W.C.
New member
- Oct 31, 2011
- 4,927
Not at all. Not my point. I wouldn't want to see Europe turn a blind eye at all. Just saying other countries should do likewise.
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UK net migration hits record high
- Thread starter Hampster Gull
- Start date
Not at all. Not my point. I wouldn't want to see Europe turn a blind eye at all. Just saying other countries should do likewise.
Strange how at the beginning of this thread some had a virtual open door policy and those that did not agree were made out to be heartless and other things. Cameron was slated for rightly going to the heart of the problem and taking refugees from the camps near Syria ie genuine refugees from Syria. Thousands of these refugees would be housed with the people on FB who offered to take them in...now a few weeks later, the German way waining and changing....we see " Europe can't cope alone." and other changing minds....who'd of thought it, or thought about it eh.
Ensure they are delivered to a well resourced and safe area nearest to where they have left.
So, the quotes from leaders on that piece were from Sept 3rd and before.....how do those quotes stand up now, same as many on the beginning of this thread i guess.How many migrants/refugees that are in Turkey do you think will stay there, could it not be a safe haven/stop gap before moving onto Europe.
Hampster Gull
Well-known member
- Dec 22, 2010
- 13,465
- Thread starter
- #2,305
The stats are out there, have a look, i have
Hampster Gull
Well-known member
- Dec 22, 2010
- 13,465
- Thread starter
- #2,306
Unfortunately at the moment we are told we must think as one.[/QUOTE]
Really? News to me.
W.C.
New member
- Oct 31, 2011
- 4,927
How many migrants/refugees that are in Turkey do you think will stay there, could it not be a safe haven/stop gap before moving onto Europe.
ffs, you asked "Ok, so how do the numbers compare with all the European countries, how many in Turkey and the other neighbouring countries have tipped up there on route to Europe."
there you go, there are some numbers. Now it's, 'Yeah, but, will they stay there?'
Well Creaky has let us know Turkey are doing its bit, so that is a safe area, was that not the place that the father piloted the dingy to get to Europe...it's a stop gap.
Well will they, do they want to, you gave me the "numbers", i asked.
http://www.npr.org/sections/paralle...rants-many-reasons-to-leave-turkey-for-europe
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-09-18/land-or-sea-refugees-trying-leave-turkey-face-tough-decisions
On Tuesday security forces stopped hundreds of would-be migrants as they tried to reach Turkey's western land border with Greece.
Unless European countries take more refugees or boost financial aid to Turkey, officials could begin to turn a blind eye to those trying to leave, aid-workers and diplomats fear.
"European countries need to step up to the plate to increase.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015...-migrants-turkey-analys-idUSKCN0RF1PX20150915
Really? News to me.[/QUOTE]
Really, have you not heard the comments from Angie in Germany, have you not heard the term printed and similar..
"European countries need to step up to the plate to increase"
Have you not heard the UK being slated for not taking enough from other EU leaders...i must have dreamed it.
W.C.
New member
- Oct 31, 2011
- 4,927
Maybe they are on their way to THE MOON. I gave you a simple answer to your assumption that Turkey isn't doing anything, when in fact it's taken in far more than the UK who you keep informing us have done more than enough. Football time.
You put up your info in response to this quote "how do the numbers compare with all the European countries, how many in Turkey and the other neighbouring countries have tipped up there on route to Europe." ....which is why i put up links showing that Turkey could be a stop off zone on route to Europe.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...gler-who-has-made-60000-this-month-alone.html
Abu Mahmoud is richer than he has ever been, even when he was a doctor in Aleppo. Smuggling Syrians into Europe has made him $100,000 (£60,000) this month alone. But it is not an easy life.
He is, for one thing, busy. An interview in an Istanbul cafe takes hours, as it is interrupted by constant calls to his three mobile phones.
The cafe is on a main thoroughfare busy with Turks walking home from work and thousands of refugees, who gather in the plaza around the Metro station and in a nearby park.
His trade is open. The waiters know who the smugglers are, when asked, while the park is the unofficial stop for the minibuses that ferry refugees to Izmir, the coastal city from where boats head to Greece.
Some calls are from clients. Some are from his fixers: one bus-load of refugees has been intercepted by police and is being escorted back to the city. “Tell them they won’t have to stay a single extra night in Istanbul,” he says reassuringly down the phone. “I will send them straight back.”
One call is from a family pleading with him to take them to Greece. “Not until I’ve been paid for your brother,” he says, referring to a relative who has already made it to mainland Europe but whose $1,100 (£700) payment for the crossing is not yet forthcoming.
Then there are also the raids: the day before, the police arrived at his office, requiring a bribe of $1,000 (£600) to get rid of them.
