Illegal immigration - what to do?

anya I'm concerned too about the families of these hordes of fit young men who appear to dominate the numbers of potential immigrants. I think they really muddy the waters for genuine refugees from oppression and danger. My suspicion is that these young men just bugger off and leave the women and children to fend for themselves. Obviously I'm a nasty suspicious character but human nature tells me that young men are selfish. Maybe they think our streets are paved with the latest mobile phones and consumer crap -all they need to do is break into a lorry at Calais and Bobs their uncle! As said before I feel extremely sorry for the genuine refugees.

In some parts of the world, I think oppression is the answer to that question, anya. In other parts, struggle to manage without young men. Elsewhere plain sadness. And in some places relief that they've gone to find a better life. In short, we don't know.

I've asked this question before and never got an answer. What is happening to their families and the communities left behind without their young men?

We were all migrants once.

I have no idea how we can solve the issue of desperate people abandoning their homeland to escape civil war, poverty, homophobia etc. etc.
I fully appreciate how hard it is for local communities, in Italy, in Calais etc. to manage the humanitarian needs of these many unhappy people and not to be seen to 'encourage' more immigrants travelling to what they see as safety and streets of gold. I know it all costs money.

What I can't appreciate is how easily some posters appear able to dehumanise these folk and appear to see them as people without normal feelings. I hope I have misunderstood and that was not anyone's intention.

I have known 'illegal' families quite well and they are just like you and me. They love their kids, their parents and, long term, their dream is to be able to go'home' once whatever it was that caused them to flee is no longer a threat.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-real-stories-of-migrant-britain-clive-fled-from-zimbabwe--now-it-wont-have-him-back-10362362.html?origin=internalSearch

The story for anyone who wants to read it.

Finding Home: The Real Stories of Migrant Britain, by Emily Dugan, out now, costing £12.99, Icon Books.

A few more stories in that. The Algerian geneticist came over here with her husband. He had lived here since 1999, and did not go back to Algeria because of the civil war there. When the company asked him to go back he ran away and found work as a chef in London. He now lives in Edinburgh. He has right of residence here so why would they go to France? His wife met him but could not see him for two years except in secret when he went to Algeria. It is an Islamic country and she was supposed to marry someone chosen by her parents, rather than someone she loved. That's why she came over here to marry him; and why not?

So you are quite happy for a man from Zimbabwe to live on the streets in Glasgow on less than £10 a week even though he wants to go back to Zimbabwe? I thought you did not like illegal immigrants.

You're all heart.

I'm always wary of anecdotes used as evidence too, roses.

You can't just judge things on one or two reported stories. if the authorities here think this man is lying about coming from Zimbabwe, then maybe he is lying!All his story may be made up, as well.
As for the Algerian geneticist , why not go to France, Algerians speak French as well don't they.If she wanted to be here with her husband, and his job for the moment is here working for an oil company as an engineer, she should not need to work in a kebab shop, as he will be paid quite well.She may not be able to do anything in the genetics line here for various reasons.

This thread started about illegal immigrants.
I read the story of one in yesterday's i. He is from Zimbabwe, and came over here through the Calais route because Zanu PF had beaten up his parents. His father died, and the family thought he would be next, so he gave the money he inherited from his father to smugglers to get away. This was in 2008.
He dare not go to the authorities when he got here as he had no papers. Having lived on the streets in London and Glasgow for a few years he decided he would be better off going back to Zimbabwe and taking his chances. The UK authorities did not believe that he was from Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwe authorities will not give him a passport because he left the country and has no papers.
He has been trying to leave this country for four years now.
The only money he has is from a charity which gives him £15 a fortnight. He has showers and food at another charity, and sleeps at a hostel shelter.

Ridiculous that someone who wants to go back home cannot do so. There was also the story of an Algerian geneticist who is working in a kebab shop. She came over here to be with her husband who works for an oil company as an engineer. They would go back to Algeria if it wasn't for the war there.
We say we want intelligent immigrants to come here, and they end up working like that?

I posted that the Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait are funding them. Bit of a problem for our government. We never want to upset the Saudies.

Saudi Arabia is apparently backing IS. Can,t remember where I've read that but it's in more than one place.

We apparently had "to do something" against Sadam Hussein - and Gaddafi. Now we have an explosion of violence in the Middle East that is leaking into other areas of the world and we think that dropping more bombs - which, as absent said, cannot be so accurately targeted so as to avoid civilians - is going to solve the problem. Isn't there a real danger that young men and women who see the results of the bombings on their families, their homes and their towns will not be content to accept this as "collateral damage" but will view those that bomb them as the enemy?

One of the questions that has had hardly any coverage is - who is funding ISIS and is it really not possible to block that funding? By all accounts they have the most sophisticated weaponry, fleets of brand new armoured vehicles, etc. One of the explanations is that they are selling precious artefacts and drugs on the black market but they also have control over vast supplies of oil. Who is buying the oil? Why is this question not being asked?

The arms industry is an extremely wealthy one and depends for its ever-increasing wealth on continuous conflict throughout the world.

I don't know the answer to that question, absent. Jews in Germany still suffered and died for quite a while before the evil regime killing them was stopped. But the suffering and dying was stopped. Whether more or fewer would have suffered and died if the Nazis hadn't been stopped is the same sort of hypothetical question.

We are not talking about drones here. Real aeroplanes with skilled crews. We have to do something against IS.

I'm not making any judgement on whether it is right or wrong to bomb Absent I'm simply refining S2B's sweeping statement.

Of course civilians are suffering and dying. However, is the resolution of these terrible conflicts to cause more of them to suffer and die?

Civilian suffering and dying won't stop if we don't do anything. Perhaps the feeling is that civilian dying and suffering might stop if we do do something.

Civilians are suffering and dying now. And have been doing for quite a while.

And that's assuming that they have got the targets right in the first place.

Anya All very well but bombing particular targets is not like a video game, much as the US and UK governments tried to suggest that it was with their carefully edited footage in various wars since the first Gulf War. Civilians, non-combatants, whatever they are called, invariably suffer and die too.

I think the talk is about bombing Daesh strongholds in Syria, not the country as a whole.

"Despite having granted asylum to around 4,000 Syrian refugees who arrived under their own steam, the UK is reluctant to resettle refugees: it resettles only around 750 refugees per year, and has accepted only 174 of the 200 Syrian refugees it pledged to take in early 2014. This is against the stark backdrop of 3 million Syrian refugees, among a total of 9 million displaced Syrians.

There is a real danger that the moral case for the UK taking its share of refugees will become muddied by the politics of euro-scepticism, which is now high on the agenda, given the prospect of a referendum on EU membership. Whatever the UK’s future relationship with the EU, the newly elected government must cooperate with other European states to fulfil its special responsibility to protect refugees."

We are now talking about bombing Syria. How many more refugees will there be then?

I don't think you can hold up east London as an example of different people getting on together. (Eloethan's post) That's always been a very mixed race area of Britain. It's the areas that have been recently flooded with immigrants that are likely to have the problems.

This morning on BBC news there was an interview with some foster parents in Kent, who take in unaccompanied immigrant children. Who evidently by law have to be accepted and cared for. One teenager spoke too - he spoke no english.
What marvellous people, I couldn't do it. But it's putting impossible pressure on housing, education, health srvices etc.
Evidently Kent has more than any other county, and numbers are rapidly increasing.