8 ms·

How would you suggest the UK "stops the small boats"? Any attempt to stop them by force or push them back would result in a large number of drowned migrants. Th

by Veen 5y ago

How would you suggest the UK "stops the small boats"? Any attempt to stop them by force or push them back would result in a large number of drowned migrants. The only way to stop them is to discourage them from getting in the boats in the first place. It would be nice if the French did that on their side of the channel, but they don't. The point of the Rwanda scheme is to make getting in the boat an undesirable option, because you'll just end up somewhere you don't want to be. The hope is that few people will have to be sent to Rwanda because they'll stop paying people smugglers to make the trip.

regularfry 5y ago
Why this false dichotomy? Either we do whatever authoritarian crap the Home Office are pushing this month or it's pushing people back into the sea and drowning them? No. What will discourage people from getting into boats is to provide safe routes in. Literally a desk in Calais where you can walk up and say "I'm going to request asylum and need a ferry ticket, have Borders Agency meet me at the other side please" would undercut the people smugglers to the extent that you wouldn't have boats any more. The French offered us almost exactly this but we turned them down.
- matthew40 5y ago
  Then you should be happy because Rwanda will do exactly what you said the French should have done.
  - regularfry 5y ago
    Except they won't. The deportations are for asylum application in Rwanda, not to process them for onward passage back to the UK. This is trivial stuff. Besides which, costs per applicant under a "desk in Calais" scheme would cost peanuts. Remind me how much the Rwanda scheme costs, per asylum seeker?
- Veen 5y ago
  And when an asylum claim fails, what happens to the asylum seeker? The French won't take them back, so what generally happens is that they stay in the UK regardless of whether the claim is justified. That's equivalent to having open borders, which I suspect is the underlying objective of many who strongly object to this scheme. Plus, of course, they are already in France. They could claim asylum there.
  - regularfry 5y ago
    > And when an asylum claim fails, what happens to the asylum seeker? That's totally irrelevant, and not what we're talking about though. This scheme pre-judges that. It exposes the scheme for what it is: it's not about the boats, it's about the people in them. > Plus, of course, they are already in France. They could claim asylum there. And the vast, vast majority of them do. The ones that don't have their reasons, which they are best placed to judge.
    - dotBen 5y ago
      "That's totally irrelevant, and not what we're talking about though." Well yes, we were originally talking about shops selling American candy...
      - gilleain 5y ago
        Sigh, yes I was thinking something similar. Not sure how we got from suspect sweet stores to illegal immigrants ... Thanks, your comment made me smile.
- jl6 5y ago
  Few are willing to say it outright, but the objective is not to discourage them from getting into small boats, but to discourage them from coming at all. The UK remains nominally committed to providing asylum for people who fear for their lives in their home country, so the latest scheme is designed to call the asylum seeker’s bluff: “we will guarantee your safety, but it will be in Rwanda”. Anyone genuinely fearing for their lives will presumably be happy to take the offer of safe haven. The economic migrants presumably will not.
  - sonthonax 5y ago
    Refugees' lives are rarely at risk. The reason that refugees leave 'safe' camps is that they, more often than not, will live with with the prospect of living their whole lives in a tent and subsisting off WFP rice bags. It's incredibly grim; life expectancies in long established camps are often under 45. Technically these people are economic migrants. > https://www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/syrian-refugee-children-lebanon.jpg https://www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/201...
    - morelisp 5y ago
      > Refugees' lives are rarely at risk... It's incredibly grim; life expectancies in long established camps are often under 45. Sounds to me like their lives are at risk, just more slowly than previously. "Economic migrants" is a category invented to justify atrocities. After you've financialized basic necessities, of course the the reasons for "migrating" are economic!