These difficulties are, for him, trivial. The biggest crisis for Abu Mahmoud - not his real name - came four months ago, when he was tipped off that his name was on an Interpol wanted list. He checked this information, he said, with a contact who is a general in the Syrian police force, who confirmed it.
At the time, he was based in the Turkish city of Mersin, on the south-east coast much closer to Syria and at the end of a ferry route from Lebanon much used by refugees wanting to get to Europe. He was running much bigger boats, with hundreds of passengers, all the way to Italy, and taking in large sums, but he had to close his entire operation down.
After he had repaid his debts and the money paid by clients waiting for rides, he was left with nothing and had to start again.
Of course that was not the real disaster.
The real disaster is the the war in Syria and the subsequent events that have turned thousands of ordinary people, like Abu Mahmoud, into criminals.
When the rebels moved in and seized half of the city of Aleppo in July 2012, he ended up being hunted by both sides. The Assad regime wanted to find him because he treated wounded activists and rebels; the insurgents, meanwhile, decided he was pro-regime. So he fled.
He decided to go to Europe, starting in Turkey and booking a place on a boat with two cousins and a friend. It sank. He saw women and children drown in front of him, despite his efforts to save them, he said.
He and his cousins could swim, and survived for 11 hours in the water before being picked up.
He made other attempts, all unsuccessful, until he had accumulated such a network of contacts, of smugglers and other Syrian refugees, that he became more useful in Turkey, putting people in touch with each other.
“At first, I wouldn’t accept any commission,” said Abu Mahmoud. “Then I needed money to survive and I had family to support. Then I found it was good business.” He eventually moved on from accepting commissions to setting up on his own.
"They trust me because I was a doctor," he said.
In Mersin, he would buy his own boats which, since they were going all the way to Italy, would be used only once. They would be impounded by the Italian coastguard, which intercepted them. The cost for that trip was $5,000 (£3,000) per refugee, but with sums like that he could afford the loss of the boat.
In Istanbul, he works through Turkish gangs - the trade is dominated by Turkish mafia. He has 15 employees finding clients and escorting them to the coast, but the heavy work - running the boats - is done by the gangs, to whom he pays $850 of the $1,100. Still, that is $250 to his business per person.
Now, though, he says he is in the processing of buying a rubber dinghy and a fishing boat to run voyages himself.
Altogether, he says he has sent 8,000 to 9,000 people to Italy and Greece in the last two years “without a single sinking or drowning”.
He links the current surge in numbers directly to European government policy, in particular Greece’s decision to open its borders to the north.
He said the actual process of smuggling people to Greece had got harder - despite the thousands of dollars in bribes paid to Turkish police to turn a blind eye. But the refugees knew now that once they reached Greece they could move on to wealthier, northern countries.
“It’s easier to get smuggled on from Greece, because they opened the border,” he said.
He said this was reflected in the costs, with Germany now seen as a reasonably “cheap” option.
While he charged $1,100 (£700) for a crossing to Greece per refugee, to get to Germany might cost 2,000 euros, but to go on to Sweden or Norway, which are seen to have generous asylum and resettlement policies, costs another 3,000 or 4,000 euros on top.
He adds: "I just want to send this message to the EU. Refugees will come to your countries even if they close all the borders. They will dig tunnels if necessary.
"So why don't they arrange to take refugees through the UN? Why do they let people pay the mafia? Let them go legally to your countries. Why do they allow people to put themselves at risk? A lot of people are now food for the fishes."
Refugees themselves and aid workers put it differently. Many say the way the war has changed this year has made them give up hope that they - and more importantly their children - will ever be able to have a normal life.
Until last year, there were areas of Syria where refugees could find sanctuary - the north-eastern, Kurdish-run area, parts of the regime-held central region from Damascus to the coastal area dominated by Alawites, members of the sect to which the Assads belong, or even in the Isil-held north-east. The jihadists' ultra-strict rules had at least brought a sense of order, and people could return to their jobs.
One man from Al-Bab, an Isil-held town west of Raqqa, said all its schools were now functioning normally, while many refugees from other areas said their children had not been educated for two, three or even four years.
However, in the last year, Isil had attacked Kurdish areas - with the devastating results seen in towns like Kobane, from which the drowned toddler Aylan Kurdi and his family came. Rebel-held areas are under constant bombardment from the regime’s air force, particularly its indiscriminate use of the barrel bomb on civilian areas. Isil areas are now under attack from coalition air forces. And even in regime areas, law and order is breaking down as the government crumbles and lawless pro-regime militias run amok.
Seeing the whole country engulfed in this way meant not only that more refugees left, but those in camps in neighbouring countries like Turkey felt there was nothing to stay for - no chance of returning.
“People don’t see the end of the tunnel,” said Fuat Oktay, the head of the Turkish governments emergency response programme. “They don’t see the beginning of the tunnel either.”
