To think the RNLI are 100% in the right

[SanFranBear]

I've just seen this story on the BBC news homepage where the RNLI are being accused of acting as a taxi service for migrants trying to enter the UK on small boats from Europe.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8dejyg4l37o

The organisation and volunteers quite rightly have responded to say they make no apologies for saving lives at sea and that their work has no political motivation.

Damn straight - one of the volunteers further down the article explains the profound impact he feels of encountering people struggling in our waters.

It makes me wonder what critics of the service expect them to do - just sail away, leaving the people to die? Pick them up and cross the channel to dump them back 'where they came from'?

What is wrong with them? Where is their compassion? Regardless of your thoughts on immigration, this is so cold and inhuman....

I think if the numbers continue to go up then people will vote for bigger change at next GE.

To be fair, there are lots of people who were born and bred here who are of no benefit to the UK either.

The incentives aren't just financial though. Existing communities of people from their home country are also a factor.

One of my friends arrived in the UK to claim asylum and was subsequently given refugee status. She came here because there are already established groups of refugees from her ethnic group (Kurds) and they campaign from the UK for the end of persecution in their home countries.

If you stopped grandstanding for a moment and read through the thread, you'll come to the bit where I actually state my solution - to end the financial incentives that act as a pull factor to come to the UK. Not your little fantasy of watching people drown.

The Nazi trope is not only embarrassingly racist, overused and completely inappropriate considering the context - it shows your lack of intellect.

Ask yourself why people come on boats at all? The boat “tickets” cost more than trains and planes.

why make them take boats at all … put on flights to uk, no ID required. Then they are all safe. Vote for that next election. Free one way tix to UK from anywhere - no fee or ID required. Asylum lawyers can start paperwork on the planes. Buses to hotels straight from airport.

Think it thru if you can, why do they come on boats ?

We do. But as I said previously, the fact that we have "homegrown" problems does not mean that we should or can afford to import more.

I’m not a seafarer at all, but I thought the common custom amongst sailors is that if you see someone in peril, you rescue them, irrespective of who they are? It’s an old unwritten rule, or something.

Absolutely. As I see it, there's various possible "endings" to this:

• (1) We change laws until they work for the UK. Remove the pull factors, shut the hotels and do what the public has consistently backed for years: vastly reduced immigration of all kinds.

• (2) They continue to ignore public sentiment. "Those who makes peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK. In that case, we get increasingly extreme politics, and some simply cease to participate in the political process and resort to violence.

(2) If it goes on long enough, will lead to wholesale demographic and societal change in the UK. These groups will then become sufficient in number to get political power. At which point, the UK's fragmentation accelerates and the outcome will be very ugly.

Couple this with a very ugly economic outlook, and police and military leaving in droves, and it's looking bad indeed.

Of course any decent human being, especially those trained to do so, would and should help in those situations. Thank goodness for them.

I read this report and noticed several important mistakes:

The author writes as though we left the Dublin Agreement on 31 January 2020;
”UK’s failure to retain or create a new returns agreement with the EU after 31 January 2020” - however we did not exit the agreement until the end of the transition year - 31 December 2020. He only gives stats for 2019 but we made over 8,000 return requests in 2020 under the Dublin Agreement - resulting in only 105 transfers.

He links regulatory changes in Jan 2020 to the rise in small boat arrivals in 2020 (8,466) - however the regulatory changes he refers to did not occur until Jan 2021.

He notes that the ”biggest dip in non-small boat irregular migration happens in 2020” - particularly by air - but he hasn’t considered that Covid restrictions are the probable cause of the dip.

He also links to an article in wrote in 2016 where he says;
'if anyone sets foot first in Greece or Italy [from where the majority of asylum seekers were arriving] and makes a claim for asylum in Britain later they can be returned to that country' - however the EU suspended/banned all Dublin returns to Greece between 2011 and 2017 (conditions in the refugee camps considered unsafe/overwhelmed) and in fact I am not sure that the UK sent any Dublin returns to Greece after 2017 either - conditions had not materially improved and return requests were open to legal challenge.

Nazi trope?

Is the use of detention centres more acceptable for you? Or do you think the UK should just drop off immigrants and leave them to fend for themselves?