      - an9n 5y ago
        And what is the solution then when the population of the UK is 100 million, Or 200 million, and more still want to come? The government already lie about the genuine population because the numbers are so alarming. There has to be an upper limit on the desirable population of the UK before life becomes miserable: this is a small island and already one of the most densely populated places on earth in parts and little space to expand without further significant impact, no genuine wilderness, increasing pressure on the pockets of decent biodiversity left etc. etc.
- motogpjimbo 5y ago
  Given that failed asylum seekers will almost never be deported, you are essentially arguing for unlimited migration here.
  - regularfry 5y ago
    And you're arguing for zero, which is frankly ridiculous.
    - Veen 5y ago
      No one is arguing for zero immigration. That's a fiction you've invented. I'm arguing for controlled legal immigration: i.e, the UK gets to decide who comes to live here. I was entirely supportive of the recent scheme for Ukrainians and the earlier BNO visa scheme for Hong Kong residents.
      - madaxe_again 5y ago
        On what basis have you earned the right to reside in the U.K.? Don’t say “I was born here” - you didn’t earn that. How would you fare on the points based visa scheme? Would you support an initiative to strip undesirable people (i.e. all those who have inadequate points) of their citizenship, so “better” people with more points can replace them?
        zmgsabst 5y ago
        Yes — a society should preference it’s own children over outsiders. That’s essential to its continued existence. You’re simply arguing that you have a right to loot UK families, destroying their society in the process, to give their money to people you feel are “more deserving”. I think that’s borderline genocidal.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
- Helitioo 5y ago
  This doesn't solve the problem. Apparently it's also a communication thing. Smugglers have motivation to say how good it is if you make it. People hear and share weird information.
te_chris 5y ago
Given even the Home Office, an organisation which has basically institutionalised cruelty, is finding this one hard to stomach, I think the point is more that you have to look at the motivations for why they went with this idea: red meat for the mouth breathers.
- Veen 5y ago
  If by "mouth breathers" you mean the majority of the UK population who would like immigration reduced, then yes, it probably is meant to appeal to them.
  - maxehmookau 5y ago
    I think by "mouth breathers" they mean folks who are willing to dehumanise folks less lucky than themselves to have been born somewhere with relative economic prosperity because this is "our country". Also, those same people who are willing to buy newspapers that _gleefully_ employ columnists who also dehumanise these humans on an almost daily basis. People who fall for populist nonsense just before an election spouted from a government who have, over more than a decade, entirely failed to reduce immigration and yet convince the electorate that they're the best people for that particular job. I also reject the notion that the majority of the population would like immigration reduced (I certainly don't, especially refugees fleeing wars that we are at least, in part, responsible for). Considering the chronic shortage of skilled workers in the UK (due to our underfunded education system), I don't see how that's possible.
    - philk10 5y ago
      and the pushback policy has now been withdrawn - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/25/uk-refugee-pushback-policy-withdrawn-judicial-review-priti-patel https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/25/uk-refugee-p...
      - maxehmookau 5y ago
        Shocker /s Almost like they knew it was going to end like this but now they can say that they tried, only to be stopped by the "activist judges". (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54687081 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54687081) This government's attacks on the judiciary is nothing short of awful.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
boffinAudio 5y ago
