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.

There is a cris in the NHS which is due to longer life expectancy with increasing immigration as an add on. I agree that we need to be compassionate and responsive to the humanitarian crisis. However when people enter this country they do need to accept the way of life here and our culture and values. It is my belief that the reluctance to to this that has caused all the issues. Certain groups have accepted our values and integrated well, others have not and this is the problem. Many people talk of there relations coming to the uk, and where they have integrated I have no issue.

If they aren't finding work and are begging on the streets then how are they economic migrants?

Yes, there is no work in Italy. The migrants do not want to be there either, they want to move up to Germany, Sweden and the UK. Unfortunately these men - and I do feel sorry for them - are being sold a dream of women, cars, housing and highly-paid jobs in Europe.

As discussed on other thread, these men are not doctors, surgeons, engineers (as some people insist) but unskilled and poorly educated. The jobs available in the UK would be in care work, which is not what they have in mind.

Economic migrants = people who move in search of better life/jobs rather than refugees. Doesn't mean that they actually find them!

But we can't make their countries a better place to live, not without the very same people who are leaving.
They are the oneswho can make their life better, by education, work and political engagement. There are no rights without responsibilities.

I might be naive there, but no more than those saying let everybody in.

Also, the problems faced regarding gangs, extremism and FGM are rare and there are laws in place to deal with these. These problems are red herrings

Goodness Can't even find the words to reply to that except to say, lucky for you if you haven't been a victim of a grooming gang (estimated victims in tens of thousands), been subjected to FGM, or been a victim or lost a loved one in the numerous Islamist terrorist atrocities in the last few years and lovely to dismiss the awful consequences for those effected.

Anyway, its great that we've got laws to deal we these things so that grooming gangs, FGM and Islamic extremism no longer exist

The only way to solve the immigration crisis is to wake up and let people move where they want. Have no borders.

Sure there will be immigration, but the immigrants of today will be the future generations of this country. Let's help them to help us become a better society. Immigration is always a positive thing.

The people coming here can get work or benefits and send them to their families abroad to help their situation there.

Zippey I would be interested to know what your politics are. Would you be happy to live on an unfettered capitalist system with no NHS, no welfare state, no public housing etc? Because that is what we would have with no borders. Our current system would not be sustainable under no borders.

No one has been racist or nasty on the thread which is lovely. I don't think anyone on the thread is any kind of extremist. However some want anyone to come here who chooses to and some of us want English law to be respected ( which I think is a pretty moderate position - we have about 300,000 net immigration into the UK as it is which seems quite a lot).

I don't agree that the issued caused if we were to allow a lot of young uneducated Africans in who are mostly male are rare or extreme. Obviously if you put one per village then there would be no problem but it is the groups. We had a Somali riot locally the other day - late at night on the street about 2 miles from me. My son's friend sent us a live stream. Okay the boys called it a riot and it probably was not as bad as that but and surprisingly I could not find it on twitter but everyone chucking stones there were unoccupied Somali lads. My culture goes to bed at night - we don't go out on the streets. (I am not saying white boys don't hang around outside but they tend not to in my own area).

It is not racist to call people black Africans. I am perfectly happy to be called white British. It's just a useful shorthand. If in the UK it becomes not permitted to discuss peacefully and politely these issues then censorship has won and we might as well move to China where there is only one view allowed to be debated.

Why on earth do you think the whole of Africa is suddenly going to decamp here? Of course they aren't, any more than we would up sticks to the USA.

I don't think anyone has suggested the whole of Africa is, have they? But clearly large numbers of Africans are and there seems no reason (correct me if I am wrong) to predict the reasons for people wanting to migrate to Europe will decrease any time soon.

If they aren't finding work and are begging on the streets then how are they economic migrants?

If you migrate to try to live a more wealthy, comfortable life you are an economic migrant. Whether you succeed in getting that is another matter.

I suspect some migrants have been given an unrealistic picture of how their life will be if they get to Europe. The people smugglers are after all making money out of taking people across the sea (well, a few miles of the Libyan coast now until they are picked up, see link above) so have an incentive to encourage people to migrate.

