Calais: Migration and the UK Border

[taffboy gwyrdd]

In principle, the jealous guarding of borders tends to boil down to "we've got ours - fuck you!".

Fairly mainstream attitudes are thus repuslive, anti human, and drenched in racism.

 

[bluescreen]

Thing that bothers me is that people don't just shrug and head off to the tundra. They fight for what they consider is their turf and it gets bloody.

 

[bluescreen]

I don't mean they have to, just that they do.

ETA: if no one acknowledged the possibility that anyone might want to defend borders, would racism disappear? If not, how to deal with the desire to defend borders?

 

[brogdale]

Some light relief in a dark tale...

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Migrant is crushed to death in the tunnel, Cameron says...

I have every sympathy with holidaymakers who are finding access to Calais difficult because of the disturbances there and we will do everything we can to work with the French to bring these things to a conclusion

 

[brogdale]

Migrant is crushed to death in the tunnel, Cameron says...

Some reports that he was 13 year old Sudanese lad.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

And the world is up in arms over a dead lion.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

And the world is up in arms over a dead lion.

I have no problem with the anger about the lion. The reason why a 13 year old migrant is harder to examine is because it shows a very ugly reflection in the mirror. The system to quite an extent, and quite a lot of people (perhaps not consciously) essentially want people like him dead, certainly in preference to him persuing any kind of freedom for the life he thinks best for him.

This is the philosophy of "show me the bodies floating in the water - I still dont care", a philosophy shared widely beyond the harpy who gave verbal form to the idea.

 

[likesfish]

Immigration control is always going to be racist when you can double or treble your life expectancy getting out of eritria or Afghanistan for instance.
Not sure taking everyone in is a realistic option though.

 

[Pingu]

Immigration control is always going to be racist when you can double or treble your life expectancy getting out of eritria or Afghanistan for instance.
Not sure taking everyone in is a realistic option though.

maybe if we invaded and imposed our systems and ways of life in the originating countries we could help improve things to an extent such as they wouldn't need to leave... i mean what could possibly go wrong?

 

[likesfish]

But we didnt did we this time we just invaded wrecked some shit and pissed off home
The original evil empire™ Did impose a system and rule of law mosty the rules we just made up but there was law and order 21st style no law or order but air strikes

 

[Pingu]

But we didnt did we this time we just invaded wrecked some shit and pissed off home
The original evil empire™ Did impose a system and rule of law mosty the rules we just made up but there was law and order 21st style no law or order but air strikes

to be fair you have a point.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

So invading and imposing doesn't work, invading and not imposing doesn't work either.

Gee, I'm fucked if I know what to do with these countries then.

 

[likesfish]

Invading and imposing does work but you've got to turn up mob handed and stay for years and years and be an utter bastard for a few years

 

[SpookyFrank]

But we didnt did we this time we just invaded wrecked some shit and pissed off home
The original evil empire™ Did impose a system and rule of law mosty the rules we just made up but there was law and order 21st style no law or order but air strikes

You can't commit crimes to impose the rule of law. That's not a thing. You're not upholding shit, you're just a criminal.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Immigration control is always going to be racist when you can double or treble your life expectancy getting out of eritria or Afghanistan for instance.
Not sure taking everyone in is a realistic option though.

A single country opening its border to everyone would probably cause chaos. Paticularly a wealthy country like Britain, and one at the heart of a massive linguistic, cultural and historical web.

This is why we say, no nations, no borders.

 

[Celyn]

What happens to the people in Calais if they cannot get to the UK? I mean, what does France do to them? Do they get left to stave, or get arrested, imprisoned or what?

N.B I am NOT saying they ought to stay in France, but I genuinely don't know what bad stuff befalls if they stay there, but anyone risking their life stowing away on the undersides of truck etc is obviously pretty desperate.

Does France not provide any support for asylum seekers, or has it already decided that the people in Calais don't qualify and should just die or something? Yet if you come from Eritrea, surely you're a valid refugee?