>How would you suggest the UK "stops the small boats"? Instead of financing the wars that create the poverty that these people are fleeing from, use that financing to improve services in their society and create better standards of living. Its not like the English don't have a long history of colonialism and imperialism to pay for. The debt is due. More should be done to make up the damage done by hundreds of years of exploitation by English lords.
- matthew40 5y ago
  Handing out cash does not solve any problems. Cf. Afghanistan. You don't just build a modern country or civilization by dropping some helicopter-dollars, that's not how it works. Unless you tell me you want to send doctors, engineers, school teachers, etc, there, to "civilize" them, but i thought you were against colonization ?
  - pacija 5y ago
    What do you mean by handing out cash cf. Afganistan? Last I heard Afganistan's billions of cash reserves were seized by USA. You mean handing out Afgani cash to US oligarchs does not solve any problems? I can agree with that.
    - matthew40 5y ago
      "Half a billion dollars of aircraft that flew for about a year. A huge $85 million hotel that never opened, and sits in disrepair. Camouflage uniforms for the Afghan army whose fancy pattern would cost an extra $28 million. A healthcare facility listed as located in the Mediterranean Sea. These are part of a catalog of "waste, fraud and abuse" complaints made against the United States' reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan -- an effort totaling $145 billion over 20 years -- made by the United States' own inspector general into the war. But the in-depth audits detailing these findings have, for the most part, been taken offline at the request of the State Department, citing security concerns." https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/07/asia/us-afghanistan-spending-waste-intl-cmd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/07/asia/us-afghanistan-spend...
maxehmookau 5y ago
> How would you suggest the UK "stops the small boats"? We don't. We treat humans with dignity and accept them on to our shores to process their asylum claims. We allow asylum seekers to work and pay taxes while that happens. As a society we both demonise asylum seekers for "not contributing" whilst also making it illegal for them to do so.
kergonath 5y ago
> The only way to stop them is to discourage them from getting in the boats in the first place. Which does not work because to quite a lot of people drowning in the Channel is preferable to what they fled back home if there is the tiniest of chances that they can actually make it to a place where they or their children can actually make a living. This line of reasoning is like "let's use harder punishments to dissuade the others". It never worked that way, and still does not now. > The point of the Rwanda scheme is to make getting in the boat an undesirable option, because you'll just end up somewhere you don't want to be. That's not the calculation they make. Their issue is being shot at, disappeared, bombed, or tortured if they stay. Most of the time their risk analysis does not go beyond leaving the country and you see quite a lot of them drifting from country to country once they are in Europe. The ones who show up at Calais are those who come from former regions of influence of the British Empire. No amount of dissuasion is going to change that. > The hope is that few people will have to be sent to Rwanda because they'll stop paying people smugglers to make the trip. It won't work and they won't stop. Again, these people take risks assuming that they have a chance of not being caught or to actually get granted asylum once they arrive (fat chance; most of them don't have a very accurate image of the UK). How is the British government paying to export them to Africa going to change anything in this calculation? Could the UK actually pay to deport all these asylum seekers? Could Rwanda actually welcome them in anything that looks like decent conditions? The most likely answers are "no" and "no", and the examples of Australia's refugees camps out in the Pacific are really not encouraging.
- retube 5y ago
  > Which does not work because to quite a lot of people drowning in the Channel is preferable to what they fled back home But France is presumably a lot nicer tho?
  - kergonath 5y ago
    I would not say that. Maybe a bit nicer, but they would not have the community effects they could find in the UK, where there are strong Pakistani, Bangladeshi, or Iraqi networks. You would not guess from reading the British press, but there is actually a large population of migrants who stop in France, mostly from Africa though.