As for reasons, just one of many articles on that

https://news.sky.com/story/why-do-so-many-from-around-the-world-try-to-cross-the-english-channel-13394345

Absolutely. How else are these young men, some of them criminals, others rootless drifters, supposed to illegally enter Britain? Everywhere I look in my home town I see groups of young immigrant men wandering around. This is the middle of a weekday btw, so either they work nights or they’re living on benefits. My neighbour no longer goes into town because she’s so intimidated. (She has been hassled and even followed on several occasions.) A hotel near me has been pretty much taken over by immigrants. The vast majority are young men, so I guess their parents and sisters have been left behind to face all the “war and persecution” we keep hearing about. Still, so long as the left can feel all warm and smug and morally superior, that’s all that matters

If there's a risk of drowning they shouldn't be allowed in the water.

The problem is not a lack of bin bags.🤯🙈

This is the point, isn't it? How many is too many? At what point can any reasonable person legitimately say enough is enough? Because the logical end point of continuing as we are indefinitely is very ugly indeed.

As RNLI crew, we don’t know what we’re being tasked to. We don’t know who it is or what they’ve done in their life, regardless of whether they’re a migrant, an unfortunate sea-goer or someone trying to harm themselves.

For example, least year we rescued a murderer. We didn’t know he was a murderer til we got him back to the station. He freely told us this, and it was the reason he was trying to….. end himself.

We can’t pick and choose, partly because we don’t even know! And also because the migrant issue is for the border force and government to deal with. A lifeboat may bring them to safety, but it’s up to the government to deal with them in line with the law. Not for a lifeboat crew member or launch authority to decide whether they’re live or die.

Exactly that

it’s like being a doctor or paramedic, you can’t say “well he killed someone some one so let him die” as you’re not judge and jury, the job is to treat/rescue the patient

There's a risk of drowning for anyone who gets into a ship or boat. So should we just give up the use of boats, ships, ferries etc completely, give up eating fish, stop people swimming or even paddling?

I'm a legal migrant and just for the record I feel only empathy and compassion for refugees. And I can't get too worked up about illegal immigrants either.

Thanks for sharing OP. I'll make a donation to the RNLI now!!

Britain has been taking immigrants for centuries without all these dire consequences. In fact, it's one of the factors which has led to us having an influence in the world that is wholly disproportionate to our size. If anything we are becoming a more cohesive society than we ever were - look at, for instance, the fact that it is the norm to see people of all races on TV all the time.

Anecdotally, I was watching a programme the other day following the consequences of a very nasty fairground accident which left four people being taken to two hospitals. It was noticeable that, in both hospitals, the teams involved were predominantly people of ethnic minorities, and both teams were led by people of Asian heritage. The care they have their patients was extraordinary, and all survived. The NHS would be in a very bad way if it wasn't for immigration.

That word "solution" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. How can you know that what you vote for will be a solution? Farage et al find it easy to spout a load of rhetoric when they'e not in power, actually doing anything effective if they ever reach power is a wholly different matter.

Something tells me you are one of those under the fond illusion that it is illegal for genuine asylum claimants to come here by boat. It isn't.

The UK has descended into a cess pit of crime because we suffered 14 years of incompetent, expensive, destructive governance under the lazy, arrogant Tory Pary.

They ballsed up the economy. They ballsed up law and order. They ballsed up education. They ballsed up the NHS. They ballsed up immigration. They failed to provide the basics like clean water and housing.

The UK is in a right state due to the mismanagement and neglect of 14 years of Tory government, not desperate people who landed here 15 minutes ago.🙄

It's no wonder RNLI and Border Force is largely men who do not care about women's safety that ferry the illegals unnecessarily to the UK, they do not give a stuff about women's safety.

Seriously, @Zebedee999? You think the RNLI should have a look at the people in the water and, if they think there is any possibility of them posing a danger to women, they should turn back and leave them to drown?

Just think, what if the person they left to drown would actually have had a brilliant career in the police successfully targeting rape gangs, or become an effective prosecutor of rapists, or a dedicated doctor specialising in women's problems and going on to find cures for breast and ovarian cancers? How exactly do you suggest an RNLI person responding to an emergency in a Force 10 gale should sort out which is which?

I don't believe you're arguing in good faith. Otherwise, you'd admit what anyone can see with their own eyes when they walk around any British city.

There are plenty of statistics showing that the scale and pace of change is unprecedented in the history of Britain. The sources are also generally incompatible cultures.