Fatima Feytrouni, waiting in the park with her nine-year-old daughter Nadia, said her home in Damascus had been destroyed, while people in Turkey were racist and would not accept her and her family.
"There is no future in Syria. I want to find my children a better future," she said. “If we stay in Syria we will die. If we take to the boats, maybe 50 per cent we will survive.”
The Turkish government is also running out of resources - or patience. Mr Oktay said Turkey had spent $6 billion (£4 billion) on refugee assistance so far, but received only $417 million from the United Nations and other donors. The government, along with the UN, aid agencies and volunteers were teaching 220,000 Syrian children - but a third of the two million refugees in the country were of school age, which meant more than 400,000 were not being taught.
Even Abu Mahmoud sees his future in Europe - eventually. He has sent his 11-year-old son with a friend to Holland. He hopes that as an unaccompanied minor he will be given preference - including being able to arrange for the rest of his family to join him.
Abu Mahmoud is richer than he has ever been, even when he was a doctor in Aleppo. Smuggling Syrians into Europe has made him $100,000 (£60,000) this month alone. But it is not an easy life.
He is, for one thing, busy. An interview in an Istanbul cafe takes hours, as it is interrupted by constant calls to his three mobile phones.
The cafe is on a main thoroughfare busy with Turks walking home from work and thousands of refugees, who gather in the plaza around the Metro station and in a nearby park.
His trade is open. The waiters know who the smugglers are, when asked, while the park is the unofficial stop for the minibuses that ferry refugees to Izmir, the coastal city from where boats head to Greece.
Some calls are from clients. Some are from his fixers: one bus-load of refugees has been intercepted by police and is being escorted back to the city. “Tell them they won’t have to stay a single extra night in Istanbul,” he says reassuringly down the phone. “I will send them straight back.”
One call is from a family pleading with him to take them to Greece. “Not until I’ve been paid for your brother,” he says, referring to a relative who has already made it to mainland Europe but whose $1,100 (£700) payment for the crossing is not yet forthcoming.
Then there are also the raids: the day before, the police arrived at his office, requiring a bribe of $1,000 (£600) to get rid of them.
These difficulties are, for him, trivial. The biggest crisis for Abu Mahmoud - not his real name - came four months ago, when he was tipped off that his name was on an Interpol wanted list. He checked this information, he said, with a contact who is a general in the Syrian police force, who confirmed it.
At the time, he was based in the Turkish city of Mersin, on the south-east coast much closer to Syria and at the end of a ferry route from Lebanon much used by refugees wanting to get to Europe. He was running much bigger boats, with hundreds of passengers, all the way to Italy, and taking in large sums, but he had to close his entire operation down.
After he had repaid his debts and the money paid by clients waiting for rides, he was left with nothing and had to start again.
Of course that was not the real disaster.
The real disaster is the the war in Syria and the subsequent events that have turned thousands of ordinary people, like Abu Mahmoud, into criminals.
When the rebels moved in and seized half of the city of Aleppo in July 2012, he ended up being hunted by both sides. The Assad regime wanted to find him because he treated wounded activists and rebels; the insurgents, meanwhile, decided he was pro-regime. So he fled.
He decided to go to Europe, starting in Turkey and booking a place on a boat with two cousins and a friend. It sank. He saw women and children drown in front of him, despite his efforts to save them, he said.
He and his cousins could swim, and survived for 11 hours in the water before being picked up.
He made other attempts, all unsuccessful, until he had accumulated such a network of contacts, of smugglers and other Syrian refugees, that he became more useful in Turkey, putting people in touch with each other.
“At first, I wouldn’t accept any commission,” said Abu Mahmoud. “Then I needed money to survive and I had family to support. Then I found it was good business.” He eventually moved on from accepting commissions to setting up on his own.
"They trust me because I was a doctor," he said.
In Mersin, he would buy his own boats which, since they were going all the way to Italy, would be used only once. They would be impounded by the Italian coastguard, which intercepted them. The cost for that trip was $5,000 (£3,000) per refugee, but with sums like that he could afford the loss of the boat.
In Istanbul, he works through Turkish gangs - the trade is dominated by Turkish mafia. He has 15 employees finding clients and escorting them to the coast, but the heavy work - running the boats - is done by the gangs, to whom he pays $850 of the $1,100. Still, that is $250 to his business per person.
Now, though, he says he is in the processing of buying a rubber dinghy and a fishing boat to run voyages himself.
Altogether, he says he has sent 8,000 to 9,000 people to Italy and Greece in the last two years “without a single sinking or drowning”.
He links the current surge in numbers directly to European government policy, in particular Greece’s decision to open its borders to the north.
