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 Originally Posted by Poopadoop
It's irrelevant to the refugees themselves how they got here. Once they're here, they have to be treated as asylum seekers, not sent to some other country for "processing," or whatever they keep trying to do with them. When they're in the English channel rowing over here, they should not be met with a battleship to scare them back to France.
The people traffickers are scumbags, and if we capture people traffickers we should prosecute them, assuming there is even a law against it. What we shouldn't do is assume every man woman and child who arrives on a dinghy is themselves a people trafficker and treat them like a criminal, as that makes no sense at all. The people who've paid the criminals for passage to the UK are not themselves criminals.
The number of people who are crossing the channel in dinghies is a problem, I agree. But the solution is not to send out a battleship to steer them back to France. The solution is to enable them safe passage. It costs a lot less to send a ferry from Calais to Dover than to send a battleship out to patrol the Channel, so there can no whinging about costs.
You start this post with a comment about "refugees". Let's just clarify something here... those fleeing Ukraine are refugees. Those fleeing France on boats are migrants. There is a difference, and it's an important difference.
When they're in the English channel rowing over here, they should not be met with a battleship to scare them back to France.
We're not just trying to deter people traffickers and migrants, we're trying to deter France from doing nothing. France have an obligation to secure their borders, including coastlines. France should be doing more to stop these boats leaving their territory. But they don't want these migrants, so they allow it to happen. What should the UK do? Just say "ok, you've got us, they're in British waters" and let this play out indefinitely? Ludicrous.
France are to blame for this crisis. We're trying to secure our borders. France are not. France are encouraging people traffickers. If France did more, this would be resolved.
The people traffickers are scumbags, and if we capture people traffickers we should prosecute them, assuming there is even a law against it.
Of course there's a law against it.
What we shouldn't do is assume every man woman and child who arrives on a dinghy is themselves a people trafficker and treat them like a criminal...
Well yeah, the people traffickers themselves aren't getting onto these dodgy boats. And while a migrant isn't automatically a criminal for attempting to enter a country by illegal means, they aren't law abiding either. Maybe that's not their fault, maybe they were led to believe this is how you migrate to the UK by people traffickers. Maybe they didn't even know they were getting on a boat until they were ushered onto one. Who knows?
Turning away boats at sea is a terrible thing to do. But allowing them to arrive is worse, because it encourages the people traffickers to keep doing it, to keep putting these people at serious risk of drowning.
There is no good way for the UK to deal with this problem.
The solution is to enable them safe passage.
No. The solution is to pressure France to secure their maritime borders.
It costs a lot less to send a ferry from Calais to Dover than to send a battleship out to patrol the Channel, so there can no whinging about costs.
This isn't about cost. There's a lot more to it than that. This is a battle of political will between France and the UK, with France allowing these people to be put at risk, and the UK refusing to allow France to palm off their migrants onto us.
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