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Land of milk and honey


PaulT
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Q wrote:

'The readers comments are particularily of interest I thought. Makes me ashamed to be British sometimes.'

in response to a DM article regarding scaling back patrols to rescue illegal immigrants.

Apart from one comment I could see nothing awful about the comments and I thought the comments from the American resident in the US were sensible.

Perhaps, as the new God is H&S we should send boats to Libya to ferry the immigrants across to save them when their normal mode of transport sinks.
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[quote user="PaulT"]Q wrote: 'The readers comments are particularily of interest I thought. Makes me ashamed to be British sometimes.' in response to a DM article regarding scaling back patrols to rescue illegal immigrants. Apart from one comment I could see nothing awful about the comments and I thought the comments from the American resident in the US were sensible. Perhaps, as the new God is H&S we should send boats to Libya to ferry the immigrants across to save them when their normal mode of transport sinks.[/quote]

My issue is that the British government, like a few others active in this area of the Med, and it would seem a lot of those passing comment on the article think it is acceptable to allow men, women, children and babies to drown. I don't have a problem with towing the boats back before they get into EU waters but to sit by and watch them drown is inhumane.

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[quote user="idun"]NH, surely income is income and an untaxed UK pension can simply go into the simulateur under pension just to see. OR do they tax it at a different rate?

[/quote]

Don't know if the following link may help you out with the pension question.

http://www.siddalls.net/siddallsinprint/2013/FrenchPersonalTaxation2013.html

Government pensions like military, police etc are treated differently than the standard state pension and private pensions.

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[quote user="Quillan"]

My issue is that the British government, like a few others active in this area of the Med, and it would seem a lot of those passing comment on the article think it is acceptable to allow men, women, children and babies to drown. I don't have a problem with towing the boats back before they get into EU waters but to sit by and watch them drown is inhumane.

[/quote]

Q, you and I have had our disagreements in the past but, on this one, I am with you 100%[:D]

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Will not use the QUOTE - about time this forum was not just for IE!

Surely, if the UK has ships in the Med then they are there to do things other than as lifeboats for immigrants. In order to carry out their exercises and also a lifeboat service then they will need more ships at greater cost to the UK taxpayer.

Perhaps, cheaper, would be making known to those who might try to cross the Med that it is extremely dangerous and many have drowned - if they then try to cross they have taken a concious decision to cross and on their own heads be it.
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Inhuman? Are we really supposed to be blackmailed about this, the EU and the UK?

.................We will risk our lives to get to you, but you have to reduce our risk, otherwise it is your fault and you who lack morals?

..................We would rather die trying to get to you, than fight to make our own country better!

I've seen programs on french tv, where those trying to cross the channel get their fancy phones recharged by a charitable lady in Calais. (Phones, if I wanted, would be struggling to afford). My thought is that when they have such good phones and contact with 'home', why could they not have realised that they should not have started the journey in the first place. AND who is at home, if it is so dangerous,  (depending on where they are from), but when asked, every where is........ apparently!

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I would say this is as typical of the reasons that people become migrants as any other reason.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29694066

Don't you have to be pretty desperate to risk your life by entrusting your family to traffickers? I doubt there are many that would be prepared to chance it just for money.
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[quote user="Quillan"]I don't have a problem with towing the boats back before they get into EU waters but to sit by and watch them drown is inhumane.[/quote]

I agree that we can't let them drown, but we in Europe are not coping with the situation and we are not handling the situation in a way that will dissuade the economic migrants and more importantly the people traffickers - and to be honest I don't really know what the answer is. We don't seem to be able to tell the difference between genuine asylum-seekers and economic migrants. We have to bear in mind that the UK has a good tradition of accepting those seeking asylum from persecution and death, and many of those who benefitted also made significant contributions to the accepting countries. When in the past we put limits on these genuine asylum-seekers, or refused on grounds of political expediency to accept that they had a case, it didn't go well (I'm thinking about those who fled Germany in the 1930s, some of whom were accepted whilst others were forced to remain, and those repatriated to certain death after WW2).

