Katie Hopkins accused of race hate by linking Pakistani men with sex abuse

[Alty]

It's impossible to remove the vast majority of undocumented migrants anyway. Nor would we really want to.

Opening up the borders in Ceuta and Melilla would make it possible to control/direct the flow of migration throughout Europe rather than creating bottlenecks which bear the brunt of relatively small-scale inward migration. It would also stop dangerous sea-crossings. Meanwhile you could co-operate with Morocco to, rather than crack down on migrants (which drives people over the fences/across the sea) to be able to accommodate more of them.

The vast majority? Says who? Overstayers and criminals can be redocumented and removed relatively easily once found (with a handful of exceptions depending on nationality).

And surely whether we'd want to depends on the particular migrant in question?

This is the nub of it really. Who is it you anticipate coming through Ceuta and Melilla? Can anyone come across and chance their arm at an asylum claim? If that is the rule, do you not anticipate a very significant rise in the numbers coming, irrespective of the fact large numbers will not be in any perilous danger at home?

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

LGBT point is arguable. On a practical level I wonder how things are supposed to improve in these countries if the activists leave. But yes, if there's genuine evidence such people are in danger, they shouldn't be forced back.

On a practical level, how would we even know who is LGBT and who isn't?

 

[Alty]

On a practical level, how would we even know who is LGBT and who isn't?

It gets a bit ridiculous. People are asked for details of previous relationships, what harassment intimidation they've faced etc etc. When I worked at the FNO Unit we had a couple of instances of people sending in photographs of themselves in sexual situations!

It's a difficult thing to prove or disprove. I suppose if we took people at their word then everyone from a country on the 'do not send gays back here' list would claim asylum on that basis.

That said, there's a difference between an LGBT person and an activist. There are countries in which the general atmosphere is somewhat hostile to gays in general. That is insufficient grounds to get asylum in the UK. But in those same countries there are cases of activists being extremely vulnerable and facing direct threats - they'd have a fair chance of being allowed to stay here.

 

[Red]

Uganda being one of them.

 

[silkyman]

How do you identify them?

They're the ones on the boats.

Overall, I think you need to take the rough with the smooth and accept that some less deserving cases might get through, unless you want to stick the line on the other side of the argument and accept a few capsized boats full of dead people to prevent the chancers getting over.

 

[Red]

They're the ones on the boats.

 

[Alty]

If we just "take the rough with the smooth" we're likely to see an enormous influx of people including plenty of undesirables. This isn't wishy washy playing around here. We need to come up with a practicable solution.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

I don't feel like we should be held even remotely responsible for someone gambling with the lives of their family members and losing. I'm all for trying to address these problems at their source, but I don't accept that all we can do if give them a free pass into Europe.

 

[Womble98]

Libya needs to be stabilised, that is where manyof the boats are coming from.

 

[Alty]

TBF to our Government we have been arguing for, and indeed doing, 'upstream' work in places like Eritrea and Libya for some time now.

A lot of the Southern European countries are in favour of "burden sharing". That is, people making it to Spain, Greece and Malta being taken in immediately by countries elsewhere in Europe (UK, France, Germany, Netherlands and Scandinavia). Bit of a cop-out because they know the vast majority of migrants landing in Southern Europe want to head north already. "Burden sharing" amounts to expediting people's passage to their countries of choice.

 

[Red]

Farage has a plan for that RW. Let's take some Christian Libyans who are being oppressed in Libya, but no Shia Muslims...who are being oppressed in Libya.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

Detention.

Came for 10 days on holiday to see family, detained for a month, had a heart attack in detention, waited 15 minutes for medical help, died shortly afterwards.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...val-centre-for-release-of-widow-10196889.html

Of course, this is anecdote and so flies in the face of Alty's rationalist beliefs (which include the repeated insinuation that immigrants are wrong'uns) but I think this is pretty grim.

 

[Alty]

Detention.

