This is a very interesting development (first picked up by the FT, behind its paywall but now reported by the BBC)
BBC News - UK and France in talks over migrant returns deal
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As is suggested that it would be in exchange for “legal migrants” - this will require processing of applications over seas - something that does not happen other than in a couple of specific countries (Hong Kong & Ukraine?) .
Hence why Foreign Secretaries have been able to bend the truth about safe routes. Maybe it’s time to accept reality and start processing in France with a clear policy that those who haven’t availed themselves of that process will be removed.
There was an interesting documentary on LCP the other night, with a journalist following migrants trying to cross the channel, including some footage from on the dinghies. Having watched that, I struggle to see how anyone can say that these aren’t desperate people. What was even more interesting is that quite a few get to the UK, end up homeless, and smuggle themselves back to France.
A very interesting study done, using of all things Facebook, shows rather different statistics of global migration than that from official data
For any who can access the NYT, this article and active graph gives a very clear picture
The combination of climate change and wars, the latter often exacerbated by the former, will ensure this flow will not cease, no matter how draconian the actions taken to end it. A wall high enough will only make prisoners of us all. Somehow, we need to find ways to help people stay and thrive where they are.
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^ This, with knobs on.
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A report I listened to say the people traffickers are advertising the UK to these people showing lush hotels, restaurants, nice houses and cars in order to sign them up. Little do they know the real truth until they arrive in the wet at Dover and then into cheap hotels or centres.
Tricky when areas become unliveable due to drought.
Yes. It requires finance. Emirates, Kuwait et al are sand boxes but they made their territories not only liveable but enviable. The problem is in finding the finance.
You watch Phil Morehouse on YouTube don’t you? He has gone to great lengths to explain how some of the buildings that migrants have been placed in might have been called hotels at some point but when being used to house migrants not one of them has any of the services that we would expect from even a cheap hotel. They are basic places to live, no more no less.
Watching the documentary on LCP, it seems that many don’t even get that. Some were sleeping on the beach under upturned boats.