Well said Mair, totally agree with you.

Brilliant post.

Sadly no-one seems to want these teenagers, much hostility, and perhaps distortion of the truth on both sides. But as I read they are battle-hardened by their months or years of journeying, and aren't going to give up easily.
Some groups have been offered places to live and work in France, but refuse, it's only the UK that they want.

Sadly we can't always have what we want, I would think a place of safety and a life free from bombs would be most important but do understand some want to join extended families in a country where they can speak the language

Did you watch 'Silent Witness' last night? I know it is fiction but some of that was about Calais. I do know someone who goes there regularly to help the refugees - She has said several times about children/teenagers she has known going missing and no-one seems to know where - not just a couple but many. The problem has always been worse after there has been some sort of clearance of the people.
I think it is difficult also to be sure how old these young people are - I was surprised to see the photos of those two poor 11/12 year old girls who were knocked down and died in the hit and run. I thought they looked much older than they are.

"I know it is fiction"

Exactly utter fiction and thus irrelevant so why refer to such fairy stories?

Its very telling that the pro migrant BBC seems to have failed to find a single genuine unaccompanied child to interview.

Transport House put up a screen after a couple of days to stop the press photographing the adult men and women who were being shipped in claiming to be "children".

The determination of these men to cross continents to get here and the fact that they have the money and where with all to do so is also indicative of age and experience.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/17/from-the-calais-jungle-to-croydon-migrant-children-arrive-in-bri/

The Home Office has no way of verifying the age of child refugees being brought to the UK, it has emerged amid concerns that adults are posing as minors to gain access to Britain.

Many of us on here have pointed out in the past that the French authorities should be getting to grips with the problem ( perhaps they were, but slowly) and the jungle should have been demolished before it reached such swollen proportions.
There were many men in the camps not from war torn countries at all.

I would suggest that maybe you join some of the volunteers going to Calais, Dunkirk and Paris before saying things are utter fiction!! I have known these people for some time and many are using their own scant resources to help these desperate people. These was also a Dutch woman doing a blog on the camps in Lesbos - they sounded horrendous altogether.
I suppose when some other plays and films such as Cathy Come Home and I, Damiel Blake are simply fiction too and have no grain of truth in them! The French have been horrified with this latest Ken Loach film.

"I would suggest that maybe you join some of the volunteers going to Calais, Dunkirk and Paris before saying things are utter fiction!! "

The TV drama you referred to was fiction - as you yourself admitted!!! <doh>

Drama may have a grain of truth but is totally distorted to reflect the political agenda of the playwrite and director. Surely you understand that as an adult?
Cathy Come Home was a brilliant stunt. People actually thought it was a documentary!

Cathy Come Home , a tv play and Daniel Blake, a film were fiction , Sandord also wrote Edna , the Inebriate Woman , fiction . Doesn't mean these problems didn't / doesn't exsist but these films were fiction

Good lord Mair you are getting scathing "as an adult" - I suppose you don't think you are being rude?
Your arguments are not handing together. Some people apparently think The Archers and East Enders are real after all. Doesn't mean that a serious drama, written to highlight a social problem, does not have a serious and valid message, based on true experiences.

Re the coach - or the adult translators maybe Mair You don't know a thing about who was in those coaches. All we know is that they were being harassed by press.
Those managing the process would have been in deep trouble if they had allowed any of the kids coming here to be harassed by the press. Even the saintly BBC.
And it is well known that people still in Calais were very wary about being interviewed or photographed. Some had very good reasons - they were fleeing from someone/something that was out to kill them.

Thats nonsense Jess. They were not being 'harassed' simply photographed by the press. The barriers were put up only after the photographs embarrassed the Government as it became clear they were admitting men not children and few women - they quickly responded by bringing in women and the one shot the press got was a well built woman with long green nails , certainly not the vulnerable little kids we'd been assured were struggling to survive alone in Calais.

What shocks me is the dumb gullibility of so many Britons who actually believed little kids had somehow, in boys own paper style, crossed continents to get to Blighty's shores, and were bravely using their cub scout skills to house and feed themselves in the harsh environment of the Jungle! Any who managed that would have no fears of weedy photographers.

I do believe the situation in Calais when people were being chosen to come to the UK was utter chaos.