 

[8115]

What happens to the people in Calais if they cannot get to the UK? I mean, what does France do to them? Do they get left to stave, or get arrested, imprisoned or what?

N.B I am NOT saying they ought to stay in France, but I genuinely don't know what bad stuff befalls if they stay there, but anyone risking their life stowing away on the undersides of truck etc is obviously pretty desperate.

Does France not provide any support for asylum seekers, or has it already decided that the people in Calais don't qualify and should just die or something? Yet if you come from Eritrea, surely you're a valid refugee?

I think, they mainly live in camps and survive on charity and maybe minimal state aid.

I don't think they get much from France, one reason being that they aren't claiming asylum in France.

 

[Celyn]

...

I don't think they get much from France, one reason being that they aren't claiming asylum in France.

Ah! I seem to have missed out on that rather important detail. Oh, what a bloody mess.

 

[sovereignb]

I think there's an argument that everyone should be let in (I said 'perhaps') because it's unconscionable that they should be left to suffer the way they are suffering in The Jungle in Calais, or that they should be risking their lives in a way that would be considered an outrage if it were happening here on this island but is apparently not, so long as it's happening over there abroad. I don't know how else that suffering can be relieved, given that France is already doing a lot more than they are given credit for. Against that is the very obvious argument of the alleged pull factor: if we make it easy (hell, it's not remotely easy, is it, to get this far?) then more will come. I don't honestly know how much weight to give to either side of the argument, even while acknowledging there are many more sides to it than just these two.

What I am certain of is that continued conflict and climate change - which induces further conflict - will only exacerbate the exodus. We aint seen nothing yet. I'm also reasonably sure that the people trying to enter the UK are young and able - the very people most needed back home. In an ideal world we'd wave a wand and create world peace and people would move only because they wanted to, not because they had to. We're not in that world, so how do we improve the one we've got (without making everything worse)?

The BBC (I know I know) has an interesting feature on the naive question I asked Frank earlier:
Would Calais migrants really be better off in the UK?

I couldn't have put it better myself. Thanks for an answer that considers all sides of the equation (and it is truly a big equation with no simple answer). Unlike Frank, who seems to resort to swearing and talks of racism when someone questions or opposes his warped standpoint on the matter.

We've definitely seen an increased number of unaccompanied minors presenting where I work over the last few months so clearly something in equation is getting worse.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I'm also reasonably sure that the people trying to enter the UK are young and able - the very people most needed back home.

Patronising nonsense. What if it's the young and able who are drafted into the military and executed if they desert, as they are in Eritrea? What if 'home' is a pile of rubble now presided over by a horde of nihilistic mass murderers, as it is for many Syrians and Iraqis? What if only tough young men are likely to even survive the journey to the UK, so they go alone in order to try and earn money to send back to the rest of their families?

If you think these people should stop whining, roll on home and get a job in burger king like you did when you were their age, have the decency to go look them in the eye and tell them yourself.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I don't believe everyone in Calais would be better off in the UK for what it's worth. But what I really don't believe is the people who talk as if these people are being left stranded in Calais for their own good.

The question of whether or not coming to the UK is going to improve someone's life is irrelevant, a complete red herring. What matters is that a person has decided that they want to come here and we have no right to tell them they can't. If you don't know a person, you don't know their situation, you don't know the choices facing them, how can you claim to know what's best for them?

 

[crossthebreeze]

From Calais Migrant Solidarity - this clarified of some of the facts for me:
https://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/the-crisis-is-the-border/
According to this not 1000-2000 people trying to storm Eurotunnel at once (as the headlines are saying), but the number of attempts blocked by police or border staff over one night - some people will try several times a night and get counted each time. 11 people have died in Calais and other parts of the French coastal area since June this year while trying to cross to the UK. They say that what is happening at Eurotunnel is a direct consequence of increased security at the ferry terminal - increasing security just means that people have to take more risks. They reckon that measures short of no borders, no nations - moving the British border to British soil and ending the Le Touquet agreement, along with introducing a safe and dignified way of coming to the UK and applying for asylum from abroad - would have an immediate humanitarian affect.