Came for 10 days on holiday to see family, detained for a month, had a heart attack in detention, waited 15 minutes for medical help, died shortly afterwards.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...val-centre-for-release-of-widow-10196889.html

Of course, this is anecdote and so flies in the face of Alty's rationalist beliefs (which include the repeated insinuation that immigrants are wrong'uns) but I think this is pretty grim.

Oh come on. I've never implied all immigrants are bad people. Some are, some aren't. All I've ever really tried to assert is that we should try to devise a system that sees us admitting as many good people as we need and as few bad people as possible.

Re the story - horrible. But I'm baffled by several aspects of the story. Not least the fact that anyone deemed liable to refusal at port is supposed to be sent straight back there and then. The HO doesn't really like detaining people at great expense for no reason.

Either there's more to the story - moderately likely. Or an HO employee has fucked up - more likely.

I'll look up the details when I'm not using a phone.

 

[Red]

I don't feel like we should be held even remotely responsible for someone gambling with the lives of their family members and losing. I'm all for trying to address these problems at their source, but I don't accept that all we can do if give them a free pass into Europe.

That's because you haven't even the remotest fucking clue about the hardship they're experiencing. Don't pretend you do because you don't, none of us here do. Does it even remotely occur to you that for some of them 'gambling' with their own lives is a more acceptable alternative to being executed if they stay? They're not getting on boats and risking their lives because they've had poor service at a restaurant over there. What would it take for you to feel we should help out? Presentation at border control of a signed death warrant from their government ?

Fucking hell, even Farage doesn't go as far as implying they're irresponsible

I suppose to your mind it's just about more people wanting to come here and sponge off our benefit system.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

What does their hardship have to do with us being held responsible? Where did I say we shouldn't help?* When have I ever waffled about migrants on benefits?

* I said we should help in the very next sentence.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

What does their hardship have to do with us being held responsible? Where did I say we shouldn't help?* When have I ever waffled about migrants on benefits?

* I said we should help in the very next sentence.

Colonialism innit.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

I don't think holding entire ethnic groups responsible for the crimes of their ancestors is a road we want to go down.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

No, but you can say the enormous wealth/stability disparity between former Imperial powers and their former dominions, as well as the fact that global capitalism (built on the fruits of plundered wealth and labour by colonialists) and imperialist foreign policy continue to contribute to the specific circumstances that drive people towards Europe.

I mean take the specific example of DR Congo. Aside from the brutal and genocidal Belgian administered Congo Free State that plundered Congo (and built the Belgian golden age off it's back) you had the CIA assassinating the first elected president of what was then The Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville) because he was a socialist. Then you had a kleptocratic dictator propped up by French and US soft power to oppose the Soviet Union who allowed US and French multinationals looted the country's rich natural resources. Now you have a brutal, bloody civil war, raging for a decade.

Then, after the fall of the Soviet Union, that fragile, unsustainable state was allowed to collapse into a twenty-year civil war. A civil-war sustained largely by the various armed factions exporting black-market conflict-minerals such as cobalt to multinationals. The conflict has resulted in the deaths of millions since 1998.

It's a mistake to pretend that colonialist meddling ended with independence, or that our government is a neutral actor in this sort of stuff.

 

[Red]

What does their hardship have to do with us being held responsible? Where did I say we shouldn't help?* When have I ever waffled about migrants on benefits?

* I said we should help in the very next sentence.

You implied that these people are irresponsible, gambling, without any idea whatsoever of their personal lives and what they're fleeing from. Can't you grasp how desperate they must be to have to get on those boats?

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

You implied that these people are irresponsible [...]

I didn't, actually. Although even if I had, that still wouldn't answer the questions I just posed you.

 

[Red]

for someone gambling with the lives of their family members and losing. .

Yes you did. Saying that someone gambling with the lives of their family members and losing is implying they're irresponsible. It would help if you saw these people as fellow human beings, some of which are fleeing persecution instead of as immigrants who might potentially come to the UK to sponge off our system.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

Yes you did. Saying that someone gambling with the lives of their family members and losing is implying they're irresponsible.

No, it's a statement of fact.