by Veen 5y ago

regularfry 5y ago

Why this false dichotomy? Either we do whatever authoritarian crap the Home Office are pushing this month or it's pushing people back into the sea and drowning them? No. What will discourage people from getting into boats is to provide safe routes in. Literally a desk in Calais where you can walk up and say "I'm going to request asylum and need a ferry ticket, have Borders Agency meet me at the other side please" would undercut the people smugglers to the extent that you wouldn't have boats any more. The French offered us almost exactly this but we turned them down.

matthew40 5y ago
Then you should be happy because Rwanda will do exactly what you said the French should have done.
- regularfry 5y ago
  Except they won't. The deportations are for asylum application in Rwanda, not to process them for onward passage back to the UK. This is trivial stuff. Besides which, costs per applicant under a "desk in Calais" scheme would cost peanuts. Remind me how much the Rwanda scheme costs, per asylum seeker?
Veen 5y ago
And when an asylum claim fails, what happens to the asylum seeker? The French won't take them back, so what generally happens is that they stay in the UK regardless of whether the claim is justified. That's equivalent to having open borders, which I suspect is the underlying objective of many who strongly object to this scheme. Plus, of course, they are already in France. They could claim asylum there.
- regularfry 5y ago
  > And when an asylum claim fails, what happens to the asylum seeker? That's totally irrelevant, and not what we're talking about though. This scheme pre-judges that. It exposes the scheme for what it is: it's not about the boats, it's about the people in them. > Plus, of course, they are already in France. They could claim asylum there. And the vast, vast majority of them do. The ones that don't have their reasons, which they are best placed to judge.
  - dotBen 5y ago
    "That's totally irrelevant, and not what we're talking about though." Well yes, we were originally talking about shops selling American candy...
    - gilleain 5y ago
      Sigh, yes I was thinking something similar. Not sure how we got from suspect sweet stores to illegal immigrants ... Thanks, your comment made me smile.
jl6 5y ago
Few are willing to say it outright, but the objective is not to discourage them from getting into small boats, but to discourage them from coming at all. The UK remains nominally committed to providing asylum for people who fear for their lives in their home country, so the latest scheme is designed to call the asylum seeker’s bluff: “we will guarantee your safety, but it will be in Rwanda”. Anyone genuinely fearing for their lives will presumably be happy to take the offer of safe haven. The economic migrants presumably will not.
- sonthonax 5y ago
  Refugees' lives are rarely at risk. The reason that refugees leave 'safe' camps is that they, more often than not, will live with with the prospect of living their whole lives in a tent and subsisting off WFP rice bags. It's incredibly grim; life expectancies in long established camps are often under 45. Technically these people are economic migrants. > https://www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/syrian-refugee-children-lebanon.jpg https://www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/201...
  - morelisp 5y ago
    > Refugees' lives are rarely at risk... It's incredibly grim; life expectancies in long established camps are often under 45. Sounds to me like their lives are at risk, just more slowly than previously. "Economic migrants" is a category invented to justify atrocities. After you've financialized basic necessities, of course the the reasons for "migrating" are economic!
    - an9n 5y ago
      And what is the solution then when the population of the UK is 100 million, Or 200 million, and more still want to come? The government already lie about the genuine population because the numbers are so alarming. There has to be an upper limit on the desirable population of the UK before life becomes miserable: this is a small island and already one of the most densely populated places on earth in parts and little space to expand without further significant impact, no genuine wilderness, increasing pressure on the pockets of decent biodiversity left etc. etc.
motogpjimbo 5y ago
Given that failed asylum seekers will almost never be deported, you are essentially arguing for unlimited migration here.
- regularfry 5y ago
  And you're arguing for zero, which is frankly ridiculous.
  - Veen 5y ago
    No one is arguing for zero immigration. That's a fiction you've invented. I'm arguing for controlled legal immigration: i.e, the UK gets to decide who comes to live here. I was entirely supportive of the recent scheme for Ukrainians and the earlier BNO visa scheme for Hong Kong residents.
    - madaxe_again 5y ago
      On what basis have you earned the right to reside in the U.K.? Don’t say “I was born here” - you didn’t earn that. How would you fare on the points based visa scheme? Would you support an initiative to strip undesirable people (i.e. all those who have inadequate points) of their citizenship, so “better” people with more points can replace them?
      - zmgsabst 5y ago
        Yes — a society should preference it’s own children over outsiders. That’s essential to its continued existence. You’re simply arguing that you have a right to loot UK families, destroying their society in the process, to give their money to people you feel are “more deserving”. I think that’s borderline genocidal.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
Helitioo 5y ago
This doesn't solve the problem. Apparently it's also a communication thing. Smugglers have motivation to say how good it is if you make it. People hear and share weird information.

te_chris 5y ago

Given even the Home Office, an organisation which has basically institutionalised cruelty, is finding this one hard to stomach, I think the point is more that you have to look at the motivations for why they went with this idea: red meat for the mouth breathers.

Veen 5y ago
If by "mouth breathers" you mean the majority of the UK population who would like immigration reduced, then yes, it probably is meant to appeal to them.
- maxehmookau 5y ago
  I think by "mouth breathers" they mean folks who are willing to dehumanise folks less lucky than themselves to have been born somewhere with relative economic prosperity because this is "our country". Also, those same people who are willing to buy newspapers that _gleefully_ employ columnists who also dehumanise these humans on an almost daily basis. People who fall for populist nonsense just before an election spouted from a government who have, over more than a decade, entirely failed to reduce immigration and yet convince the electorate that they're the best people for that particular job. I also reject the notion that the majority of the population would like immigration reduced (I certainly don't, especially refugees fleeing wars that we are at least, in part, responsible for). Considering the chronic shortage of skilled workers in the UK (due to our underfunded education system), I don't see how that's possible.
  - philk10 5y ago
    and the pushback policy has now been withdrawn - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/25/uk-refugee-pushback-policy-withdrawn-judicial-review-priti-patel https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/25/uk-refugee-p...
    - maxehmookau 5y ago
      Shocker /s Almost like they knew it was going to end like this but now they can say that they tried, only to be stopped by the "activist judges". (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54687081 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54687081) This government's attacks on the judiciary is nothing short of awful.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

