African migrants - what is to be done?

[LadyinCement]

I see in the news that millions are trying to cross the Med to reach Europe. I visit Italy frequently to visit family and it is no exaggeration - there are huge groups of young men hanging about with no status and no purpose. They are lying about in parks/by the sea all day. At one major station I had to pass armed guards linking arms at the barriers as otherwise the men try to board the trains to ride round. They receive an amount of money every day and accommodation, but there is no hope of work - Italy has very high unemployment. Of course they want to reach Germany/Sweden/Britain and don't want to be in Italy at all.

What is the solution? Europe cannot possibly absorb vast numbers, especially lone young men.

Millions? Really? Or rather thousands?

Help them
Let them in. Register them. Help them get work and make a life.
Things must be pretty crappy for them at home for this to be a better option of living.
If we 'clamp down' on immigration then it's going to get worse here too.

, & armchair.

Please come along and wave the magic wand!

Let them in and house them where?

I think the figures are over a million since 2015.

And I don't have a solution.

A million over 2 years.... still a lot

If life is so bad they have left their homes..... where are the rest of their families? Were they the main breadwinners and have now left families to fend for themselves?

Let them in. Register them. Help them get work and make a life.

I'm genuinely interested in how you propose to do this? Millions of people already in this country are unemployed. Millions of people already in this country are homeless/in inadequate housing/unaffordable housing. The NHS is already on its knees because of the millions of people already in this country. Schools are full to the brim because of millions of people already in this country

Let them in. Register them. Help them get work and make a life.

Yep that's a great way of making sure that children continue to drown in the Med on a weekly basis.

And what clark said.

their little mud hut?

How much do you know about 'little mud huts' and life in Africa, Sinuhe? It's a big old place, an entire continent even, and not everyone lives in mud huts. I've been to parts of Africa where there are shopping malls with branches of Woolworths, Barclays bank, McDonalds, etc in. People have cars there, houses made of brick, there are restaurants and nightclubs, children go to school, there are sports grounds and football stadiums. And there are refugee camps where African people are helping other African people from less fortunate countries. (I have been to one. And fwiw, none of what I am describing above is based on South Africa, I have never been to South Africa but I have worked in multiple countries in North, East, West and Central Africa for the last 10 years.) It's not all like something out of Tarzan!

I used the term to illustrate the difference of living standards and the cost of getting a ticket to Europe ... but yeah get hung up about it!

I've been to parts of Africa where there are shopping malls with branches of Woolworths, Barclays bank, McDonalds, etc in.

I have lifelong experience of Kenya and the only people shopping in those malls etc are not the people who would trying to get to the UK.

And whilst I feel that the ref to little mud hut is nasty the reality is that most people do indeed live in housing that is little more than a hut. I did the new train journey from Nairobi to Mombassa last week and going across country was an eye opener.

but no. let's take everything they have,

I hope you're including their corrupt governments in that.

They are somebodys son, somebodys workmate, somebodys uncle.... Not just a body on a beach.

perhaps had the west not stripped africa they would have become wealthy on their natural resources and people wouldnt feel the need to abandon everything and try to get to other countries.

Oh FFS. Nobody alive today was complicit in anything of the sort. How long does the average case of post-colonial guilt last? Until nobody here can afford housing/healthcare/food? Because that is the logical consequence of suggesting that each and every person here has a duty to compensate for things that happened before they were born. Just like in Africa, it's the poor here that would suffer the most.

Not only is the accurate position much more nuanced than you suggest, you seem to be suggesting that everyone share their misery equally. We can't bring the entire continent of Africa to Europe and afford education, healthcare and welfare for the poorest. So what's the answer?

And DH is non-white and from a dirt poor bit of the Middle East btw so don't bother going there.

The perception that colonialism is responsible for all the world's ills is blinkered and ignorant. It's historical relativism and about as relevant to modern Britain as cholera or the guillotine. It's also insulting to continue to portray an entire populace as "victims" several generations after an event. My distant family suffered in the potato famine but I dont feel any non-specific wooly need for "change" as a result of that. I wasn't here.

My point is there is considerable nuance here. There were benefits of colonialism as well - democracy in India, for example. Suggesting that people born in the U.K. today have some kind of moral debt to pay is illogical. And even if we accept the premise, what can we do? Invite all the poor of Africa here so that everyone can live in one of Sinhues mud huts and die of preventable illness? Is that the end game? Are Belgians flagellating themselves in the street today over the Congo? Would it change anything at all in the continent of Africa if they were? No.

Let them all in. The world civilisation has always been in flux and movement. It's part of the evolutionary process and stopping it from happening only has negative consequences.

Good-o, off you trot dear.

There are reasons why the majority of migrants are young able bloodied boys/men.

Firstly it's a dangerous journey, much more dangerous for a woman than a man/teenage boy. Often the males are send first with the plan being to send for the rest of the family enabling them to travel across in much safer means.

Secondly when war breaks out in a country or when there is civil rest it is often the men who are in danger of being conscripted or caught up in the politics and the dangers l. For example we have a huge number of male Eritrean asylum seekers in this country because of forced conscription and imprisonment of young males. Women in Eritrea are much less likely to experience the same threats.

Thirdly only the strongest and the fittest tend to survive the journey which 9 times out of 10 is the young males.