perfectstorm I read your poem. It is lovely.
I can tell you that I have been disabled for a long time, and my best carers and helpers have been African, and have had to flee for their lives.
What Britain cannot continue to do is have more immigrants. It is not the colour or creed. It is that this country cannot give them accommodation and work. Some of the people who have helped me had no idea how expensive it is to live in Britain. They are cold. They cannot cope with the cold wet climate, and they suffer from it. They have to start right back at the bottom. I pay my carers far more than the minimum wage. It is probably why they stay so long, but they don't get more than the minimum anywhere else.
I say this not because I am rich, I can only pay them from my benefit, but I would rather have less hours and pay them more.
They never realised how very difficult it is to make it in Britain. Nor can they understand how the illegal boat people can pay thousands for a place in a flimsy boat, when the same money would enable them to set up business somewhere else. How many countries do they travel through to get to Britain? No one tells them how hard it is.
The people smugglers and traffickers are acting the same way as the 18/19th century slavers. Those slaves worked all day for a wooden shack in a white world, and food. A man who works full time here, and cannot provide a roof over his family's head and food in their bellies is in the same position as those slaves. The accommodation might be better than the old plantations, and the food might be better, but if that is all they can provide when they work full time, it is slavery.
I am not talking about the unemployed or the part time workers or the unfit to work. I refer only to those who cannot earn enough to save, who cannot provide more for their children.
Unless they arrive with money and contacts, the people smugglers are doing them no favours.
I wish we were a large country and had more capacity. They would be better to escape to another country which can accommodate them.