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.

Because if you have ID cards you can require people to show them to access any service they require - healthcare, education, social housing, etc - and anyone who is stopped on the street must be able to able to provide their ID card. Sound like a terrible, Fascist idea? They have it in France. It's illegal in France not to carry ID card at all times and be able to present it, if requested, by the police.

Of course, the desperate will continue to come - it hasn't stopped them entering France - but it enables the authorities, employers, healthcare providers, etc, to identify those here illegally much more efficiently and it would deter health tourists. It's ridiculous that we have no checks on who is illegible for NHS healthcare, that anyone can pitch up at an NHS hospital and receive whatever they need. No wonder it's abused.

Also, if we create safe routes and allow people to apply before they arrive we will be able to save many more women and children who are often not strong enough to make the journey or are murdered/sold to sex traffickers en route.

How many would apply and how many would you say yes to?

If someone arrives without data by boat how do you get around international law that says they need to be processed

Plus where would you move them to?

Safe isn't "comfy" ffs op.

If there are safe alternatives to illegal routes, more people will use them.

The situation has been mismanaged by our current, and previous governments for the last 20 years. Globalisation was always going to create a situation where the ‘have nots’ want what the ‘haves’ have got. People traffickers know this and use this to sell the dream of the land of milk and honey. If you arrive on Uk shores claiming that all your documents have been lost/stolen, how can it be proved otherwise.

And to be fair if every single asylum seeker is genuine we still haven’t got the resources? What are the genuine costed out plans for 500 people arriving each day?

I predict some very turbulent times ahead. The right wing narrative can run with the reality of the situation and whip the general public into a frenzy. In a cost of living crisis where people are languishing in overcrowded accommodation, struggling to pay their bills and access the NHS of course it’s going to create problems and violence as already seen in many towns up and down the country.

Have you never heard of id card fraud?

From Parliament.uk website:

*Travel through a safe country can void a UK asylum claim. The UK Government’s position is that refugees should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.

People who have passed through a safe country can nevertheless be denied access to the UK asylum system. The law allows the Home Secretary to declare an asylum claim inadmissible if the person “has a connection to a safe third State”.*

ID cards won't dissuade people who are genuinely desperate and who have a decent chance of gaining asylum at the other end of a dangerous journey. They should dissuade people who have no justification for an asylum claim and whose intention (either off their own bat, or at the behest of people traffickers) is to live under the radar and work in the black economy...or worse.

Different problems, different tactics. The Med boats require a huge international approach which I frankly despair of in the current state of the world, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do things that will help with other aspects of the issue.

Have you never heard of id card fraud?

That's not a reason not to bring them in. There will always be criminals. We have passports, don't we?

We quite literally do not. If this gentleman does in fact exist, the migration route he used will be long closed.

I feel like crying really, I just want a normal government again.

We've had increasing incompetence, corruption and self-created chaos since the Tories got their majority in 2015.

I want the UK to get back out into the world, work with Europe and other partners, make things start working again - we need proper global action.

Cutting the aid budget was so stupid, we should be building up strength across the globe, not retreating more and more into isolationist madness.

We don’t have Ukrainians drowning in the channel. Safe routes do work. It doesn’t solve what happens when people arrive but it does stop people dying on the way here.

Pretty sure that’s the position from the government’s illegal Migration Bill. They haven’t given it the full force of the law. And it’s unlikely to be legal as far as I’m aware.

This. And this is how it should be.

Women and children (and the elderly) given safe passage and looked after because they WANT TO GO HOME.

I don't understand why people think we have the money and resources to bring thousands of young men over, house and feed them, only for them to eventually want to bring their wife, 6 children and parents over - when unless they are highly educated, they can't afford to look after them. So who does it fall to? Us, again.

We cannot help everyone, as lovely as it would be. And no, I don't know what the answer is.

