a la carte Europe

I cannot understand why the EU is saying that UK cannot say that new immigrants have to wait a number of years to be able to claim benefits. It is not an immediate right if you move to France and neither is joining the health scheme unless you are in receipt of a UK state pension - in which case the UK reimburses France anyway. It is otherwise five years before people can join the health system unless they are working in some capacity. All sorts of rules - France just ignores the EU with some things.
If there were certain criteria for everyone to qualify for benefits including UK citizens there would I think be no problem and maybe cut the benefits bill. Births and years living in the country could count or having parents who contributed to the system etc - all sorts of possibilities. I wonder also if many of these poor immigrant people realise how different the climate is in Europe.

www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/policy_research/the_truth_about_asylum/facts_about_asylum_-_page_6

They do not all want to come here anyway.
Bez, it's a myth that asylum seekers get lots more benefits in the UK compared to other countries. You'll find the information on the link above.

The migration crisis appears to be a catalyst for many countries in Europe to pull up their respective draw bridges and it demonstrates to me that the notion of the United States of Europe is a myth.

I think for Poland and Hungary to take 29,000 and 43,000 respectively is a joke. I believe the official figure for our increase in population last year was half a million and that of course wont reflect "below the radar" number of people that manage to arrive here. Hungary has a population of less than ten million. It's not really about their income per capita it's all about their fascist right wing attitudes and their antiquated views on race and religion. Perhaps you could produce a link about that dj, which leads me into Soontobe's comment to "you post negative stuff about Britain, yet you want others to come here" - I couldn't agree more. Dj you do seem to view us as a nasty, mean spirited nation, in spite of the fact that our foreign aid budget is larger than that of Germany, the richest country in Europe, in spite of the fact that we, the British, donate greater sums than many others when and where global disasters occur. If Shelter tell us, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, that nearly half a million people in the UK are in danger of losing their homes then I think we have a duty to help those people before we allow economic migrants access to our scant social housing supply. We might be the 6th richest country in the world, but does that also mean that we are some bottomless money pit that has to feed and house the world. At the moment, for various reasons there seems to be a global shift of people, how can a small island sustain that magnitude.

I think there have been many refugees that have settled in the UK that have flourished and made an enormous success of their lives, Ugandan Asians and Vietmanese spring to mind, they have set fine examples through educational achievements and work ethic.

Nevertheless, that cannot be applied to other communities. The Somalians for example have an extremely high rate of unemployment, tend to under achieve educationally. They are often held back by the particular brand of Islam they embrace. Many of their young men hang around chewing Khat, a Somalian councillor in the UK would like it banned because of its detrimental effect. Many of the young men gathered at Calais seem to be from this ethnicity and if their fellow "settled" Somalians have an unemployment rate, something in the order of 80 per cent then I think it's fair to assume that the newcomers won't fare well either, in spite of them believing this is the land of milk and honey.

Asylum seekers are not allowed to work until they have been given refugee status. That can take years. Until then they can live on £5 per week.

Most of them do not expect handouts. They do not know about the welfare system in this country. All they want is to get as far away from oppression as they can.
The reason many of them do not stay in their first country in the EU is that they still owe money to the traffickers, and therefore need to escape from them too.

Those figures for Poland and Hungary were for one year, Terribull. The UK is home to less than 1% of the world's refugees.
So your saying all Somalians are the same, even though you would be really upset if other countries said the same about the Brits.
" Dj you do seem to view us as a nasty, mean spirited nation,"

Read your post Terribull, and you'll see why I think that.

www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/tellitlikeitis

As it says, the truth about asylum is in short supply. You can click on each graphic to read it properly - if you have eyesight like mine, that is.

durhamjen of course, there is plenty of money in the UK but at the moment it is not fairly shared out is it?

The scant resources I mentioned in my earlier post refer to that portion of the wealth of this country which is made available to the poor.

I agree that wealth should be more evenly distributed but at present it is not and I am guessing that those who find it difficult to keep a roof over their heads and feed themselves and their children today cannot afford to wait for the revolution!

Hope you notice that Germany has taken over five times as many refugees as the UK, Terribull. Maybe we spend more money on overseas aid in order to keep them out of the UK. Just a thought.

We live in the here and now warts and all. In a perfect world all assets would be held nationally and shared evenly. Oops- wait a minute, that was tried by USSR and China. How happy their people are and how well that worked out!! Of course it would be nice to solve all third world problems completely but we just can't.

