Surely someone could have intervened to help this baby?

[Cardemomle]

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16040317/French-police-stand-watch-baby-toddlers-board-dinghy-England.html

Because Labour dangle benefits to the parents.its pull factors making the parents risk their babies life. If they knew they'd simply be returned or sent to a third safe country and no benefits they wouldn't bother.

Many of the one in one out deal with France have simply returned to UK yet again.

‘Labour dangle benefits/Andy Burnham is going to build social housing’ - listen to yourselves. Did you actually read any of the detailed posts describing what happens to arrivals in this thread? Any knowledgable comments on those?

At this point we may as well just set up a safe route and collect them and bring them across ourselves. Its outrageous rhat tiny babies are being dragged into overcrowded inflatables and everyone just stands by and lets it happen. Labour has apparently sorted out the asylum system and applications are being expedited, so let’s just bring them all over, do the paperwork and send the ones who don’t qualify back.

@EvangelicalAboutButteredToast that will increase numbers tenfold

to be fair, the reason why it's news is because it doesn't happen that frequently - I mean bringing babies across.

That's a really common question, but destroying physical documents doesn't actually help them all that much. There's a really strict process for establishing identity and nationality when people arrive undocumented.

The first thing that happens is biometrics (taking fingerprints and facial photos). If that person has ever applied for a visa, been stopped at a border, or logged a footprint in any allied country's database, their real identity flags up immediately via international database sharing.

If that doesn't throw up anything, but the Home Office is still doubtful about their stated nationality, it can commission specialist language analysis. This would be a linguistic expert who would examine things like pronunciation, dialect and vocabulary to assess whether the person's speech is consistent with the country or region they claim to come from. In some languages this can provide quite specific evidence, although it's always considered alongside other evidence rather than being solely relied upon.

Also, the burden of proof is on the claimant, not the Home Office. Under UK immigration rules, if a claimant can't prove where they're from, the Home Office won't just accept their story. For eg, if they claim to be from a war zone but fail basic geography, cultural or regional knowledge tests during their interviews, their claim would be rejected on credibility grounds.

Border Force are also allowed to search their devices, and it's often things like geolocation, currency transactions, text messages, social media accounts etc that reveal their true country of origin and the other countries they travelled through.

Border Forceshould remove their devices entirely when they pick them up.

They can and do. They got enhanced powers as part of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 which came into effect last December. They are also allowed to check inside their mouths for SIM cards.

I agree. These people are not like us - vastly different values and morals.

And when you’ve been desperate enough to undertake a long and dangerous trek to a distant country, which will leave you or your family at home in debt to people smugglers, then you get to sit in judgement.

Three women apparently died of a ‘heart attack’ on one boat. This seems extremely unlikely that three women would all have a heart attack in say a two hour crossing. After seeing the earlier post on here about witches what on earth happened to these women? Were they attacked? Raped? It seems highly unlikely that three women would have heart attacks in one boat.

If they were attacked by men/women/teens on the boat why do we want these men/women/teens in the UK?

https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/three-migrants-found-dead-on-board-boat-in-the-english-channel-5HjdfLc_2/

That’s tragic @Sarahsduck I’m wondering if they were crushed at the bottom of the boat.

I used to think the same as you @Unblushingly but if the aim is a safe country why keep adding to the danger you’ve been in by embarking on a Channel crossing in a dingy with no life jacket and putting your baby in the same position? Why not stop in the first safe place you arrive in? It makes no sense to me.

Your were clear but I didn't think anyone would be crazy enough at the Times to use a still from a video where a milk bottle stuck to a man's arm, so I thought you were actually talking about the photo.

For those of us who don't have an X account can you please put up a pointer to the post that contains the video so that we can watch it. Thanks.

Not getting into the “why didn’t the French police intervene” part, unless you have been desperate enough to travel thousands of miles at large expense you will not understand the mindset. They truly believe their lives before weren’t worth living so risk everything on this small island, and yes even death. They believe their children will have a chance in the uk of a future. I’ve worked with refugees and the stories are quite frankly horrific. The second group are so poor in their countries they want to get youngsters, usually men, abroad to earn money to send home, unfortunately this group are particularly at the mercy of the traffickers

@RainbowRoadshow thank you for your detailed answer.