He said the actual process of smuggling people to Greece had got harder - despite the thousands of dollars in bribes paid to Turkish police to turn a blind eye. But the refugees knew now that once they reached Greece they could move on to wealthier, northern countries.
“It’s easier to get smuggled on from Greece, because they opened the border,” he said.
He said this was reflected in the costs, with Germany now seen as a reasonably “cheap” option.
While he charged $1,100 (£700) for a crossing to Greece per refugee, to get to Germany might cost 2,000 euros, but to go on to Sweden or Norway, which are seen to have generous asylum and resettlement policies, costs another 3,000 or 4,000 euros on top.
He adds: "I just want to send this message to the EU. Refugees will come to your countries even if they close all the borders. They will dig tunnels if necessary.
"So why don't they arrange to take refugees through the UN? Why do they let people pay the mafia? Let them go legally to your countries. Why do they allow people to put themselves at risk? A lot of people are now food for the fishes."
Refugees themselves and aid workers put it differently. Many say the way the war has changed this year has made them give up hope that they - and more importantly their children - will ever be able to have a normal life.
Until last year, there were areas of Syria where refugees could find sanctuary - the north-eastern, Kurdish-run area, parts of the regime-held central region from Damascus to the coastal area dominated by Alawites, members of the sect to which the Assads belong, or even in the Isil-held north-east. The jihadists' ultra-strict rules had at least brought a sense of order, and people could return to their jobs.
One man from Al-Bab, an Isil-held town west of Raqqa, said all its schools were now functioning normally, while many refugees from other areas said their children had not been educated for two, three or even four years.
However, in the last year, Isil had attacked Kurdish areas - with the devastating results seen in towns like Kobane, from which the drowned toddler Aylan Kurdi and his family came. Rebel-held areas are under constant bombardment from the regime’s air force, particularly its indiscriminate use of the barrel bomb on civilian areas. Isil areas are now under attack from coalition air forces. And even in regime areas, law and order is breaking down as the government crumbles and lawless pro-regime militias run amok.
Seeing the whole country engulfed in this way meant not only that more refugees left, but those in camps in neighbouring countries like Turkey felt there was nothing to stay for - no chance of returning.
“People don’t see the end of the tunnel,” said Fuat Oktay, the head of the Turkish governments emergency response programme. “They don’t see the beginning of the tunnel either.”
Fatima Feytrouni, waiting in the park with her nine-year-old daughter Nadia, said her home in Damascus had been destroyed, while people in Turkey were racist and would not accept her and her family.
"There is no future in Syria. I want to find my children a better future," she said. “If we stay in Syria we will die. If we take to the boats, maybe 50 per cent we will survive.”
The Turkish government is also running out of resources - or patience. Mr Oktay said Turkey had spent $6 billion (£4 billion) on refugee assistance so far, but received only $417 million from the United Nations and other donors. The government, along with the UN, aid agencies and volunteers were teaching 220,000 Syrian children - but a third of the two million refugees in the country were of school age, which meant more than 400,000 were not being taught.
Even Abu Mahmoud sees his future in Europe - eventually. He has sent his 11-year-old son with a friend to Holland. He hopes that as an unaccompanied minor he will be given preference - including being able to arrange for the rest of his family to join him.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9560982/the-invasion-of-italy/
Let us suppose that first the Royal Navy, then the navies of a dozen other EU countries, start to search for all such vessels in the Channel right up to the French coast, out into the North Sea and the Atlantic even, and then ferry all the passengers on board to Dover, Folkestone, Hastings, Eastbourne and Brighton in a surreal modern-day never-ending version of the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940. Would the British government agree to take them all? What of the British people? And if they did agree, what would the British government and people do with all the migrants? How would they cope?
Well, Italy has been invaded in just this way, by migrants from many nations all coming over here from Libya. And Italy’s unelected government has agreed to take them all. This makes the Italian people — who are among the least racist in Europe — very angry. It’s hard to blame them.
In October 2013, Italy’s previous unelected government, which like the current one was left-wing, ordered the Italian navy to search for and rescue all boat people in the Sicilian channel and beyond. This hugely expensive operation — ‘Mare Nostrum’ — ran until October last year and rescued nearly 190,000 people. The Italian government took this decision after a migrant boat sank with the loss of 360 lives 500 yards from an idyllic beach on the island of Lampedusa, once a resort of choice for the right-on rich.
The same left-wing Italian government also took the extraordinary step of decriminalising illegal immigration, which means among other things that none of the boat people are arrested once on dry land. Instead, they are taken to ‘Centri di accoglienza’ (welcome centres) for identification and a decision on their destinies. In theory, only those who identify themselves and claim political asylum can remain in Italy until their application is refused — or, if it is accepted, indefinitely. And in theory, under the Dublin Accords, they can only claim political asylum in Italy — the country where they arrived in the EU. In practice, however, only a minority claim political asylum in Italy. Pretty well all of them remain there incognito, or else move on to other EU countries.