The root cause of the tens of thousands arriving via the Mediterranean weekly is the huge industry of people-smuggling. Modern technology means that it's child's play to find a smuggler, pay them an extortionate amount of money, and within days be on a boat heading away from the north African coast. If these boats were towed back to Africa, instead of their inhabitants being dumped in Italy, the industry would soon perish.

Surely it remains the case that the best immigration policy is to take the most vulnerable and arrange their transport from Africa ourselves? If we want to take more, then we increase the number taken by this method.

But that is the UK's current policy.

I understand why males are attempting to make the journey, but that isn't a reason for us to be complicit in a survival of the fittest process.

Agree that if one African man managed to schlep up to Europe, find a job, house, wife... no one would bat an eyelid. Applaud him, even. But the sheer numbers intent on coming to Europe is a problem.

I read a recent article in The New Yorker (very liberal publication) and said that in Italy prostitution is a huge industry amongst those arriving, ie they petition to have female "relatives" join them but they are importing sex workers. Italy has always had quite a lot of visible prostitutes, but when I visited a couple of months ago I saw not only African women standing along the main roads, but very young girls . I swear one must have been about ten years old

Actually one of the main points of the article is that the women elders back in Eritrea, I think it was, fully facilitated the prostitution process, and just as women were supposed to breed in The Handmaid's Tale, they were being "bred for sex" in one particular area.

I know Lady I can't understand why that thread was deleted.

Actually one of the main points of the article is that the women elders back in Eritrea, I think it was, fully facilitated the prostitution process, and just as women were supposed to breed in The Handmaid's Tale, they were being "bred for sex" in one particular area.

Yep, no racism here.

Yep, no racism here It is not racist to report on what goes on in the world. I think we are getting confused over what constitutes racism. For example, in some countries, rape and sexual violence is rife. There is little understanding of women's rights. (I am not naming the countries - google them). Not everyone from those countries is a risk to women but obviously the society and culture you live in does affect the way you behave (otherwise rape statistics would be more or less constant around the world, no?) Ignoring this or refusing to discuss because it could be seen as racist is not helpful.

I resent the comments about charities. My daughter has worked for years for a major UK charity, and has spent long periods in areas of disaster, famine, etc. During these periods she has never stayed in anything like a luxury hotel - living conditions have often been basic to say the least, and she does not earn a fat salary.

She has busted guts in the past to e.g. get clean water to areas where cholera was rife, people were dying everywhere, and the only water they could access was dirty, contaminated ponds also used by animals. The local government would not even accept the fact of cholera, let alone do anything to help. It was just one country of several she has worked in where the governing elite mostly do not give a flying fuck about their own people, and are concerned largely with enriching themselves while they are in power and able to do so.

For all those crying for "compassion", think about what's happened to Sweden in the last 20 years after they took in huge numbers of disproportionately male migrants from third world countries. Swedish women who once had the best countries in the world, are now suffering an epidemic of sexual violence. The men who attacked young girls at the Bravalla festival and others were all Middle Eastern migrants yet no-one wants to talk about that. No, best to leave the women to suffer in silence or pretend the problem is just "men". Compassion my arse.

Exactly. We are facilitating the crimes if we let illegal immigrants (economic migrants) in and enable the trade.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/10/the-desperate-journey-of-a-trafficked-girl

"One of the best countries in the world"

Compassion my arse

Indeed. Tim Pool (independent journalist from USA) did a series of videos from Sweden recently. The refusal to discuss honestly the effects of migration seemed quite a feature of many of the Swedes he met. There seems to be huge compassion towards immigrants there, but very little towards the victims of sexual violence, usually women and children. Some of the sentences being given for sexual assualts are truly disturbing.

Tim Pool Sweden videos if anyone is interested.

m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxQaod7tWvYK_Naia54GcFr3Ff04y3O5Z

Then we need to pressurise these corrupt governments into helping their own people and making sure the aid we pay to the countries is used for the people fairly but I'm sure it is not an easy task