I read a report by a British woman who was running a soup kitchen for lone children at the Calais camp and she had many distressed children coming to her saying that they had been pushed out of the queues by older youths determined to come here. Apparently there did not seem to be much of a system to determine which children were alone and vulnerable and who should have been prioritised.

I think you need to be somewhat sceptical of reports by "a woman who was running a soup kitchen". These charity workers who went there are to a man (or more often woman)totally committed left wing pro mass immigrationists eager to admit as many migrants as possible. (Remember the scandal about those who had been tarting about sleeping with multiple migrants?)

I would take her tale with a large pinch of salt. She was effectively trying to cover up the reality that were no "unaccompanied" young children to admit! Much better to blame inefficient authorities for choosing the wrong ones!

I have a friend who runs a charity in Turkey to help refugees there.
One of their aims is to try to dissuade people from making the dangerous crossing to Greece.
She is no more left-wing than I am (I am on the centre ground) and is just a very compassionate and committed person.
I don't need any salt when I read what she tells us.

mair doesnt your guru advise that these people are expendable for the good of the world as a whole? Why not say it like it is instead of beating about the bush?

Many would rather face death by drowning than the horrors of Syria, but as that other famous and enthusiastic Malthusian said " If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population"

Mair if, after a long and stressful journey, the massed London press were camped out on your doorstep, yelling and taking hundreds of photos, you wouldn't feel harassed?
I think you are confused between people campaigning to admit as many Syrian refugees as possible (a perfectly reasonable humanitarian goal espoused by caring people across the political spectrum) with "people who want to admit as many migrants as possible".
You really need to think about the precision of your language if you wish to engage in debate in a convincing manner.

Thanks, Mair, but I'll stick to my gullibility in the face of your outrageous xenophobia.

theconversation.com/syrian-refugees-in-turkey-jordan-and-lebanon-face-an-uncertain-2017-70747

This is where most of the Syrian refugees are. They have never been queuing up to come here.

Jess said:

I think you are confused between people campaigning to admit as many Syrian refugees as possible (a perfectly reasonable humanitarian goal espoused by caring people across the political spectrum) with "people who want to admit as many migrants as possible".
You really need to think about the precision of your language if you wish to engage in debate in a convincing manner.

Unfortunately Jess you are confused. It's extremely difficult to distinguish between Syrians and other migrants when they do not have documents, and as all the other migrants claim to be refugees too, fleeing persecution, it adds to the pressure and confusion on the authorities trying to distinguish between the groups.

Then of course there is the further question of do even Syrians deserve to be classified as 'refugees' when they are living somewhere like Turkey, people such as the family of the boy on the beach (whose father saved himself while his wife and kidss drowned), who had been living in Turkey for a few years, had a job and a flat? They were not in danger until the father forced them into the boat.

80% of the migrants in Germany have no documents.

All of this confusion is presumably why Cameron was reluctant to admit refugees from Syria in a wholesale manner, but thought giving large amounts of money/aid to the camps a better option.

The rhetoric may be not to the liking to some posters but having been accused recently of being a Racist Bully myself on Gransnet I am fed up with the ease some Gransnet posters feel free to call anybody who challenges their view Racist/Xenophobic.

Simply calling a poster Racist/Xenophobic is not as clever as saying why you disagree with their comment or proving them wrong, it is tantamount to not having a good enough response because what has been said cannot necessarily be disproved.

It is obvious people will have differing views but sometimes people , not only on Gransnet, will speak as they find.

People will have strong views but calling them Racist/Xenophobic cements the argument that the subject of immigration cannot be , has never been, debated properly for fear of being called Racist/Xenophobic.

The end product of shutting down any voice that does not sit with liberal thinking is now also widely being accepted as being in part a reason for the rise of the 'far right' throughout Europe.

If a poster has has produced a comment that can be disproved then disprove it. If a poster is doing the same as yourself and giving their view then that is their prerogative.

I know I will be 'called out' for backing a poster but I am not. I am genuinely getting annoyed at the ease some feel free to call posters Racist/Xenophobic (hell the Brexit threads are littered with the words) and that is the point I am trying to make, not particularly standing up for a certain poster who seems perfectly capable of doing so themselves.

You posted before I could get there POGS but I have been feeling this for ages on this forum.'What! You don't want unlimited immigration? You must be xenophobic/racist then' kind of attitude.It's a rude and lazy arguement.