Is It Time for, Some Facts About Those Migrants? Huffington Post

 

 

Robin Lustig Huffington Post

Journalist and broadcaster

Is It Time for Some Facts About Those Migrants?

Posted: 31/07/2015 17:58 BST Updated: 31/07/2015 17:59 BST 

Perhaps you'll think I'm naïve, but I still believe that when you have a debate, it's a good idea to have some facts readily to hand.

So here are some facts that you might find useful next time you're thinking about that "swarm" (David Cameron's word, not mine) of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from north Africa. Why not keep them handy (the facts, not the migrants) on your smartphone, or print them out and shove them in a pocket. 

Read more here:

Further Reading

Daily Express

Daily Mail

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Why the world is dying to come here, Daily Mail

The discovery of 35 desperate people inside a shipping container at Tilbury docks is a real-life horror story. Basic humanity requires that we give them medical treatment and temporary accommodation.

Clearly they have suffered a terrible ordeal. They were dehydrated and close to suffocation. One of them died on the voyage from Zeebrugge.

There were 13 blameless children among those packed into what has been described as a ‘metal coffin’. We can only imagine what they have endured on their 3,500-mile journey across continents.

They have been exploited and put in mortal danger by callous traffickers, who trade in human misery.

But they weren’t kidnapped. While the children are exempt from any responsibility for their plight, all the adults involved knew what they were getting into.

They voluntarily paid the traffickers to smuggle them into Britain. Typically, it costs £20,000 to get from Afghanistan to Zeebrugge and a further £1,500 for a passage to England. I’m assuming they weren’t expecting to be flown first-class to Heathrow.

We are told they are all Afghan Sikhs fleeing Taliban persecution and they were attracted here because of the ‘thriving and established Afghan Sikh community in London’. There is also a thriving Sikh community in India, right on Afghanistan’s doorstep. So why didn’t they flee there? I’m sure they’d be more at home in the Punjab than Putney.

Why didn’t they seek asylum in Russia, or Turkey, or any of the countries that they crossed en route to Zeebrugge?

Read the full article here:

'We are outnumbered 285-1': Calais police admit they cannot prevent UK migrant surge, Daily Express

FRENCH police today admitted they were "powerless" to prevent thousands of migrants attempting to enter Britain illegally.

The border crisis is now so severe one officer shrugged, saying: "We are overstretched and there is not much we can do."

Experts estimate as many as 12,000 refugees make a bolt for Britain through Calais each year.

Today the Daily Express witnessed chaotic scenes as gangs of vagrants risked their lives attempting to jump on the back of moving freight trucks.

The migrant epidemic is now so bad officials believe at least 30 attempts to make it to the UK as stowaways every day.

The 2,000 who have congregated in the port town from a variety of countries including Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Ethiopia outnumber police by 285-to-one.

One exasperated officer said the blue line policing the perimeter of the port is so thin border guards are overrun by the migrant tide.

Giving the first detailed account from the front line of the fight, the unnamed officer aid: "There are just two or three patrols - just seven of us maximum - and hundreds of them trying to get to the UK. We are powerless to do anything.

Read more here:

British security on alert as migrants aim to ‘live like a king’ in the UK, Daily Express

 More than 2,000 people are now crowded in, most of them ­desperate to reach the UK.

Meanwhile, the deputy mayor of the port wants the French border moved to Dover for one month – to make the British understand the sheer scale of the problem faced by his town every day.

There is such alarm at the growing numbers of migrants using ­Calais as a base to make a bolt across the Channel that a Home Office source said “physical security has been increased and beefed up”.

The tent city is home to those from countries including Syria, Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.

Many fight to stow away on lorries bound for Britain each night. French officials say the town is overrun because the UK is a land where the penniless could “live like kings”.

The word about easy-to-obtain benefits and “paradise” conditions for migrant families has spread to the world’s poorest countries. It is estimated there have been 12,000 attempts to cross the UK border via Calais in the past year.

The lure of a new life across the Channel has seen families live in unimaginable squalor at the camp in woods near the port. Numbers are swelling by the day.

“Why is England so attractive for migrants? In their original countries people are saying that if you go to England you will have everything – a house, money, a job; your family will be able to join you. Right or wrong, it is what is said. They might leave with three pounds but, when they arrive in England they can make £50-a-week on the black market, so they are happy – they are kings.

“The bottleneck here is caused because England is too attractive, too easy. They have nothing to lose – except their lives.”

Inside the camp, men, women and malnourished children live on top of each other in tarpaulin tents with no running water.

The clamour for the front of the queue when the nightly scramble begins to sneak on to lorries bound for England means violent clashes often erupt.

Comment:

We need to secure our borders, and if people want to come and live here, they must be willing to work and integrate into society, rather than expecting a life of freebies

Read more here:

As Eritreans and Sudanese riot in Calais over the best spot to jump onto lorries bound for Britain, one mother of a little daughter says 'Nothing will stop us getting to your schools and hospitals!' Daily Mail

Wearing a clean dress and pink socks as she waits patiently to be smuggled across the Channel to England, Kidan Tedros is the youngest child at the Calais camp where African migrants armed with guns, flick-knives and iron bars rioted this week.

The four-year-old is sitting on a wall by the refugee camp which is spread over sand dunes and the base for 1,300 Eritrean and Sudanese who try, night after night, to jump on lorries where they can hide and be taken illegally on ferries sailing to Dover.

The little girl arrived in Calais three weeks ago with her mother, Laula, 40, after travelling at least 3,200 miles from Eritrea, a country in north-east Africa which is run by a ruthless dictator. Terrified, they watched when this week’s riot broke out and French police moved in to quell the violence and fired rubber bullets.

