Why do Asylum Seekers cross the channel on small boats

David49

Whatever they say 70% of crossings are successful, which sounds to me like not really trying, if it depends on the UK paying the French more to do the job properly, it’s going to be a lot cheaper than the stupid Rwanda plan.

Just out of interest do you have the source for that figure? According to Le Monde 69% of crossings have been stopped (April 2024). The figures do include the whole of the channel coast. The local papers and tweets from officials provide quite a lot of information about operations on the ground (in French).

There’s blaming, and then there’s what I just wrote.
The shortage existed without illegal entrants, but if there are doctors available for one group . . .

@chestnut
This world is subjected to a constant ebb and flow of peoples moving from one place to another, has ever been the case. Either due to wars, famines, natural disasters, or the desire to find a better life. Climate change is set to make the numbers even greater so we should all be prepared for that. Not so long ago huge numbers of British people colonised many parts of this world and stole the resources and lives of the countless indigenous people who lived there, our migration then was not anywhere near as harmless as people in boats coming here, not our fault today but we should be aware how history shapes what happens today and how it can make some of us sound hypocritical when casting blame. Indeed it is much more recent western government meddling in various parts of the world that has resulted in the levels of refugees coming here today.

Well said Babs03

Mamie

David49

Whatever they say 70% of crossings are successful, which sounds to me like not really trying, if it depends on the UK paying the French more to do the job properly, it’s going to be a lot cheaper than the stupid Rwanda plan.

Just out of interest do you have the source for that figure? According to Le Monde 69% of crossings have been stopped (April 2024). The figures do include the whole of the channel coast. The local papers and tweets from officials provide quite a lot of information about operations on the ground (in French).

From the website you quoted

François Guennoc, vice-president of the Auberge des migrants, an association which helps migrants, estimates that "the success rate of crossings is between 60 and 70%".

Mollygo, where's your statistics for saying that there are doctors etc available for asylum seekers?

But, there are no legal routes for asylum seekers, hence why they risk their lives to get here.

By the way, according to international law, there is no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker.

These are SUCH important points!

One of the achievements of the former government was to get the word 'illegal' associated with asylum seekers and refugees, by consistently using it in speeches and in statements. It has become so ubiquitous that it is repeated in social media, including Gransnet.

As Nano says, it is NOT illegal to seek asylum, and there are now NO legal routes in existence.

Babs03

@chestnut
This world is subjected to a constant ebb and flow of peoples moving from one place to another, has ever been the case. Either due to wars, famines, natural disasters, or the desire to find a better life. Climate change is set to make the numbers even greater so we should all be prepared for that. Not so long ago huge numbers of British people colonised many parts of this world and stole the resources and lives of the countless indigenous people who lived there, our migration then was not anywhere near as harmless as people in boats coming here, not our fault today but we should be aware how history shapes what happens today and how it can make some of us sound hypocritical when casting blame. Indeed it is much more recent western government meddling in various parts of the world that has resulted in the levels of refugees coming here today.

Babs03 with respect we should be looking forwards not back.

We all know the UK has always been a welcoming place over centuries but times are very different now.

Primrose53

Babs03

@chestnut
This world is subjected to a constant ebb and flow of peoples moving from one place to another, has ever been the case. Either due to wars, famines, natural disasters, or the desire to find a better life. Climate change is set to make the numbers even greater so we should all be prepared for that. Not so long ago huge numbers of British people colonised many parts of this world and stole the resources and lives of the countless indigenous people who lived there, our migration then was not anywhere near as harmless as people in boats coming here, not our fault today but we should be aware how history shapes what happens today and how it can make some of us sound hypocritical when casting blame. Indeed it is much more recent western government meddling in various parts of the world that has resulted in the levels of refugees coming here today.

Babs03 with respect we should be looking forwards not back.

We all know the UK has always been a welcoming place over centuries but times are very different now.

If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know where you are going.

whitewavemark2 the boat people know where they come from and they 💯 know where they’re going! 😉

Thank you babs.

I wish there wasn’t this false narrative today of crafty criminally minded refugees waiting to board a dodgy dinghy rubbing their hands with dastardly glee at the thought of being locked in a detention centre then moved onto a shabby b&b to share a room with another family and be given food vouchers or £30 a week whilst constantly running the gamut of racist hostility. Yeah. Sounds great.
Having worked with AS I generally met cowed, scared individuals, trying they’d best to avoid eye contact and mostly trying very hard to reduce the actual physical space they took up.
Of course in any cohort of people there will be a few bad eggs, that is a mathematical probability but to suppose they are all the same is as unintelligent as it is risible.
And I would like one person to tell me an actual real story of a member of their family or themselves missing out on a house or a job due to an AS. Fact is those who shout loudest usually don’t live in areas with the largest immigrant uptake.

I wish there wasn’t this false narrative today of crafty criminally minded refugees waiting to board a dodgy dinghy rubbing their hands with dastardly glee at the thought of being locked in a detention centre then moved onto a shabby b&b to share a room with another family and be given food vouchers or £30 a week whilst constantly running the gamut of racist hostility. Yeah. Sounds great.
Babs03 you’re the only person I’ve seen posting this false narrative.
Are you trying to help them it make it worse?