There's no arguing with GN's resident 'Trot' Jane 10. Unfortunately she has never realised the Unted Kingdom is a small island and a population of 60 odd million is quite a lot of people for a government of any hue to cope with. New Zealand by contrast has a population of about 4 million with a land size aproximately the same as the UK. No unemployment, no obvious economic problems...... so what's wrong with them taking the odd half miĺlion refugees ? I'd like your opinion on that Durhamjen... without another b.....y link, si'l vous plait !

DJ - Clearly my mistake was not putting the pre requisite "some" when referring to behaviour patterns with a section of the Somalian community. I don't think an ethnicity will all be the same although certain patterns of behaviour do prevail in "SOME" of that community.

Producing statistics on how many refugees Germany is taking does not negate the fact that Eastern Europe take very few.

Your back handed personal insult when discussing a general topic such as this is puerile.

Now I am all agog trying to work out who absentgrandma thinks is our resident trot.

Trot is one of those dismissive, invalidating terms though, isn't it?

Here's yet another link

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_European_countries

European country - pop density per sq km - area in sq km - population
United Kingdom . . . . . . . . 256 . . . . . . . . . . . 243,610 . . . . 62,262,000
Germany Germany . . . . . . 233 . . . . . . . . . . . 357,021 .. . . .81,799,600

Interesting! Thanks Elegran.

Actually, Terribull, that is quite a big mistake, forgetting to say some, and leading people to think you meant all. Pleased you noticed.

No bloody link but in 2012 Syria took in the third highest number of refugees according to UNHCR global trends.

Global trends 2011 said that there were
319 natives per refugee in UK
144 natives per refugee in Germany
10 natives per refugee in the Lebanon
Even Iran had 74 natives per refugee.

We are supposed to be the civilised country.

Terribull, you are obviously not very good with statistics, and I get insulted when giving links, so you will just have to take my word for it that Eastern Europe have taken lots more refugees than we have.
Calling me puerile is not puerile, of course.

There probably some sums that can be done combining the statistics in DJ's post and those in mine.

Someone else can do them - I have to go out now.

I'd really like to know what some of you say to your grandchildren when they see the news and ask why those people can't come here.

I just feel that these people who are trying to make their way to our shores are desperate - I cannot bring myself to ignore that. We made the Poles welcome after the war, because we owed it to them after carving Europe up so they could not safely return home - it was an act of collective will that succeeded. We can do it again.

My grandchildren are 5 and 1, the 5 year old has yet to learn about issues like migration and the one year old has 5 words that don't form a coherent sentence yet! In any case SOME young people who are old enough for all this to resonate, don't engage with the news because they are more interested in what's going on in their world, rather than "the world".

Yes statistics are not my strong point DJ, heinous I know, I don't have the time to access the breadth of material that you do, I'm not sure I want to digest masses and masses of data, and depending on an individual's stance on a particular subject surely you will seek out the sort of biased statistics that support those views. We could all argue this to the cows come home, pointing out individual countries' intake of refugees is an arbitrary argument, surely it's how they are treated and assimilated in that place that matters. Incidentally a statistic I have read from Der Spiegel, I have no idea what their slant on the subject is, but they have written that the EU has given Ukraine 30 million Euros to direct migrants there, where they have been interned and generally treated badly. I have never said that I don't think we should give refuge to those fleeing war, but as rich as we are in the world, our coffers are finite and as you regularly point out we have our own poor

I don't really want to get into a slanging match with you DJ. You have already pointed out that I'm not good at producing statistics, but when you say you get insulted for producing links it's probably because not everyone wants to read those all the time and you have become synonymous with posting links ad infinitum. I admitted my omission in not saying "some" which I acknowledge as mistake, you reiterate that again by saying "big mistake", well mea culpa once more. I'm not really surprised that some on GN feel too intimidated to post their views because coming up against such officious responses is pretty off putting.

The more people we take, the more will come.

Spot on soontobe!

It's time to love our neighbour I think. We cannot ignore what is happening to people - they are our fellows.

But that does not include people using what we need, so that we cant have it.
Sharing is one thing. Generosity to such an extent that it takes away jobs, housing, education, medical beds is another, in my opinion.

For a Christian, soontobe you seem to have a less than Christian charity attitude to those worse off than ourselves.

I agree with soontobe. The point is, we simply do not have the capacity to love an infinite number of neighbours.

As I said before, those who feel strongly that we should extend our hospitality to everyone who needs it could contribute extra funding in some way and open up their own homes (in other words, put their money where their mouths are).

I have noticed that sometimes the highest ideals are held by people who really are not going to be all that adversely affected by policy of unrestricted access to this country.