy remain in force everywhere, and it continues. What you describe as constitutional reality is utter fiction. If any western state actually believed that international law on asylum would survive an open democratic debate they would have long since chosen the obvious and easy option of legitimizing those laws through referenda. They know exactly what the outcome would be which is why they will never do it. And you're not advocating for it either, are you?

That's exactly the kind of discussion the advocates of mass immigration will do anything to shut down. Asylum laws that were acceptable and generally supported in the specific historical, technological, demographic, religious, economic and political context of 1930's Europe, or 1951 Europe, are utterly insane in 2023.

advocates of mass immigration

Welcome to the culture wars!

Thanks for your contribution. If you have a point, do feel free to make it, anytime.

Why is that not accurate?

What do you advocate?

If a limit how do you impose it?

This is all true.

Better ask the party who has been in power for the last 13 years?

Unfortunately, out of the EU and with little sign of agreements, there is no limit that can be imposed.

If the weather is fine for the next 6 months & 200k migrants chose to cross the channel, then the UK will have to take them, just as Greece & Italy have had too.

I made the point I wanted to.

It was 'small boats week' last week on the Tories' desperate attempt to gain back some of their lost votes.

They've no bloody answers either - attacking anyone who doesn't want to leave people to drown is all they've got.

Fucking sick of the culture wars.

Watched the useless Sunak on the news just now, moaning on about the cost to taxpayers of his party's deliberate choice to make people wait months/years for outcomes.

If it’s Brexit why is Italy finding it difficult, the EU seeing tension and drownings in the Med rising?

Why are there protests in NY over tent accommodation?

I think you’re ignoring basic changes in the global situation and climate change

@Pollyputhekettleon is right to say laws set up in 1951 are going to be strained as mass migration picks up

100%. This. We have a totally different set of circumstances today.

There is absolutely increasing recognition that mass migration has gone too far. Everyday people want our borders to be enforced and more controls on immigration (both asylum seeking and other visa types). Not just in the UK but all over Europe.

The elites react by saying everyday people are fascists. Look at Germany this week re: saying AfD should be banned...