I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what people are entitled to. I worked with some refugee families last year and a very well meaning person organised a get together across our borough for all of the families to meet up. For many that would’ve meant two buses which would’ve left them with no more money for the remainder of the week plus culturally they would’ve found it incredibly rude to turn up empty handed meaning it left them out of pocket just to go. Equally they didn’t want to not attend and look rude to somebody that had tried to show them a kindness. It unintentionally caused a lot of stress to them.

For what it’s worth I actually think we need a robust discussion about immigration and what exactly the U.K. can and can’t cope with, without people on the opposite side of the debate to me being labelled as racists. I think it’s this shutting down of people with concerns that creates a space for people to spread misinformation. Maybe a government think tank with all of the middle of the road people - but no open all borders/send them all back home people - could come up with a solution?

I personally would like to see better education on the long term impacts of colonialism/the British empire so people have a better understanding of why people are choosing to come here. It would be unthinkable that German kids weren’t learning about the holocaust or South African kids weren’t learning about apartheid but so much of History education in the U.K. centres around the early invaders and then WW2. People genuinely don’t know the impact of British involvement across the globe. More worryingly (though this is just anecdotal so I hope I’m wrong) so many people I come across seen to think we got into ww2 because we wanted to end the holocaust so end up with this misrepresentation of the U.K. as the good guys of history rather than a more well rounded understanding of both the positive and negative impact we’ve had around the world.

This is just an aside from a history nerd but looking at some 1930s local newspapers from my area on microfiche a few years ago while researching something different, it was really interesting to read the rhetoric about Jewish migrants. It was word for word identical to the rhetoric we read now about Muslim refugees. Especially the fears that adults would claim to be children to get in the country and unaccompanied child refugees.

Although I think you have many good points, @ohfook, you are misinformed about the History curriculum in state schools. It does indeed cover colonialism, the British Empire and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. So please don't blame teachers for this.
Your other points are valid.

Desperation to escape war torn France you mean?

Sorry @CardemomleI think I didn’t explain myself very well. I was a history teacher for many years and then worked helping primary schools develop their humanities curriculum so you’re right I’m better informed about primary history and less informed about the ks3 and 4 history curriculum. But I definitely wasn’t blaming teachers. I was blaming ofsted and the government’s history curriculum and particularly their push on British values when it’s clear to anyone with any understanding of history that things like individual liberty, mutual respect etc weren’t always given to people living in colonised countries. It’s a pet hate of mine though so I probably did go a bit off topic without enough knowledge to back it up!

I’ve also noticed of late the idea permeating certain aspects of the media (the daily mail basically!) that it’s ’woke’ to want to teach certain less positive aspects of history. I think that’s a dangerous path to go down and I hope it doesn’t influence any future curriculum changes. History should give us a better understanding of ourselves and our place in the world and not be used as a tool for promoting nationalism.

This is a genuine question so I hope it doesn’t come across wrong. But imagine that this government was overturned in the next couple of months and anyone who had helped them was now in danger of being put to death and you had to move your family quickly (obviously you can imagine a different scenario if you want I’m just using one I know of) and you needed to move your family to safety asap and it’s going to cost you thousands. Would you genuinely spend thousands and just go to the first country that would take you or would you go to one where you spoke the language so you had the best chance of earning money and making a life there?

It just seems like a no brainer to me. I’d get to somewhere I could build a life. However I can’t imagine putting my kids on a dinghy but if we were in a pinch I’d definitely stick my husband on one to go ahead of us and hope he’d figure something out.

Ok, thanks for clarifying! Yes, in decades of secondary school teaching, it has always been a policy to study those areas I've outlined. Students have always learned about the reach of colonialism. If someone has been led to believe that British involvement in WW2 was as a result of the Holocaust, they weren't listening. It began 3 years after the war started.
I also mark GCSE papers and am heartened at the good level of knowledge and understanding of these issues from so many candidates.

I think we can all understand why people from developing countries might want to come to the UK. Not really sure why an in depth understanding of the UKs colonial past is needed tbh to grasp this. The issue is not why people want to come but why our government is allowing hundreds upon hundreds of young men from these countries to arrive on our shores each week.

I’m not buying the “We had an empire so unlimited immigration from Africa is inevitable” line.

Proof that these people have no place in our countries if they can put their own babies through this

mutual respect etc weren’t always given to people living in colonised countries
Why they hanging around now then?