On refugees

Matthew Parris has every right to be here, he did not 'take refuge' his British parents worked abroad for a while.I think Riverwalk that you are damning him for being a Conservative ( that much is obvious.) Hopefully, it is not also because he is gay.

It s almost certainly set to get worse as not only are we not dealing with the Middle East crises we aren't dealing with climate change either.

I thought people were being given a chance to make their case but that the process is even slower than it would be ordinarily because of the high numbers of migrants.

I get why you don't like Parris. He has presented an argument that you also don't like. So argue with it, the argument, rather than getting personal about him. His being a toerag is no excuse for us to be as well.

The issue is how to deal, practically, with the hugest migration in human history. The current system isn't working too well by the looks of things. What would? What needs to change to make things work?

TBH I don't like Parris so tend to be averse to his views - irrational I know.

In case anyone has forgotten he is the aide to Mrs Thatcher who told a council tenant he was lucky to have public housing and shouldn't be making complaints; outed Peter Mandelson as gay on TV, when he himself was in the closet as an MP; and was one of those idiots who said he could live on benefits for a week, but didn't succeed.

Of course national identities can't be abolished and we generally have to live within national boundaries and rules e.g. visas and work permits.

I'm well aware of travel restrictions and immigration requirements to settle in a country. No doubt Matthew Parris qualified on the grounds of his British parents, rather than the country in which he was born.

My gripe with Parris is his simplistic and hypocritical view - not everyone can qualify under the rules and as I said, some will take their chances, and if they make it and are not drowned or shot then they should be given a chance to make their case.

Many people seek a better life abroad, my own son lives in Switzerland and I have two brothers in Australia - fortunately for them they were not fleeing from war, poverty or persecution but they obviously think the grass is greener.

Parris has chosen not to live in the country of his birth but he's not so keen for others to do likewise.

OK, river, so his background of having British parents was somehow relevant, I take it. His father worked in various countries, not just SA.

That aside, do you think national identities should be abolished? Why else would someone, anyone, be allowed to choose to live/settle/become a citizen of in whichever country they chose, even if their forebears had no previous connection with the country they chose?

I can't just choose to up sticks and go and live in, say, New Zealand. It took years for absent's emigration visa to be granted to do just that.

Could you expand your argument a bit, please? I'm slightly at a loss to understand it at the moment.

I just thought Oh bloody hell, here we go ?

I'm surprised Bags that you infer I'm suggesting that being gay, white & from SA is to be held against him - my argument is that with this background he has chosen to live in the UK but would deny others the same.

I agree that you can't hold it against someone the country that they were born in, and they can't choose their parents - the same applies to a young boy from Somalia who gets on a boat in Libya and takes his chances.

I admit I was shocked and sickened to read that post thatbags.

I agree that it sounds simplistic as he puts it, but I do think some reform is necessary because what is in place at the moment is not working.

x posts, ab.

I think Parris is being very simplistic. The problem is far more subtle and complex than this.

Whatever rules are made (he suggests that risk of death and death only should be the rule for admission) how do you prove their validity? We have to assume that anyone prepared to risk their lives by fleeing has some valid reason to fear.

Of course terrorists and others will hang onto the coat tails, but in principle we cannot send people away to oppression and misery. I do appreciate the logistics are hard, but we have to have some bottom line decency in operation.

We sacrificed thousands in two world wars in an attempt to establish decency and honour as basic principles - we cannot really abandon them now.

Bigoted, prejudiced view of others to think otherwise, much?

A gay dared to voice his opinions, seems to horrified one poster

I think I'm going to start saying something like "Linking to this article is not an endorsement of its contents", bit like the thing one sees on Twitter profiles quite often that says something like "Retweets are not endorsements".

Sad that it needs saying.

But what do you think of the proposal to reform the UNDHR? That is surely the important bit?

I didn't get the impression from Wiki that he 'fled' at all.

I don't think his being gay is relevant, river.

I've just read the Wiki article about Parris. I don't think you can hold the fact that he grew up in SA against him. People don't choose their parents.

dj, I'm not sure. Do I usually state the title of articles I link to? I don't think I was avoiding the issue if that's what you suspect because I tend to assume people will read an article before commenting on it.
I'm not sure if it is necessary for me to say this but I sometimes get the impression that you assume I support an article's message just because I post a link to it. That is a wrong assumption. Quite often I post a link to controversial articles precisely because I haven't decided what my own personal views on the subject are and want to hear more viewpoints.
I did think it was interesting that a range of politicians have already made suggestions about reforming the Convention/UN Declaration and the definition of asylum that Parris suggests does not sound unreasonable to me.

I've no idea on what grounds he's in the UK Bags but as a gay man he would obviously have found life here more conducive than SA.

I doubt if he was an anti-apartheid activist and needed to flee, given his record as an MP, but I would be happy to be corrected on that.

If he was, it makes his article worse, bags, pulling up the drawbridge, as Riverwalk implies.

Bags, why did you not give the title of the article, The West must harden its heart against refugees?

Was he a refugee because of homophobia in SA, river?

Yes I did read the article petra - how could I otherwise comment?

To put our problem in perspective.

fullfact.org/news/refugees-lebanon-and-uk/