Here’s how it works. In the welcome centres, they are given free board and lodging plus mobile phones, €3 a day in pocket money, and lessons — if they can be bothered — in such things as ice-cream-making or driving a car and (I nearly forgot) Italian. Their presence in these welcome centres is voluntary and they are free to come and go, though not to work, and each of them costs those Italians who do pay tax €35 a day (nearly €13,000 a year). Yes, they are supposed to have their photographs and fingerprints taken, but many refuse and the Italian police, it seems, do not insist. As the Italian interior minister, Angelino Alfano, explained to a TV reporter the other day: ‘They don’t want to be identified here — otherwise, under the Dublin Accords, they would have to stay in our country. So when a police officer is in front of an Eritrean who is two metres tall who doesn’t want his fingerprints taken, he can’t break his fingers, but must respect his human rights.’
This year, there is space for just 75,000 migrants in such places. Hotels are filling the breach, including the four-star Kulm hotel perched high above the luxury resort of Portofino on the Ligurian coast. But most of the rescued migrants could not care less about all that jazz and have just disappeared.
The ones who stay long in the welcome centres are those who have revealed their identities in order to apply for political asylum in Italy. Last year, 64,900 migrants did so in Italy — roughly a third of those saved by the Italian navy. But this being Italy, the judicial system only had time to reach a decision on half those applications (accepting 60 per cent of them), and anyway, thanks to the byzantine Italian appeals procedure, those refused asylum can remain for years. Even if their asylum claim is finally rejected and by some cruel quirk of fate they are actually handed a deportation order, it is easily ignored: last year Italy forcibly deported just 6,944 people — a figure set to shrink even more once a law before parliament is passed banning deportation to countries where human rights are abused.
Fair enough, you might say, if all the asylum seekers were genuine refugees from war zones. But contrary to the impression given by most of the world’s media, hardly any of 2014’s intake were from war-torn countries such as Syria or Iraq (though it is true that the number of Syrians is now rising).
Last year, most were from sub-Saharan Africa. Top of the league table were the Nigerians, followed by the Malians and the Gambians, the Senegalese and even the Pakistanis — who together made up 70 per cent of the total. No doubt these countries are no picnic to live in, and parts of some of them are war zones, but that should not, and in theory does not, guarantee refugee status. It is also a fact that most boat people are young single men and the price of a ticket on a people-smuggling boat is €2,000 (nearly two years’ pay for the average worker in Mali).
It’s worth remembering here that the majority of the boat people are Muslims and reports suggest that a small number are Islamic terrorists. The terrorists of ISIS are, we know from their Twitter feeds, obsessed with taking their crusade to Rome. One of those arrested in connection with the Islamic terrorist attack on the Bardo National Museum of Tunis in March had crossed the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy in a migrant boat in February.
Many refugees have no intention of staying in Italy, which is hardly surprising. For a start, only people who lose a full-time job are entitled to unemployment benefit. Italy, thanks to the straitjacket of the single currency, has been mired in recession for most of the past six years, with an official unemployment rate of 13 per cent (the real rate is probably 20 per cent) and the youth unemployment rate at a staggering 43 per cent.
The government of Matteo Renzi — the man billed as the Latin left’s answer to Tony Blair — seems happy to ferry into Italy a vast army of migrants with no real idea what to do with them except hope that they move on to other EU countries. The Italian premier has also been quick to champion the Euro-luvvie definition of this as a ‘European’ and not an ‘Italian’ crisis. So as of spring 2015, the ferry service is now operated not just by the Italian navy in the Sicilian channel but across the entire Mediterranean by the navies of many other EU countries, including the Royal Navy. This year, they have brought 54,000 boat people into Italy and a further 48,000 into Greece, and the summer migration season is not even in full swing yet.
Recently, Nick Cooke-Priest, captain of the British vessel involved in the rescue mission, HMS Bulwark, told reporters that ‘the indications are that there are 450,000 to 500,000 migrants in Libya who are waiting’ to reach Italy. The British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said ‘We could see hundreds of thousands trying to cross this summer.’ Fabrice Leggeri, the head of the EU’s border agency Frontex, has put the figure even higher, at ‘between 500,000 and a million’. So huge are the numbers that Italian police often just dump coach loads of migrants in town squares or at main railway stations which are then turned into temporary camps. Government policy is to try and spread the migrants out throughout the peninsula to lessen their impact; but now many regional and town councils (of all political persuasions), especially in the north, are in open revolt and refusing to take any more. Scabies is rife (of 46,000 migrants tested this year, 4,700 were infested) and one in four migrants is said by doctors to have Hepatitis C. The anti-immigration vote is rocketing and the Italian left has taken a hammering in the recent regional and city elections.