 

[frogwoman]

The uk has only taken 200 syrian refugees.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Sadly with all the present hysteria I can't see any progress being made in terms of UK border policy. The whole situation is an ideal red herring for a right wing government to distract people with.

If there are changes to policy they will be forced upon Britain by France. Everything the French have done to try and drive migrants out of calais or keep them contained has just created a different kind of chaos. In the case of the new camp and the new fences the result has been a huge rise in the number of deaths. 11 people have died in two months, compared to 15 in the whole of last year. I hate to mention it in the same breath but transport links have been seriously disrupted as well. This was all entirely predictable and the French authorities were warned about it at the time.

Pretty much nowhere else in Europe has the policy we do, that of stopping refugees from even coming to us in the first place. Everywhere else has land borders so it would be impossible anyway. I have said on this thread that asylum seekers are treated relatively well in the UK, but that has to be seen in the context of what so many of them are forced to endure to even get here in the first place. We have a duty as part of an international community, and especially as a wealthy country which has long profited from poverty and bloodshed in much of the rest of the world, we have a duty to help deal with the refugee crisis.

Policing the border at Calais costs a lot of money. The French Plods au Frontier are funded by the UK. Just like with the detention centres, you feel that money might be better spent actually providing people with support. Because migrants still come to the UK anyway. The border controls still aren't fit for purpose despite all that money, all they do is make the journey more dangerous and provide lucrative opportunities for gangsters.

Something will give sooner or later. France will stop playing ball. It's a little known fact but every so often the French border controls will just take the night off, stop giving a shit, and let fifty or a hundred people get onto the boats unimpeded. They have to do this to stop the jungles from growing too big. With the new measures this probably isn't happening any more, and I suspect that's one of the reasons why numbers of people on the ground in Calais seem to be rising. But even if the French open the gates at their end, as they do on the sly from time to time, the migrants still have to risk their necks clinging to lorry axles or whatever else to make it past UK customs at the other end.

The whole situation is a particularly sorry example of what happens when people try to enact reactionary, dog-whistle politics in the real world. Nobody can back down, no matter how obvious the failure of their schemes, because to do so would require going back on something they told us was really, really important. People are dying so politicians can save face.

 

[trabant]

Just read through the whole thread, thanks for all the great posts spookyfrank (and a few others).

In Greece over the last 6 months there has been a vast increase in Syrians and Afghanis arriving. There is currently a camp in a park in the center of Athens that developed a few weeks back and has around 1000 people, a significant proportion are children. The state has done little, and local groups have been doing the bulk of the work, collecting and distributing contributions (which, considering the current state of things here, have been substantial), helping kids go to hospitals, guarding the area from cops, setting up a make-shift clinic etc. Most I've met are tired, frustrated, angry, hungry and scared. After an already exhausting journey, even after entering Europe, they still have a few 1000km of traveling precariously to arrive at their intended destination.

Anyway, apologies if this is too off-topic.

 

[Sprocket.]

David Davies was on Radio4 earlier expressing his and no doubt others belief that the French should repatriate all the people without papers to their country of origin and also for the UK government and French government to set up camps '' not the bad type'', in the vast areas of North Africa and begin processing them!
Compassion and responsibility are apparently no longer available.

 

[Pickman's model]

this will end in tears, mark my words

 

[likesfish]

We could concentrate the refugees/migrants in these camps now what to call them?


You can impose order with enough bloodshed but even the sociopath Davies isn't advocating British empire mk2. Yet

 

[Pickman's model]

We could concentrate the refugees/migrants in these camps now what to call them?


You can impose order with enough bloodshed but even the sociopath Davies isn't advocating British empire mk2. Yet

it would be british empire iii or perhaps even iv.