Can we discuss the migrant crisis in a sensible and humane way?

I will start. Firstly, I think we have to recognise this is a massive worldwide problem, with millions of hungry/disaffected/persecuted people or just people who want to make the best of opportunities for their families. Shuttling people from pillar to post is not resolving the issue and is more likely stoking up dangerous resentment. Secondly, the Home Office should set up a processing centre in Calais, deal with people's applications quickly and efficiently, then move people who gain asylum over to UK, by safe means (thus excluding the vile traffickers and their dinghies), get people working straight away and contributing to the economy rather than languishing in detention centres for years. I acknowledge that not every asylum seeker/migrant is a decent sort, like society in general they are good and bad and indifferent, but surely having the stamina, nous, to travel thousands of miles, living on your wits, should be a welcome characteristic? I realise this may be simplistic, but sometimes the most obvious answer is the best.

I completely agree HousePlantQueen.

We have so many vacancies now in the UK and many of the people who have come here want to work.
I know it will take time to train them but they are a resource not to be wasted.
One man who arrived here many years ago is now a much needed GP.

Hear hear House Plant Queen.
Such a waste of people's lives in detention centres while paper is pushed around.

I agree that setting up a processing center in Calais would be a good thing (though, I understand that the French were willing to do it but Johnson turned it down in the 'oven ready Brexit' negotiations because he didn't want anything to do with the EU at all). But I don't think it wold stop the traffickers; I think they'd still have a market in people whose application was refused but who were still desperate to get to the UK. A much smaller market, but still a market.

A number of people who are refused asylum in the UK still manage to get the refusal overturned on appeal. How would they be able to access lawyers in Calais to organise an appeal? Would the lawyers set up shop there, too?

I think we'd still need a 'safe route' to stop the traffickers. If the h Home office had to deal with fewer people actually in the UK (the greater number having been sorted out in Calais) then the process would be quicker and appeals and legitimate deportations take place faster.

Thank you for such a sensible and productive start to this thread HousePlantQueen.

I agree with the quicker, on-site processing of applications in order to remove the trade from traffickers.

Also we should concentrate on catching and stopping the traffickers with an organised and sufficiently funded strategy which is a joint operation across all countries concerned.

I'm afraid this government is the problem - and some other governments around the world. To my mind, you cannot solve the problem until you set up reception centres as close as possible to the countries from which people are fleeing. They could then decide if the person was eligible for asylum. After that, they could look at where they have relations, a language they can speak or other reasons for a particular country agreeing to give them asylum status. That would mean they could work (if they are able to at this point) as soon as they are settled in their new country.

You would also have to give more help to the countries people are leaving for economic reasons to give them a reason for staying there.

But the countries will not agree to do this together. Our govenment will do nothing unless they are seen to be top dog. Nor will they agree to the money it would cost, although I would bet it would be less in the long run.

Before setting up any centre in Calais it might be a good idea to process all the people languishing in accommodation in the UK and awaiting asylum appeals. Perhaps there should be a set period of time taken to process these applications (with allowance for extension in complicated cases). There should certainly be some way of informing applicants of the progress of their application and the projected time frame. Issuing temporary permissions to work would help as well.

I feel desperately sorry for all people seeking asylum and don't know the answer but I don't think Pritty Patel should be anywhere near the problem.

Asylum seekers are one thing and economic migrants are another and they have muddied the water. The suggestion of processing nearer the country of origin is a good one. It would be good to provide help and support to these countries rather than promote a 'brain drain' of their youngest and fittest. A pretty impossible task though given the seemingly intractable infighting going on in some of these African countries. The poor women and children.

Migrants in general should be controlled and we do it is very hard to migrate legally into the UK.

It is illegal migrants, some are Assylum seekers, some are Economic migrants who claim to be Assylum seekers, none have visas to enter UK. They have either paid or indentured themselves to smugglers, you will never stop them because another will replace the one you arrest.

There is no legal solution, the Rwanda project is not going to be viable, the best solution is to give them work permits and some kind of hostel accommodation, we need the workers in any case.

In my opinion, we have to think long term about human migration.

It has happened since the great ape stood up and viewed the horizon, but it is now going to continue in huge numbers for a numbers of reasons, some of which will become related - war, climate change, drought and famine.

The world population needs a massive strategy. Tinkering around at the edges won’t cut it.

The solution to the immigration problem, doesn't lie in Britain or France, but back in the countries these immigrants come from.

As I see it the immigrants fall into two groups. Those coming from the war-torn countries of the Middle East and Asia; Syria, and Irag, Afghanistan, where war is over but civil order is not to be depended on, and it some are still wracked by sectional violence Until we can bring peace to these countries so that people can be happy to stay at home. The migration from those countries will stop when there is stability and safety there.

