I return the subject I have often covered in this column: Channel crossings, about which I – quite understandably- continue to receive a lively correspondence.
Whilst I share the anger and frustration of my correspondents, I do not agree with their analysis that there are simple solutions if only we had the will to implement them. On the contrary, the matter is as complicated as you can get, with international treaty obligations…and the rest.
The Government is wrestling with the complexities and is determined to get on top of them. The opposition parties however, believe that the solution is to make more ‘safe and legal’ routes available so that migrants are spared the danger and expense of paying gangsters to bring them by dingy.
I think this is naivete of the first order: the ‘safe allocations’ would quickly be exhausted and everyone else would simply resort to dinghies once again.
At least a part of the problem is of our own making. We are a ‘soft touch’ and we allow ourselves to be taken for fools. For example, the Albanians -who make up about one third of this year’s arrivals in small boats, yet there is no war or oppression in Albania. Equally, if you claim, as an Albanian, that you have been trafficked as a modern slave, surely it is reasonable that, once having been rescued, you be returned to your home.
Given the choice, I’d rather live in the UK than Albania, but as a country that has an acute housing shortage and which saw net migration of half a million in the last year for which figures are available, we cannot be in the business of making such choices freely available.
So, how is it that we accept the claims of well over half of our Albanian asylum applicants?
Why does France accept only 2.3 % of their Albanian claims?
Why do Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and eleven other European countries not accept any of such Albanian claimants?
Clearly, there is something wrong with our law, our processes, or our judgement. Actually, it is probably all three.