The EU — urged on in particular by an increasingly desperate Italy and Greece — is trying to draw up a quota deal to distribute the huge migrant army; but as with the single currency, when push comes to shove, it is every nation for itself. Despite months of talks, there are few signs of an agreement even on the small numbers being bandied about. A couple of months ago, there was much talk about UN sanctioned military action by the EU to stop the smugglers’ boats putting to sea from the Libyan coast. For weeks now, the silence on that subject has been deafening.
The French have ‘closed’ their border with Italy on the Côte d’Azur in defiance of the Schengen Agreement, which guarantees free movement within member nations. They are rigorously checking trains, cars and even footpaths across the mountains, and sending any illegal migrants back to Italy; they say they have sent back 6,000 this year. The justification is simple: the Italians are failing to identify these people and distinguish economic migrants from refugees. Who can argue with that? The Austrians are doing the same at the Brenner Pass in the Alps.
Pope Francis said last month that leaving the boat people to drown (about 3,500 are known to have died last year, and already nearly 2,000 this year) is ‘an attack against life’ akin to abortion. All of us feel it to be our moral duty to save lives where we can. Yet it cannot be our moral duty to ferry such vast numbers across the Mediterranean into Italy and Europe for ever, unless they are genuine refugees. In fact, our moral duty is not to do so — and the only solution is the one which few politicians dare even talk about, let alone implement: that the navies of the EU should stop the ferry service and start a blockade of Libya.
Prime Minister Renzi tried to pretend that the migrant crisis did not exist, but now that it has turned into an emergency he can remain silent no longer. He blames other EU countries for putting the nation before the union — in this latest meltdown of EU collective responsibility — and the British and the French in particular for getting rid of Muammar Gaddafi and turning Libya into a failed state. When Gaddafi was in power, thanks to a deal struck with Berlusconi, who like Blair had an excellent rapport with the Colonel, the number of boat people slowed to a trickle.
Signor Renzi now threatens his EU partners with what he calls ‘Plan B’ but refuses to reveal the details. It is thought to involve, among other things, refusing the EU fleet permission to land rescued migrants in Italy, and giving all migrants already here temporary leave-to-remain cards — in order to fox the French and flood Europe with them. That’ll teach them. The Italians call Renzi ‘Il Rottamatore’ (the Demolition Man) because of his vow to reform Italy root and branch. The nickname may end up being more apt than anybody realised.
Let us suppose that first the Royal Navy, then the navies of a dozen other EU countries, start to search for all such vessels in the Channel right up to the French coast, out into the North Sea and the Atlantic even, and then ferry all the passengers on board to Dover, Folkestone, Hastings, Eastbourne and Brighton in a surreal modern-day never-ending version of the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940. Would the British government agree to take them all? What of the British people? And if they did agree, what would the British government and people do with all the migrants? How would they cope?
Well, Italy has been invaded in just this way, by migrants from many nations all coming over here from Libya. And Italy’s unelected government has agreed to take them all. This makes the Italian people — who are among the least racist in Europe — very angry. It’s hard to blame them.
In October 2013, Italy’s previous unelected government, which like the current one was left-wing, ordered the Italian navy to search for and rescue all boat people in the Sicilian channel and beyond. This hugely expensive operation — ‘Mare Nostrum’ — ran until October last year and rescued nearly 190,000 people. The Italian government took this decision after a migrant boat sank with the loss of 360 lives 500 yards from an idyllic beach on the island of Lampedusa, once a resort of choice for the right-on rich.
The same left-wing Italian government also took the extraordinary step of decriminalising illegal immigration, which means among other things that none of the boat people are arrested once on dry land. Instead, they are taken to ‘Centri di accoglienza’ (welcome centres) for identification and a decision on their destinies. In theory, only those who identify themselves and claim political asylum can remain in Italy until their application is refused — or, if it is accepted, indefinitely. And in theory, under the Dublin Accords, they can only claim political asylum in Italy — the country where they arrived in the EU. In practice, however, only a minority claim political asylum in Italy. Pretty well all of them remain there incognito, or else move on to other EU countries.
Here’s how it works. In the welcome centres, they are given free board and lodging plus mobile phones, €3 a day in pocket money, and lessons — if they can be bothered — in such things as ice-cream-making or driving a car and (I nearly forgot) Italian. Their presence in these welcome centres is voluntary and they are free to come and go, though not to work, and each of them costs those Italians who do pay tax €35 a day (nearly €13,000 a year). Yes, they are supposed to have their photographs and fingerprints taken, but many refuse and the Italian police, it seems, do not insist. As the Italian interior minister, Angelino Alfano, explained to a TV reporter the other day: ‘They don’t want to be identified here — otherwise, under the Dublin Accords, they would have to stay in our country. So when a police officer is in front of an Eritrean who is two metres tall who doesn’t want his fingerprints taken, he can’t break his fingers, but must respect his human rights.’