The other group come from Africa, some of these countries are lawless, but Africa is an area where population growth by natural increase, babies and yet more babies, is still growing rapidly. Outside Africa, most countries have stabilised their populations and are close to population stability List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate.

Unemployment runs at a very high rate and bad management, immense corruption and tribal animosities run large. Many of these countries have rich natural resources, but the benfits go into their ruler's banks accounts and do not benefit the people.

Solve these two intractable problems and the immigrant crisis will be solved.

If only M0nica. I think you've hit the nail on the head though.

Glorianny

Before setting up any centre in Calais it might be a good idea to process all the people languishing in accommodation in the UK and awaiting asylum appeals. Perhaps there should be a set period of time taken to process these applications (with allowance for extension in complicated cases). There should certainly be some way of informing applicants of the progress of their application and the projected time frame. Issuing temporary permissions to work would help as well.

I agree that the process should be time-limited and, if it over-runs people should be at least allowed to work to keep themselves. There could, perhaps (don't know enough about it) be given right to reside too.

The problem is the “African mindset” it was no until this year that it was explained.

In any country the President is the “chief” everything belongs to the chief, so corruption is not seen as a problem by the population in general. Secondly population control is a taboo issue, it is never discussed, education of women may control population, politics certainly will not.

That’s Africa!.

Aveline

Asylum seekers are one thing and economic migrants are another and they have muddied the water. The suggestion of processing nearer the country of origin is a good one. It would be good to provide help and support to these countries rather than promote a 'brain drain' of their youngest and fittest. A pretty impossible task though given the seemingly intractable infighting going on in some of these African countries. The poor women and children.

All countries would have to pay towards these centres Aveline, as the cost would be resting on a few countries in the first instance. And therein lies the problem. The UK, it seems, simply does not want to work in a team for any reason at the moment. I simply cannot see them doing this.

Education for women would be a good start. I know there are many such projects already but there needs to be so many more. Education and having more control over their reproductive abilities could liberate these women which could only have positive benefits.

I think HousePlantQueen is right when she says that this is a worldwide problem. People are leaving their homes for many different reasons, from many different places. Anybody seeking asylum is an asylum seeker, by definition. That's what the words mean. They may subsequently be shown to be in search of a better life by moving to a country where they can find better economic systems, but that doesn't mean they are not asylum seekers.

We cannot expect other countries to change centuries of culture to be more like us, and then wash our hands of them if we think they haven't done the "right" thing. I don't believe that we can expect other countries to stop using the "Africa mindset" if that is how they are. We shouldn't expect to tell them how to run their own countries. Interestingly, the country third in the list of countries hosting refugees is Colombia. I don't expect many of them came from Africa.

While its absolutely imperative to work with countries to help them be what we consider "fairer", its up to countries themselves how they behave. But this government have cut overseas aid, so that's undermined as well. Also, people are going to move about the planet in unfathomable numbers in a few years as a result of climate change. We ain't seen nothing yet, and the only way to manage this will be working together with other countries. Hopefully by then we will have a government that appreciates that.

These EU policies aren’t exactly helping some of the African nations.

www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/the-cap-has-devastating-effects-on-developing-countries-report-says/

Some of the migrants have decided to try and sidestep the Channel patrols, and are using speedboats to land on the Devon coast.

People carriers were waiting for them, and police are hunting for them

www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2022-06-15/large-police-presence-as-12-migrants-arrive-on-boat-at-devon-beach

www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/devon-migrant-boat-landing-locals-7211287

For anybody who doesn't know this site:

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/

It's the most authoritative source of factual about a range of migration issues.

Maybe ban the use of "illegal" immigrant and just call them people.No one is "illegal" .Using that term is ramping up the bias.People have always left their country of origin and looked for a better life ,in war and in peace .
Many of those arriving will be valuable citizens and contribute to communities around the 4 nations IF we find the way to incorporate them into society instead of making them live in detention centres barred from working for a living .
I was appalled at the opinions on teh Jeremy Vine show yesterday by people who you would think had a brain,,,but it seems the NIMBY is alive and well in 2022 .
Put yourself in their shoes before judging these desperate folk

This graph is from 2020, but the situation hasn't changed much since then. It shows the number of asylums granted by the UK and belies the myth that we're accepting a disproportionate number of asylum seekers compared with other countries. Not only that, Turkey currently hosts 3.8 million refugees. www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/. The number of people arriving by boat on the south coast is miniscule in the context of the global problem.