This mass exodus of desperate peoples from war-ravaged, religiously divided and impoverished countries on the giant continent — as well as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Egypt — poses a disturbing immigration problem for Britain.

Of course, this isn’t a new issue. Twelve years ago, our government agreed a deal with France to close the Sangatte refugee camp in Calais because it had become a magnet for illegal immigrants. Labour politicians promised the days of ‘soft touch’ Britain were over.

Yet as today’s Biblical scenes of human suffering show, the problem is getting worse. Indeed, it has been compounded by this week’s mischievous call by Calais’s deputy mayor for the refugees to be given ferry tickets to Britain and for the scrapping of the arrangement under which the UK’s border controls officially begin at Calais, rather than Dover.

This, he suggested, could happen for an experimental month so that the UK Government might comprehend the pressure Calais is under.

Read more here:

We've lost the faith of public on immigration, says Clegg: Deputy PM thinks people do not believe what ministers tell them as it doesn't tally with what they see on the ground. Daily Mail

  Deputy Prime Minister due to give a speech on immigration tomorrow

  He will say people are 'repeatedly told one thing only to see another'

  Clegg will speak out in favour of free movement of European citizens

  But he will seek reforms ensuring fewer Eastern Europeans move here if more countries are admitted to the EU in future

  Labour's Rachel Reeves will also call for reforms to freedom of movement

The public has lost faith in government claims about tackling immigration because it does not tally with what they see on the ground, Nick Clegg will admit. 

In a speech on immigration tomorrow, the Deputy Prime Minister will say it is ‘no wonder’ that people do not believe what ministers tell them when they have been ‘repeatedly told one thing only to then see another’.

He will speak out in favour of the free movement of European citizens but seek reforms to ensure that fewer Eastern Europeans move here if more countries are admitted to the EU in future.

Read more here:

Further Reading:

Calais in crisis over UK-bound migrants: Tensions at boiling point as riot police prepare to move in on 'Jungle 2', the camp housing thousands desperate to make Britain their home . Daily Mail

  Court deadline for migrants to leave illegal camp expires this morning

  Water supplies at camp cut off and police move in to clear 1,000 migrants

  Migrants started camping at 'Jungle 2' near busy road three months ago

  Mayor of Calais calls for new Sangatte-style accommodation centre

  Original Red Cross camp at Sangatte was shut down in 2002

  Britain accepted some migrants in deal but others moved to makeshift camp

Calais was at crisis point last night as French riot police prepared to raze a camp of East African migrants desperate to make their way to Britain.

Police vans patrolled the town ahead of the imminent crackdown as a court deadline for migrants to leave the illegal camp known as Jungle 2 expired.

It comes as the mayor of Calais called for a new Sangatte-style accommodation centre to be built.

The original was closed in 2002 after triggering a British immigration crisis. 

Last night, tensions at the camp were at breaking point as water supplies were cut off and gendarmes prepared to move in to clear the 1,000 migrants living there.

Numbers have swollen in recent weeks as more and more people from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan make their way to the already crowded settlement and the surrounding countryside. 

But aid workers last night criticised the planned raids, insisting that closing the camp would not deal with the problem if no alternative solution was proposed.

Read more here:

Further Reading:

How mass migration hurts us all: No, it's not the Mail saying this, but the verdict of a top Left-wing economist from Cambridge

The findings are a major blow to claims that immigration has and will continue to bring major economic benefits. Over the past decade, widely-publicised studies by academics and liberal think tanks have repeatedly said that immigration will make us better off.

Among those reported by the BBC have been claims by the Labour-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research that immigrants are paying a disproportionate share of the nation’s taxes, and that they bring economic benefits because they do jobs that Britons will not take.

Last November the BBC reported a study by two senior academics at University College London as saying immigrants who have arrived since 2000 have made a ‘substantial’ addition to public finances.

However, since Tony Blair introduced an effectively open-door immigration policy after the 1997 election the Daily Mail has been reporting on the impact of migration on population; on the social make-up of cities; on unemployment, worklessness, and declining wages for low-skilled workers; and on the pressure it has brought on housing and services.

Read more here:

Isaiah 58:6-12 Nasb

“Is this not the fast which I choose,
To loosen the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free
And break every yoke?
⁷ “Is it not to divide your bread ^[c]with the hungry
And bring the homeless poor into the house;
When you see the naked, to cover him;
And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
⁸ “Then your light will break out like the dawn,
And your recovery will speedily spring forth;
And your righteousness will go before you;
The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
⁹ “Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
You will cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’
If you remove the yoke from your midst,
The ^[d]pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness,
¹⁰ And if you ^[e]give yourself to the hungry
And satisfy the ^[f]desire of the afflicted,
Then your light will rise in darkness
And your gloom will become like midday.
¹¹ “And the Lord will continually guide you,
And satisfy your ^[g]desire in scorched places,
And give strength to your bones;
And you will be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water whose waters do not ^[h]fail.
¹² “Those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins;
You will raise up the age-old foundations;
And you will be called the repairer of the breach,
The restorer of the ^[i]streets in which to dwell.

EXCLUSIVE: Calais lorry drivers BEG for aid as migrants turn VIOLENT, Daily Express

They say French police have given up trying to deal with gangs of up to 100 migrants who surround lorries and demand passage across the ­Channel under threat of violence.

The situation is so bad they want the British Army to be called in to help protect the drivers.

Many have been verbally abused or physically attacked and one needed hospital treatment after being kicked and punched by an angry mob.

Please read more