Illegal immigration - thread no. 101

[MyNameIsX]

People smugglers are offering migrants a discount for crossing the Channel if they film their journey so it can be promoted on social media.

Migrants are encouraged to film the journeys and then post them on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook in order to lure others into making the dangerous crossings.

In return, they get a cheaper crossing as the footage boosts business for the smugglers.

The new tactic was revealed by Paul Brisley, from the National Crime Agency (NCA), which has been taking down the social media posts in an attempt to stem the crossings.

It would indeed be naive. that’s why there is an assessment process before someone gets refugee status.

I don’t think there is evidence that the asylum system has suffered wide scale abuse by people coming on small boats: most are actually approved in the end. Something like 75% I think.

It may be my nasty cynical mind, but most of the people coming on small boats appear to be young, fit males. We do actually need more of them, but can we not indenture them to labour gangmasters and regulate that much smaller group to supply labourers for work that requires muscle and stamina? And make the gangmaster responsible for accommodation.

The seasonal agricultural workers scheme goes back a long time. Once they were Spanish or Italian, now they are East European, or from the 'stans. Happy for them to be paid decently for the work they do here, but not to have any right to live here without language skills or a long term work contract. And once that expires, go home, but there are always exceptions. Farming Today had an interview with a manager of a huge horticultural business (growing strawberries for supermarkets IIRC) who had arrived as a casual labourer and who was just so competent and hard working that he is now a partner in the business. It was a wonderful but exceptional success story.

Who are these labour gangmasters now? It sounds like a Russian Gulag set up.

The journey to Europe in general is extremely dangerous it involves walking long distances, crossing seas in unsafe boats, sleeping outside and dealing with people smugglers who often exploit or abuse them. So that’s why the arrivals on small boats to the UK end up being fitter young men, many teenagers too.

Most asylum seekers in the world are actually children and women. The vast majority are in camps in the developing world. It makes much more sense to develop more safe and legal routes from these camps so that more families can be resettled together. Deterrence won’t work, I think.

I don't think we have room unfortunately. We are soon at 70 million and are nearly bankrupt. Not good to encourage the world here.

How many would you bring over from the camps?

Exactly. We can't afford benefits for the disabled who are actually from the UK and it's their own country. Or are we expected those people to up sticks and emigrate elsewhere to be funded in order to replace them with the world's diaspora? (Who will in their lifetimes end up costing the tax payer billions according to recent figures).

If there's only so much money to go around I'd like my taxes to go on our own UK needy please, not random people from the rest of the world.

@EasternStandard

i don’t have all the answers I’m afraid. That would be a complicated total to get to. And I think the EU also needs to do this too: But having safe and legal routes and the funding of refugee camps in the developing world would ultimately reduce the number making dangerous journeys. Europe just keeps increasing the deterrence and it has not worked.

Most asylum seekers are from a handful of countries as well. So solving those humanitarian crisis would make a massive difference.

We can't solve the humanitarian crises in the whole world. We can't even solve our own. How do you propose we solve (and fund) sorting out the DRC for example, where a lot of immigration to this country comes from? "Boots on the ground"? And why should it be our responsibility? And our responsibility to be the country chosen by those immigrants to go to and be funded by?

Whilst I agree with you to some extent, I’m never sure what the answer is for the people who are not admitted via legal routes? Would you admit anyone who applied or would you limit it? Surely in the absence of a total open door policy there will always be people who will want to enter illegally?

@Icanttakethisanymore legal routes would have to be limited. In the other thread I suggested one criteria might be family connections. I add settled communities to that. They'd also need have refugee status before they set foot in the UK. All applicants would have to provided biometric data.

I'm thinking of this mainly in relation to those in France. It would have to involve agreements with France regarding those rejected and returns for those who still try by boat. I also note in this morning's news there's a prospect of failed Asylum seekers being set to one or another of the Balkan states.

I'm not saying it's bombproof; nothing is. Neither 'Stop the Boats' or Smash the Gangs' seem to progress beyond slogans.

It's time to be bold and try something else.

This will only work if you opt out of international laws or use Aus style deterrence.

Would you be willing to do that?

@EasternStandard No I would not support either Oz style treatment or opting out of treaties.

Indeed I challenge the rationale that such things would be necessary for safe routes to work.

Ok so you have a limit as in your pp.

What’s to stop people who would be granted asylum but are not able to proceed due to the quota arriving by boat and applying?

@EasternStandard there's another thread on safe routes:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/politics/5299022-asylum-how-does-it-work-what-would-providing-safe-routes-look-like?page=1

@BromptotooI know. But I’m interested in how you’d resolve people applying outside your limits as per international law?

@EasternStandard any safe routes involving people in the groups currently coming by boat would need to be agreed with the EU so that provisions similar to the Dublin Convention can be adopted.

In other words send them back to France.

I am taking about the EU also as well. No you are completely right. Most on these boats came from Syria, Afghanistan and Iran so not easy to solve the situations there.

It’s not a responsibility, it makes sense to try and solve humanitarian crisis elsewhere. We are all part of the world and we’ll ultimately feel the impact of these crises

If all Europe did this, and opened safe and legal routes and funded the camps in the low and middle income countries where 75% of the world’s asylum seeking population is. Then the number of asylum seekers arriving via irregular means would reduce.

But it would take time and would be deeply unpopular so we are stuck with meaningless slogans like Stop the boats. Deterrence has already been proven not to work.

You can only send people back to France if they agree to process all claims you will not do as a safe alternative country. A bit like Aus do with an island but France.

It won’t be a deterrent like the Aus system so they’d be overwhelmed with processing. Not sure you’d get a yes from France on that one.

@OdrasAus shows deterrence does work. And Italy too has reduced crossings by 60%. It can work but their electorates were ready to vote for it.

Can you say how you’d end fighting and violence in Sudan?

Well I should imagine that's a tiny minority and please think about what you are saying. There are plenty of British people locked up in foreign jails facing death penalties or inhumane conditions and we do very little and in some cases we do nothing. So why the hell is it our responsibility to care for people from countries with human rights infraction. We can't police the world and under your argument how many countries out there have questionable human rights.... Russia, Israel, Turkey, Hungary, Most of South America, Yeman, Iran, Iraq......that's a lot of people who could claim asylum.

Yes we should uphold our values but not at the cost of letting Farage into number 10. A line must be drawn with clear rules...come here without a visa and you will almost certainly be sent home.

Usually deterrence works for a while but then other routes open up and the numbers go up again. A quick google tells me that Italy’s asylum seeking Numbers have increased. Now there might be other factors to that but it’s a fact that the biggest predictor of asylum seeking numbers is what is going on the world.

Australia is in a unique position geographically and it’s not comparable to Europe with its myriad of entry ways at all. Its approach has also been inhumane.

And no I don’t have a proposal to solve the Sudan war unfortunately.

Aus is pretty much the country that has resolved this. And if people want the same with crossings it’s that or opting out of international law.

On Sudan I wondered how you thought other countries could step in. Realistically

We can't afford to take all the legal migrants either. So I'm not sure making the legal route to the UK easier would be a good thing for the UK.

The reason many of the immigrants come illegally is because they know they wouldn't qualify to enter the UK legally.

Yes I think that the only way to ‘stop the boats’ is to agree that everyone intercepted in the channel would be returned to France. I guess the French might agree to that but only if we agreed to take a significant number via safe legal routes.

the problem is that won’t be politically palatable because it would probably mean taking more migrants than we do now.

It's.almost (like Australia) that we need a third country that agrees to take immigrants for processing.....