Babs03 I worked with refugees in the 90's and it made me thankful to have been born in the UK into a safe and stable country. We take our security for granted but I can still imagine how dreadful it must be to have to leave family and friends and everything I know and understand for a precarious and unknown future in a foreign country. It is never done lightly and my experience showed me that refugees just wanted to be able to rebuild their lives, contribute to the society that they now lived in and be accepted by the people they lived among.

Sorry, Mollygo, but the false narrative has been posted many times. Not as *Babs03 says it because she is posting what her experience tells her is reality. But over the past year or two at least we've had plenty of tales of 'what asylum seekers get' which are untrue or wildly exaggerated.

We even have one today on the thread about Brighton. Asylum seekers are give bicycles, apparently

MaizieD

Sorry, Mollygo, but the false narrative has been posted many times. Not as *Babs03 says it because she is posting what her experience tells her is reality. But over the past year or two at least we've had plenty of tales of 'what asylum seekers get' which are untrue or wildly exaggerated.

We even have one today on the thread about Brighton. Asylum seekers are give bicycles, apparently

Indeed.
And on a talk show recently was stated by a caller that refugees get free cars.
By next week will probs be free all inclusive holidays or cruises.

MaizieD

Sorry, Mollygo, but the false narrative has been posted many times. Not as *Babs03 says it because she is posting what her experience tells her is reality. But over the past year or two at least we've had plenty of tales of 'what asylum seekers get' which are untrue or wildly exaggerated.

We even have one today on the thread about Brighton. Asylum seekers are give bicycles, apparently

I don’t know how you can call it “false narrative” Mollygo when it is somebody’s lived experience.

This article is a bit of a read, but it describes so exactly both the words/ideas involved in the hatred and the means its passed on - what babs describes is the tip of an iceberg.

research.ethicalconsumer.org/research-hub/addressing-subtle-forms-of-anti-migrant-hate-2022

False narratives about what anyone receives who arrives on a small boat or not, it doesn’t stop the flow of boats arriving daily and what strains this puts on councils who then have to house them.The only thing it seems to me to be done is very fast processing of claims then deportation also done quickly for those not deemed to be true asylum seekers.

Wyllow3

This article is a bit of a read, but it describes so exactly both the words/ideas involved in the hatred and the means its passed on - what babs describes is the tip of an iceberg.

research.ethicalconsumer.org/research-hub/addressing-subtle-forms-of-anti-migrant-hate-2022

Thanx for that. Very informative.
Antisemitism thrives on the false narrative that Jewish people are taking over, this false narrative is also the case with Muslim migrants with references to Sharia law taking over our judicial system. Racism against blacks has for a long time used the false narrative that black people are more criminally minded and more prone to commit sexual crimes because black males are more sexually active.
And in the link you supplied the usual racist opinions about refugees are outlined - that they are more criminally minded, that the men disrespect women and are more prone to rape or sexually molest women, are would be terrorists, do not have the same moral standards etc.
All of this serves to dehumanise a people and so make it easier to talk about them as a public nuisance that needs to be eradicated.
Sobering reading.

David49

Mamie

David49

Whatever they say 70% of crossings are successful, which sounds to me like not really trying, if it depends on the UK paying the French more to do the job properly, it’s going to be a lot cheaper than the stupid Rwanda plan.

Just out of interest do you have the source for that figure? According to Le Monde 69% of crossings have been stopped (April 2024). The figures do include the whole of the channel coast. The local papers and tweets from officials provide quite a lot of information about operations on the ground (in French).

From the website you quoted

François Guennoc, vice-president of the Auberge des migrants, an association which helps migrants, estimates that "the success rate of crossings is between 60 and 70%".

Yes that is from the 2020 article which was the figure during Covid lockdown.
"Sur la base des chiffres français et britanniques tenus à jour par l'Auberge des migrants depuis octobre 2018, le taux de réussite des traversées par la mer est passé de 60 à près de 80% depuis le confinement décrété en France le 17 mars. "Cela encourage plus de migrants à emprunter cette voie de passage extrêmement dangereuse", rappelle François Guennoc".
The Le Monde article which quotes 69% crossings stopped by the French forces was April this year.
The figures are never going to be easy to assess, but at the port near where we live we see plenty of action going on.

Babs03 surely you’ve seen the news and newspaper photos of immigrants arriving on our shores. Completely the opposite of the “cowed, scared” people who avoid eye contact.

The thousands I’ve seen disembarking are all fit young men either giving the Victory or thumbs up sign and waving and cheering. They don’t look cowed or scared at all.

I said on here months ago that I know a Border Force official very well and what he has to say confirms what I see with my own eyes.

Just read that in .germany asylum seekers are secretly going on holidays to their home countries. There is even a thriving industry of travel agents out there facilitating it. You couldnt make it up 🤣🤣🤣🤣

"thousands I've seen with my own eyes."
Aye, right. And one border official's opinion means it all must be true.

There are no " boat people" What a silly expression. Along with " small boats", they are hardly likely to be ocean liners. Stop the Boats, another silly phrase.

They are human being first and foremost not " boat people"
Nobody called the Ukrainians " Plane People"