This year, there is space for just 75,000 migrants in such places. Hotels are filling the breach, including the four-star Kulm hotel perched high above the luxury resort of Portofino on the Ligurian coast. But most of the rescued migrants could not care less about all that jazz and have just disappeared.
The ones who stay long in the welcome centres are those who have revealed their identities in order to apply for political asylum in Italy. Last year, 64,900 migrants did so in Italy — roughly a third of those saved by the Italian navy. But this being Italy, the judicial system only had time to reach a decision on half those applications (accepting 60 per cent of them), and anyway, thanks to the byzantine Italian appeals procedure, those refused asylum can remain for years. Even if their asylum claim is finally rejected and by some cruel quirk of fate they are actually handed a deportation order, it is easily ignored: last year Italy forcibly deported just 6,944 people — a figure set to shrink even more once a law before parliament is passed banning deportation to countries where human rights are abused.
Fair enough, you might say, if all the asylum seekers were genuine refugees from war zones. But contrary to the impression given by most of the world’s media, hardly any of 2014’s intake were from war-torn countries such as Syria or Iraq (though it is true that the number of Syrians is now rising).
Last year, most were from sub-Saharan Africa. Top of the league table were the Nigerians, followed by the Malians and the Gambians, the Senegalese and even the Pakistanis — who together made up 70 per cent of the total. No doubt these countries are no picnic to live in, and parts of some of them are war zones, but that should not, and in theory does not, guarantee refugee status. It is also a fact that most boat people are young single men and the price of a ticket on a people-smuggling boat is €2,000 (nearly two years’ pay for the average worker in Mali).
It’s worth remembering here that the majority of the boat people are Muslims and reports suggest that a small number are Islamic terrorists. The terrorists of ISIS are, we know from their Twitter feeds, obsessed with taking their crusade to Rome. One of those arrested in connection with the Islamic terrorist attack on the Bardo National Museum of Tunis in March had crossed the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy in a migrant boat in February.
Many refugees have no intention of staying in Italy, which is hardly surprising. For a start, only people who lose a full-time job are entitled to unemployment benefit. Italy, thanks to the straitjacket of the single currency, has been mired in recession for most of the past six years, with an official unemployment rate of 13 per cent (the real rate is probably 20 per cent) and the youth unemployment rate at a staggering 43 per cent.
The government of Matteo Renzi — the man billed as the Latin left’s answer to Tony Blair — seems happy to ferry into Italy a vast army of migrants with no real idea what to do with them except hope that they move on to other EU countries. The Italian premier has also been quick to champion the Euro-luvvie definition of this as a ‘European’ and not an ‘Italian’ crisis. So as of spring 2015, the ferry service is now operated not just by the Italian navy in the Sicilian channel but across the entire Mediterranean by the navies of many other EU countries, including the Royal Navy. This year, they have brought 54,000 boat people into Italy and a further 48,000 into Greece, and the summer migration season is not even in full swing yet.
Recently, Nick Cooke-Priest, captain of the British vessel involved in the rescue mission, HMS Bulwark, told reporters that ‘the indications are that there are 450,000 to 500,000 migrants in Libya who are waiting’ to reach Italy. The British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said ‘We could see hundreds of thousands trying to cross this summer.’ Fabrice Leggeri, the head of the EU’s border agency Frontex, has put the figure even higher, at ‘between 500,000 and a million’. So huge are the numbers that Italian police often just dump coach loads of migrants in town squares or at main railway stations which are then turned into temporary camps. Government policy is to try and spread the migrants out throughout the peninsula to lessen their impact; but now many regional and town councils (of all political persuasions), especially in the north, are in open revolt and refusing to take any more. Scabies is rife (of 46,000 migrants tested this year, 4,700 were infested) and one in four migrants is said by doctors to have Hepatitis C. The anti-immigration vote is rocketing and the Italian left has taken a hammering in the recent regional and city elections.
The EU — urged on in particular by an increasingly desperate Italy and Greece — is trying to draw up a quota deal to distribute the huge migrant army; but as with the single currency, when push comes to shove, it is every nation for itself. Despite months of talks, there are few signs of an agreement even on the small numbers being bandied about. A couple of months ago, there was much talk about UN sanctioned military action by the EU to stop the smugglers’ boats putting to sea from the Libyan coast. For weeks now, the silence on that subject has been deafening.