My main question is to those who are happy to let as many as possible in - will you be happy to open your home to them? Young, single men with no documents to say who they are, staying in your home with your children? Thought not.

People are using traffickers already and getting asylum though. Smugglers are not a barrier to gaining entry

I think if people put energy into ID cards as the solution they’ll be disappointed. In the same way Med crossings are still rising.

We say yes to majority of people who cross in boats, they’d have an ID card and it wouldn’t impact numbers much.

Yes but it is just a big distraction. Huge inconvenience for everyone for something that won't work.

Those without NBS numbers already have to provide biometric id. Why do you need another system?

NHS fraud is not high.

Sent back to where though? Now that we're no longer in the EU, we can't send people back to France. Once people who arrive by boat are here, we're kind of stuck with them.

"it needs massive, complex, long term, global solutions"

This will not happen. People need to realise that getting sovereign nations to agree to a series of policies for any kind of action is nigh on impossible, unless you horse-trade like fuck (and that has cost). Even when you've got a treaty-bound block, like the EU, there are always high tensions: just look at Poland and Germany within the EU at the moment.

"If they are choosing the UK it is likely because of language, historical links or wider familial/cultural links."

This argument fails when you have migrants from Albania.

We need, as a country, to be realistic and practical about this situation. If we continue to allow thousands of low-skilled migrants into the country, it will eventually crash our welfare system and the NHS. But before it does that, there will be a backlash. And it has the potential to get very nasty.

You cannot have open borders and a welfare state. You cannot have open borders and safe streets without an authoritarian police force. It is impossible to police by community consent if there is no community in the first place.

"Immigration control is broken - deliberately."

People have short memories. This situation began roughly twenty three years ago. The first time I was alerted to it was when 73 foreign nationals turned up in a small village in my area with bags and no one knew who they were or what they were doing there. I then spoke off the record to people working in immigration processing: turns out the policies changed around 2000 and they could no longer apprehend in the way they formerly did, and case workers were now being encouraged to sign off all applications, even ones that were quite obviously dodgy.

"The solution is we accept a capped number of real refugees (with a focus on women and children). Perhaps 50-60k a year."

In two years, this is 100,000 to 120,000 people. This is more than the size of the population of Durham. Over ten years, it is a Manchester.

"If taking in lots of refugees is detrimental to our country then that’s just the price we have to pay for starting illegal wars and fucking up the stability in other people’s countries."

"Detrimental to our country" might mean we end up with a hard right government in twenty years time, and no NHS or welfare system. You are obviously willing to gamble on that. I am not.

Why would France take people back anyway? It’s not like they are problem free, they have their own tensions and tent accommodation

left Africa to get to a financially better country

Is a bit of a giveaway, isn't it?

Do you think other migrants don't want to go home? Of course they do. Ukrainians aren't unique. Nor is there any guarantee that even they will, in fact, return home.

This.

I am yet to be persuaded that endangering your child’s life is necessary to escape France.

I don't normally read the Guardian or Observer much; however yesterday's Observer had a very interesting article saying that we are basically not a rich country. If we took the south east out of the equation we would be no better than middle income developing countries. Basically we can't afford to keep borrowing, we can't afford the infrastructure we have at present.How can we provide for an extra 600,000 people per year? Yes, the Tories have cocked up for the last 13 years, but quite frankly the last Labour government were not much better. Being kind is much easier when your own needs are being met.

Climate change means within the next few decades there may well be 100s of millions of refugees. Wait till that happens and all the good intentions in the world will look hopelessly naive.

I want to help them too, but let's be honest, we can't take everyone and at some point we'll actually have to maintain our borders. The only way to sensibly manage migration is broadly one in, one out until infrastructure is in place. Hotels and a barge are not it.

Unmanaged migration leads to a housing shortage, collapsing public services and internal strife with a drift to the right.

Ukrainians have thrown the kitchen sink at liberating their country. Ukrainian men have stayed put to do this. That’s the difference!