BUT: Part of the problem is that IIRC, the European countries do not get any co-operation from the North African countries with regards to returning these boats whence they came. They do NOT let warships from foreign navies into their territorial waters without prior agreement (I would presume that we don't either), so using a warship or other patrol vessel to tow them back is not going to work. The migrants are probably illegally in Libya or wherever and so the authorities there are probably not minded to take them back. I also strongly doubt whether the migrants would passively accept their boats being towed back.

During the last bout of publicity, IIRC, a group of 300 migrants were rescued by a Cypriot cruise ship which was en-route to Cyprus. The migrants refused to get off when the ship docked in Cyprus and it took a lot of hours and the intervention of the police to "persuade" them to leave. The cruise ship owners pointed out that the migrants had been rescued, fed, watered and tended to, and the whole episode left the company hundreds of thousands of € out of pocket.

Last week, another group of 220 migrants were rescued by the Eleonora Maersk which was headed towards Malta. They refused to be transferred to a Maltese navy ship because the migrants wanted to go to Italy, and the container ship has had to negotiate with the Italian authorities for them to be taken in charge by the Italians, and has had to divert to Italy.

This is not going to end well. Ship's crews rescue other seafarers basically on their honour: if they end up being economically punished for doing the right thing, next time the temptation to sail on by may be too great.

Another report concerns traffickers who wanted to get a group of 500 migrants to transfer from one boat to a less-seaworthy one, and allegedly sank the boat that the migrants were on when they refused to transfer, leaving apparently only 9 survivors.

We need to get the stories of the deaths to those thinking of becoming illegal economic migrants. We need to get potential economic migrants to think that life really isn't going to be better for them in Europe. We need to get people to believe that the traffickers are quite likely to harm them. And we need the authorities in North Africa to jail the traffickers. Now what are the chances of all THAT happening?

I think I've mentioned before the small group of illegal immigrants that I chatted to a few years ago at Treviso: they were working generally as washer-uppers in restaurants and other minimally-paid unskilled jobs. They thought that Italy was a poor country and that by comparison, the UK was very rich, and that they would be able to earn lots of money there. Nothing could persuade them otherwise, including my pointing out that we were in a temperature of 18 degrees C, and that I was in shirt-sleeves whilst they were wrapped up in puffer-jackets and STILL shivering, and that London would be rather colder.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11192208/Drown-an-immigrant-to-save-an-immigrant-why-is-the-Government-borrowing-policy-from-the-BNP.html

Interesting article in The Telegraph..I wonder if people will be quite so supportive of this hard line when their idyllic holiday in the sun is ruined by their kids discovering the washed up bodies of drowned asylum seekers next to the sun loungers.
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[quote user="Rabbie"]Glad to see the spirit of Christian Charity is alive and well and being displayed in this thread[6][/quote]

Do you mean Samaritan charity as that was the person who helped, no one else.

If there are refugees from Lybia and Syria then there are countries much closer where they could seek asylam as has been said many times before.  There are even more long before you reach the Channel, so is it the alledged benifits system and NHS they really want?

This is a world wide problem and needs a world wide solution. Personally I find Britain very crowded whereas other countries seem to have more space so should be able accododate more and could work for accomdodation and food but never be granted citizenship status.

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[quote user="Théière"]There are even more long before you reach the Channel, so is it the alledged benifits system and NHS they really want?

[/quote]

Unfortunately, until they have been to the UK, they stick to their beliefs that the UK offers them more (in whatever ways) than they can find elsewhere. They do not want to believe anyone who tells them otherwise, even if (perhaps especially if) that person is a fellow refugee who has experienced the reality of life in the UK and wants to go back.

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Most of these so called refugees are in fact economic migrants who have been made to believe that there is a better life outside their own countries. They have been manipulated by, pay huge amounts of money to and are transported by criminal gangs, and brought illegally across various countries outside and inside Europe.

A significant amount of this money ends up in the hands of terrorists or fundamentalists groups who also treat these migrants abominably, right down to killing them.