The French have ‘closed’ their border with Italy on the Côte d’Azur in defiance of the Schengen Agreement, which guarantees free movement within member nations. They are rigorously checking trains, cars and even footpaths across the mountains, and sending any illegal migrants back to Italy; they say they have sent back 6,000 this year. The justification is simple: the Italians are failing to identify these people and distinguish economic migrants from refugees. Who can argue with that? The Austrians are doing the same at the Brenner Pass in the Alps.
Pope Francis said last month that leaving the boat people to drown (about 3,500 are known to have died last year, and already nearly 2,000 this year) is ‘an attack against life’ akin to abortion. All of us feel it to be our moral duty to save lives where we can. Yet it cannot be our moral duty to ferry such vast numbers across the Mediterranean into Italy and Europe for ever, unless they are genuine refugees. In fact, our moral duty is not to do so — and the only solution is the one which few politicians dare even talk about, let alone implement: that the navies of the EU should stop the ferry service and start a blockade of Libya.
Prime Minister Renzi tried to pretend that the migrant crisis did not exist, but now that it has turned into an emergency he can remain silent no longer. He blames other EU countries for putting the nation before the union — in this latest meltdown of EU collective responsibility — and the British and the French in particular for getting rid of Muammar Gaddafi and turning Libya into a failed state. When Gaddafi was in power, thanks to a deal struck with Berlusconi, who like Blair had an excellent rapport with the Colonel, the number of boat people slowed to a trickle.
Signor Renzi now threatens his EU partners with what he calls ‘Plan B’ but refuses to reveal the details. It is thought to involve, among other things, refusing the EU fleet permission to land rescued migrants in Italy, and giving all migrants already here temporary leave-to-remain cards — in order to fox the French and flood Europe with them. That’ll teach them. The Italians call Renzi ‘Il Rottamatore’ (the Demolition Man) because of his vow to reform Italy root and branch. The nickname may end up being more apt than anybody realised.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...s-for-surge-in-illegal-African-migration.html
The European Union’s borders agency has suggested one of the world’s biggest airlines is fuelling the illegal migration crisis by opening new routes in Africa.
Frontex said a dramatic increase in migrants from Africa illegally crossing the borders of the Western Balkans in order to reach the EU “could be partly explained” by the commercial strategy of Turkish Airlines.
The flag carrier, which serves more destinations than any airline in the world, has a fleet of 296 and revenues of £5 billion last year, has opened a raft of new routes to Africa – a move interpreted as a drive by President Erdogan to increase Turkish influence.
While the world’s attention has been on illegal smuggling gangs, the allegation suggests that major corporations – acting entirely legally – also play a major and poorly-understood role in the mass migration affecting the continent.
Turkey is a major route for would-be migrants, travelling by land from Syria and Afghanistan onwards by land or sea to Greece, the Balkans and central Europe
Frontex noted there had been a threefold increase in Africans detected making illegal border crossings in the Western Balkans in the three months June to compared to the previous quarter..
They included a nine-fold increase in Congolese, a six-fold rise in Cameroonians, and a four-fold rise in Ghanaians.
In total it detected some 4,071 Africans out of 54 437 illegal border crossings.
The report goes on: “The increase in detected Africans in the Western Balkans could be partly explained by the expansion of Turkish Airlines connection network in Africa.”
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It notes how the carrier now has the largest network in Africa, nearly doubling its weekly seat capacity from 38,000 to 70,000, and planning to open six new destinations.
“It already boasts the largest network in the continent among foreign carriers, overtaking Air France and Emirates. By the end of 2015, Turkish Airlines will have at least 45 destinations in its African network across 30 countries. For comparison, Air France, which has the second largest African network among European carriers, offers flights to 34 destinations. Brussels Airlines has 19 African destinations on offer, British Airways 18 and Lufthansa 13.”
Earlier this year the Telegraph revealed how Turkey’s lax e-visa regime had made it an easy back-door into Europe.
The problem is down to Turkey’s policy of “visa diplomacy”, under which its Islamist government has sought influence across Africa and the Middle East, by easing visa restrictions. Citizens of countries such as Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Sudan can all get “e-visas”, which require only a form to be filled in and a fee to be paid online.
A Telegraph reporter pretending to be from Afghanistan was able to buy such a visa in less than five minutes, using the name John Smith:
Nibble
New member
- Jan 3, 2007
- 19,238
Oh. My. ****ing. GOD. Shut the **** up you knobber.
True to form, if you do not agree with someone's opinion, you post insults. Has it ever occurred to you that this is a messageboard and that posters are entitled to post their opinions. What i thought was not really acceptable was insults. I actually am not keen on some of your posts (in between insults) but there you go, we are all different eh.
Still, i am not the only one that you insult, you seem to have quite a list.
La` Cucaracha¤
Banned
- Jul 21, 2015
- 148
Pretty pink fairy
Banned
- Jan 30, 2008
- 31,981
