Migrant watch (merged topic)

[UndercoverElephant]

That is more a comment on your Liberal friends, Biff, than on the issue! I suspect that if I had printed that it wouldn't have got quite so many likes.

That's the nice thing about facebook - you can choose your friends.

Nice for facebook, not much use for making decisions about the real world, where you don't get so much choice.

[adam2]

In another place:

Biff Vernon
13 hrs ·
What would happen if instead of spending what we do on border control (another £7m announced yesterday to build more fences at Calais) we spent it on homes and support infrastructure for our new neighbours?
29 Likes5 Comments2 Shares

£7 million would only build very roughly 70 houses, and no support infrastructure.
Those 70 houses would not house even one days arrivals.

[snow hope]

Good to see some reality Adam. Some people just have silly pipe dreams....

[biffvernon]

£7 million would only build very roughly 70 houses, and no support infrastructure.
Those 70 houses would not house even one days arrivals.

The £7m was just the latest announcement. The Great Kent Lorry Park is said to be costing the best part of a million per day!

I hear that 185000 have crossed the Med this year, 3000 are in Calais. Some folks are panicking over a tip of an iceberg.

[snow hope]

That's exactly the point Biff. There is no way we could (or should) consider "building homes and support infrastructure for our new neighbours". I really think that is ridiculous fantasy thinking...

[biffvernon]

Of course it is a fantasy that the world should be a more equal place. Let us in the rich nations pull up the drawbridges and content ourselves with sending them our guns and bombs.

(And spend 0.7% of our GDP on 'foreign aid' so long as sufficient strings are attached to ensure we benefit.)

[snow hope]

Well at least you accept that it is fantasy thinking. We will never have a world like that where a world becomes that equal - there are very few places in the animal kingdom like that and we are mere animals...

I said nothing about sending guns and bombs - of course I do not agree with that and all it entails - corporatocracy

[kenneal - lagger]

I hear that 185000 have crossed the Med this year, 3000 are in Calais. Some folks are panicking over a tip of an iceberg.

People are panicking about the bit that we can't see, Biff. The numbers in the camp don't seem to be increasing very much despite the huge influx in the south so just how many are getting across the channel? That's the other bit of the iceberg that we can't see and the government doesn't seem to want to publicise!

[adam2]

I hear that 185000 have crossed the Med this year, 3000 are in Calais. Some folks are panicking over a tip of an iceberg.

People are panicking about the bit that we can't see, Biff. The numbers in the camp don't seem to be increasing very much despite the huge influx in the south so just how many are getting across the channel? That's the other bit of the iceberg that we can't see and the government doesn't seem to want to publicise!

Yes, we do not know how many are entering illegally via Calais and by other routes but it is clearly substantial.
It seems likely that most of the 185,000 said to have crossed the Med so far this year are either here already, en-route or are camped at Calais awaiting their turn.
Allowing for some illegal entries NOT via Calais, and NOT originating by crossing the Med, at least 1,000 people a day arriving seems a likely minimum.
Add the illegal arrivals rate to those moving here legitimately, and considering the large families favoured by new arrivals, we need to build at least 1,000 new houses, every day for many years.
Together with enough wind turbines, nuclear power plants, motorways, new railway lines, water reservoirs, sewage works and so on to meet the needs of the extra households.
And don't forget enough factories or other places of work to employ at least some of them.

And that is to allow for the present rate of arrivals, any relaxing of the rules seems likely to substantially increase numbers.

[UndercoverElephant]

I hear that 185000 have crossed the Med this year, 3000 are in Calais. Some folks are panicking over a tip of an iceberg.

People are panicking about the bit that we can't see, Biff. The numbers in the camp don't seem to be increasing very much despite the huge influx in the south so just how many are getting across the channel? That's the other bit of the iceberg that we can't see and the government doesn't seem to want to publicise!

Yes, we do not know how many are entering illegally via Calais and by other routes but it is clearly substantial.
It seems likely that most of the 185,000 said to have crossed the Med so far this year are either here already, en-route or are camped at Calais awaiting their turn.

No. Quite a lot of them are known to have ended up in Germany, for example.

[tpals]

Just throwing out a thought for debate:

How many of those young men would still want to come if they had to agree to being snipped first? As in: everyone can come! But you can never have children.

[UndercoverElephant]

Just throwing out a thought for debate:

How many of those young men would still want to come if they had to agree to being snipped first? As in: everyone can come! But you can never have children.

Interesting question, but I don't see how we could ever find out the answer.

[fuzzy]

Cherie Blair + her cronies will be salivating at the legal fees on that one [I thought I would keep it polite this time..].

[biffvernon]

We have an international, humanitarian obligation as surely now as we did to people fleeing Hitler 80 years ago. The UK takes only a fraction of the number of refugees and asylum seekers that Germany or Sweden takes. At the end of 2014 there were 36,000 pending asylum cases in the UK. In the same year, Germany had more than 170,000 asylum applications.

Many of the men, women and children in Calais are desperate. They have risked death multiple times escaping from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and now they are dying as they try to reach the UK, as we hear of another death in Calais today. They have spent every penny of their savings to flee war and terror and persecution. We owe it to them and to our own idea of what it means to be British to do more, quickly and humanely.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... sis-calais

[biffvernon]

A page of useful facts:

http://www.unhcr.org.uk/about-us/the-uk-and-asylum.html