So, you so called Christians are supporting crime, violence, terror and terrorism, at the very least, as well as blackmail, corruption and tons more crime. Whoopeee for God!

Often enough the refugees have been trained to say certain things, such as "Political Asylum" and will abscond as soon as they get the chance.

Look at the newsreels, most are male, unskilled and of little use to UK, even as fruit pickers, because other members of the EU work force can take those jobs.

All illegals should be expelled from whichever country they have been found. The only ones to be considered are genuine political refugees and then for a limiterd time, initially.

Oh, and we Brits need identity cards PDQ.

Just for starters.
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Do you have evidence or links for all of this Woolybananna. I ask because whilst I agree that the main criminals in all of this are the traffickers I think many of those taking to the boats are families. I also think that much of the crime is from a far more old fashioned source, with Mafia affiliated gangs responsible for many of the events off the Italian coast.

On the whole, if people are 'illegal' they are expelled..by the very nature of that definition. I think cooperation in Europe is better way of solving it than identity cards. France has identity cards but it doesn't stop people arriving illegally, anymore than it would in the UK.

I have problems with the notion of leaving boatloads of people to drown, even if they are there at the hands of unscrupulous people and their own desire for what they believe will be a better life. After all that is why many of us chose to live in France and so I don't feel I can criticise others for that ideal. I'm not a Christian or a Samaritan but something does not sit right with my conscience about this.
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I didn't catch the full detail of the Q and A with the Mayor of Calais, but hope that the question that I have wanted an answer to was asked of her. That question is, 'What is the status of the people gathering in Calais - are they in France legally or not? If the latter, why are the French not expelling them?' If they are there legally then in relatively short time I presume they will be eligible to get travel documents/ passports which will allow them movement around Europe, when , if they are still so inclined, the French will see the back of them as they head to UK.

Pouyade
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To appease your conscience, how about about working towards improving the lives of those in the countries from where they came. e.g. Syria, Jordan, Palestine etc.

I do question your assertion that on the whole people who are settled in a place illegally are expelled.

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Some of the comments are quite interesting I thought.

I do not think religion, often wheeled out in 'moral' debates, has anything to do with it. It is called being humane, having a moral code and a conscious. I could never sit by and watch another person die regardless of if they are an illegal immigrant or not. Yes I have thoughts about immigrants and yes I think illegal ones should be sent back either en-route or when they arrive but saying 'let them drown' is quite abhorrent to me.

I agree with ID cards and having just been sent a letter from CPAM asking me to prove my entitlement and my identity so as to get the 'new' Carte Vital with my photo on it you don't have to think very hard as to where this could be leading, don't have a card, then you're in France illegally. For Those who can't get one but have private insurance I suspect, if they have not done so already, (because I don't know) their insurance will get them a Carte Vital at some stage. The Carte Vital will then become your proof of residency. Personally I would like to see an EU identity card that whilst issued within a member state the data is held on a central EU database. Yes I know that ID cards can be forged etc but with modern technology the systems required to forge one would be very expensive and then you have to somehow find a way of getting the data into the system so the card can be recognised electronically. In short it would not be the sort of thing the average person could afford.

What to do though to deter these people from trying to get into Europe is probably the biggest question and it is really down to the EU as a whole. When this story broke I was watching C4 News and they could not get anyone from the UK government to pass comment. They went instead to the Tory leader of the EU MEP's (whose name escapes me) and I thought what he said might be valid. He suggested that they lift the agricultural tariff on these countries making it easier for them to import fruit and veg into the EU. First thing I thought was you could see the French farmers going for that, not. The basis of his idea is that many of these people apparently come from agricultural regions but there is no work. If you could stimulate the agricultural industry in these countries thus creating work it might make them think twice about leaving. It is of course going into unknown territory and it may not work but then you don't know. It might be worth trying on a limited time period, say five or ten years, with the option of extending it if it slows down people trying to emigrate. It would, rather than beating people with a 'big stick', be a better idea to offer them something that makes them feel they might be better off staying in their own country.

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