boffinAudio 5y ago

>How would you suggest the UK "stops the small boats"? Instead of financing the wars that create the poverty that these people are fleeing from, use that financing to improve services in their society and create better standards of living. Its not like the English don't have a long history of colonialism and imperialism to pay for. The debt is due. More should be done to make up the damage done by hundreds of years of exploitation by English lords.

matthew40 5y ago
Handing out cash does not solve any problems. Cf. Afghanistan. You don't just build a modern country or civilization by dropping some helicopter-dollars, that's not how it works. Unless you tell me you want to send doctors, engineers, school teachers, etc, there, to "civilize" them, but i thought you were against colonization ?
- pacija 5y ago
  What do you mean by handing out cash cf. Afganistan? Last I heard Afganistan's billions of cash reserves were seized by USA. You mean handing out Afgani cash to US oligarchs does not solve any problems? I can agree with that.
  - matthew40 5y ago
    "Half a billion dollars of aircraft that flew for about a year. A huge $85 million hotel that never opened, and sits in disrepair. Camouflage uniforms for the Afghan army whose fancy pattern would cost an extra $28 million. A healthcare facility listed as located in the Mediterranean Sea. These are part of a catalog of "waste, fraud and abuse" complaints made against the United States' reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan -- an effort totaling $145 billion over 20 years -- made by the United States' own inspector general into the war. But the in-depth audits detailing these findings have, for the most part, been taken offline at the request of the State Department, citing security concerns." https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/07/asia/us-afghanistan-spending-waste-intl-cmd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/07/asia/us-afghanistan-spend...

maxehmookau 5y ago

> How would you suggest the UK "stops the small boats"? We don't. We treat humans with dignity and accept them on to our shores to process their asylum claims. We allow asylum seekers to work and pay taxes while that happens. As a society we both demonise asylum seekers for "not contributing" whilst also making it illegal for them to do so.

kergonath 5y ago

> The only way to stop them is to discourage them from getting in the boats in the first place. Which does not work because to quite a lot of people drowning in the Channel is preferable to what they fled back home if there is the tiniest of chances that they can actually make it to a place where they or their children can actually make a living. This line of reasoning is like "let's use harder punishments to dissuade the others". It never worked that way, and still does not now. > The point of the Rwanda scheme is to make getting in the boat an undesirable option, because you'll just end up somewhere you don't want to be. That's not the calculation they make. Their issue is being shot at, disappeared, bombed, or tortured if they stay. Most of the time their risk analysis does not go beyond leaving the country and you see quite a lot of them drifting from country to country once they are in Europe. The ones who show up at Calais are those who come from former regions of influence of the British Empire. No amount of dissuasion is going to change that. > The hope is that few people will have to be sent to Rwanda because they'll stop paying people smugglers to make the trip. It won't work and they won't stop. Again, these people take risks assuming that they have a chance of not being caught or to actually get granted asylum once they arrive (fat chance; most of them don't have a very accurate image of the UK). How is the British government paying to export them to Africa going to change anything in this calculation? Could the UK actually pay to deport all these asylum seekers? Could Rwanda actually welcome them in anything that looks like decent conditions? The most likely answers are "no" and "no", and the examples of Australia's refugees camps out in the Pacific are really not encouraging.

retube 5y ago
> Which does not work because to quite a lot of people drowning in the Channel is preferable to what they fled back home But France is presumably a lot nicer tho?
- kergonath 5y ago
  I would not say that. Maybe a bit nicer, but they would not have the community effects they could find in the UK, where there are strong Pakistani, Bangladeshi, or Iraqi networks. You would not guess from reading the British press, but there is actually a large population of migrants who stop in France, mostly from Africa though.