There is probably an argument to be had on that point though come to think of it. A large proportion of these migrants are not coming to Europe because it's the only place where they'll be safe, they're coming to Europe because it's a place within reach that offers them the best standard of living. It's not the black and white situation you're painting it as. The choice for many, if not most, it not one between this or certain death. That's absurd.

 

[Red]

The people that are fleeing in genuine fear of their lives are irresponsible for not staying around to get executed? Can you tell us how you know that the choice for many, if not most, is not one between fleeing or certain death? How exactly do you know that? Do monetary considerations take precedence over human lives?

What's your view on Farage saying we should take only some of the Christian refugees in?

 

[Alty]

The people that are fleeing in genuine fear of their lives are irresponsible for not staying around to get executed? Can you tell us how you know that the choice for many, if not most, is not one between fleeing or certain death? How exactly do you know that? Do monetary considerations take precedence over human lives?

While I agree with you that EG was somewhat blasé about people resorting to these terrifying boat journeys, he's right about it not being a matter of 'get the boat or face certain death' for most of them.

 

[Red]

How do you know that? Are there some statistics out there that you both have I'm not aware of or are you both just surmising this? I'm not denying that some of them are not in fear of their lives, but then I'm also not using words like 'most' when like yourself and EG I don't really know.

'Blase'? It's a sanitised way of describing it I suppose.

Is certain death the only acceptable criteria then? A high probability of being killed is not acceptable? As I said to EG, maybe for you they have to turn up at a border with a signed death warrant in their hands before you're satisfied.

 

[Alty]

How do you know that? Are there some statistics out there that you both have I'm not aware of or are you both just surmising this? I'm not denying that some of them are not in fear of their lives, but then I'm also not using words like 'most' when like yourself and EG I don't really know.

I read diptels everyday. It's mostly people desperate for a better life, but not fearing for their life.

You'd be a weird person not to have sympathy for such people. But the answer isn't to completely empty MENA by telling everyone to come to Europe, it's to make those countries better places to live. The responsibility lies primarily with those countries themselves, but we need to play our part.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

The people that are fleeing in genuine fear of their lives are irresponsible for not staying around to get executed?

Did I say anything even remotely like that?

Can you tell us how you know that the choice for many, if not most, is not one between fleeing or certain death? How exactly do you know that?

Because they're from all over Africa, but they're in Libya. Even in the shite state of affairs that that country is in it's not a place where refugees are arbitrarily massacred, and even if it were, Tunisia and Egypt are only across the border. The idea that this is the only option for most of these migrants is ridiculous.

Do monetary considerations take precedence over human lives?

To some extent of course they do. To everyone. You and the migrants included. Don't give me this holier than thou bollocks because if you genuinely cared about atrocities and loss of life and what we can do to stop it you wouldn't be waffling about something as comparatively trivial as migrants dying in the Mediterranean, you'd be talking about toppling the genocidal North Korean regime and their fucking concentration camps.

What's your view on Farage saying we should take only some of the Christian refugees in?

It was stupid.

 

[Red]

Diptels? MENA. Didn''t anyone ever tell you using esoteric jargon is a really poor way to convey your message? . I don't think EG has much sympathy for these people he deems irresponsible. I agree with how you think this problem should be addressed though.

 

[Red]

Well seeing as you know that some of these people are fleeing for their lives and calling the people on the boats irresponsible then yes you did say something remotely like that. It's simple logic, try and follow it.

I can't actually believe you think people dying en masse is trivial, regardless of the context or relativity of it and why the fuck you're gibbering about North Korea I don't know. How are the lives of the people who died in the sea of less value than those dying in N Korea? I've got my ideas on that one I actually think you're a bit disturbed if you think the people dying in the sea in the Med is trivial.

 

[Alty]

Diptels? MENA. Didn''t anyone ever tell you using esoteric jargon is a really poor way to convey your message? . I don't think EG has much sympathy for these people he deems irresponsible. I agree with how you think this problem should be addressed though.

Sorry. Diplomatic telegrams, Middle East and North Africa.