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.

@JamSandle "There are plenty of other places that could take people in too, like Japan, South Korea, the UAE. But they refuse to."

Out of interest, why did you choose those countries in particular?

It's possible to think that people are in tragically desperate circumstances, that each individual person is behaving entirely rationally under the conditions they find themselves in, and also that the UK needs to have limits on immigration that are dictated by the ability of this country to provide rather than by the circumstances of the people applying.

Because both Japan and South Korea have plummeting populations and need immigration to survive in future. They still don't have a friendly immigration process.

As for EAU, they have plenty of resource to help out but don't.

Sorry, UAE 🙈

Ok check out the Aus process and drop in numbers.

Currently there are zero people on Nauru as it works as a way to stop smugglers. People will not pay

It also counters the claim in another post that 1000 isn’t enough. You don’t need it as people will not pay to go to another location. You start from those arriving now not people already here.

If there are no loopholes it would work, according to the politician who set up Aus version

The U.K. has an aging population and labour shortages in all sorts of skilled and unskilled areas. Like it or not we are going to need immigration.It’s why asylum seekers make up only a small % of total migration but the vast majority of people entering on small boats.

Foreign aid has been reduced however it is still a very generous 0.5% of gross national income ( £12.8 billion in 2022 ). There is a plan to increase this back up to 0.7% and I guess ultimately back up to 1%.

Every UK citizen currently contributes 0.5p of every £1 revenue we all create. I simply don't agree that our efforts are not good enough.

We also have a legal immigration friendly environment, net 600 000 people last year - too many for infrastructure to cope at the moment. Yet still, nobody is anti immigration for skilled shortage occupations, which improve the country.

The better we do as a country ( increase GDP, increase productivity, reduce taxes, attract business and investment, create more jobs. reduce the size of the state ), the more our national revenue increases, the more money is available for the foreign aid budget. For genuine refugees and displaced in or near their home countries - where they can do the most good for their own countries.

A large welfare state (more than 50% currently take more out than they put in) plus uncontrolled immigration is a race to the bottom. It is not uncaring to see the need for a strong economy of highly productive adults - controlled sensibly so that infrastructure can keep up and support the population.

Money coming in has to match money going out.

I always think of it as a life raft (pardon the analogy, given the topic) - if the rescue ship doesn't remain strongly efficient with the right amount of people on board & then takes too many on board, the whole life raft goes down.

It's no longer available to help anyone else. What's the use of that?

(There are also are urgent questions needing to be answered as to why the UK approve three fold the amount of asylum applications than any other EU state. The law needs revising - another topic )

Australia doesn't have the colonial history we do, or geographical position. Entirely incomparable imo.

On a good weather day, we can see 100s of people cross, so Rwanda would exceed the numbers (1000) in 24/48hrs.... then what?

One way Australia reduced numbers by escorting back boats but they weren't rubber dinghies.... shall we do that too?

I find it quite incredible that a boat in French waters, is escorted to the UK by French authorities, well, actually i don't, its what we voted for.

That’s up to the government of the day to decide. But don’t pretend that wanting to grant asylum to literally no refugees is for any reason other than racism.

People won’t pay to come in 1000s that’s how it works

Listen to the call, he explains it well and he has the experience.

I think the politician who set that up may have a somewhat one sided view of its success.

I wondered when Australia would be brought up as an excuse for the Rwanda policy.

The push backs - not the off shore processing- that made the difference.

www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-did-australian-offshore-asylum-system-reduce-boat-crossings

It’s more that people don’t think safe routes will stop the boats

So you’ll get the number that is capped plus international law will still mean processing of boats which arrive

You’ll get both

I have, we've not a comparable situation.

IF capacity in Rwanda was say 50k & we deported all refugees there, then yes i can see the argument but not 1000 or even 2000.

All that would happen is we'd deport 1000 over say 2 weeks and meanwhile, hotels barges etc would fill up and the asylum seekers would still come...

If being stuck in temp accommodation and having no work, no access to family or money for years on end is no deterrent, then i fail to see how sending back a tiny proportion of new arrivals will work.

No, i'm afraid until we work with the EU on this, then migrants will continue to cross the channel.

Your link says inconclusive.

It’s not an excuse it’s a process that has worked for Aus. Either think about how other countries have done it or not, but the latter won’t help much.

‘Andreas Schloenhardt, professor of criminal law at the University of Queensland, told FactCheck to “keep in mind that the Australian Government implemented a suite of measures, which makes it difficult to point to the specific effect of any one of them.”

So, we have some possible alternative explanations for the decline in boat arrivals, though none of them are proven.

They're not any more France's problem than ours. I get fed up of that narrative. France takes far more refugees than we do. It's complicated.

Yes Europe is similar to Japan and South Korea.

Would immigration not be beneficial in Japan and South Korea too then?

France offered to build a processing centre in France at their expense. We refused.

If you listened to the call you would have heard him explain that we don’t need high numbers for accommodation, that Nauru is at zero and if there are no loopholes it will work quickly.

He was characteristically blunt and easy to understand, maybe listen to last part again.

I also think those claiming people are racist when discussing these matters and having concerns about immigration are missing out on the nuances of this issue.

From the Sunday Times -

"The apparent success of the decision by Australian MPs in August 2012 to process all refugees offshore in Papua New Guinea and Nauru — a tiny island state in the Pacific — is often used as proof that Rwanda can work.
Yet the data paints a more complex picture. In 2013, the year after offshore processing was introduced, the number of small boat arrivals grew, from 17,204 to 20,587 – a record high.

It was only when the Australian government, by then led by the Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, launched Operation Sovereign Borders in September 2013 that numbers started to fall. Under this new policy, boats were intercepted and guided back to safe countries. By 2014, only 450 people arrived by sea; the next year, the policy was so effective that no more boats were taken for offshore processing."

The difference being that Australia could use the buffer zone of international waters to push back - and because distances were far greater the asylum seekers were on actual boats rather than dinghies.

Personally I think the only way to stem the flow is greater patrols on the French side - that means investing with them. Something which Sunak has begun. I suspect that will be cheaper than Rwanda, just less headline grabbing and means certain Tories getting over their French friend or foe malarky.
Plus safe routes. Perhaps processing from consulates - although I'll admit I have no idea how that would work.

And I don't understand where the outrage is about the thousands and thousands of people stuck here waiting for their claims to be processed. 1 year, 2 years. Not allowed to work and costing the tax payer. Sort that out. And we're short of labour. Baffles me.

Well, the situation in the countries of origin has improved a great deal since the 2000s, one explanation.

You need to have enough capacity to hold sufficient numbers to make it a realistic possibility you will be deported, 1000 is not that number.

I can listen to him but disagree, as you said and an Australian politician supported, many different reasons why Australia has few migrants now.

There are 12000 refugees in PNG atm.... get Rwanda to hold 12k and maybe...