Safe passage proposal won't stop the boats organised by people traffickers: Yorkshire Post Letters

What is the number of such places that would be needed to stop the rubber boats on the basis that all their potential passengers have switched to a safe route?

I think we can assume that the profit margin for the so-called ‘people traffickers’ is wide enough that, were they to be losing custom, they could comfortably drop their prices to maintain and even increase demand for their services.

The number needed isn’t actually as high as the billions globally for whom the UK poverty level would represent a substantial improvement in living standards.

But it is a number large enough to depress living standards here to a level no more attractive for potential migrants than other host countries open to them or their country of origin.

On the other hand, safe passage could be part of a plan to stop the boats on the basis that they do not offer what the passengers wanted: settlement in the UK and free access to its economy. In this case safe passage does not directly cause the boats to stop.

It is a psychological crutch, steeling us to the firm measures required to remove the incentive for coming. It is a sop to the sentimental.

It may, however, be instructive to consider who we would choose if admitting a strictly limited number of people. I suggest they would almost all be women.

These are clearly the most downtrodden of people, particularly in the countries from which most asylum claimants are coming.

They would also be single, with no option later to bring in dependents or a spouse.

Why would we allocate scarce places to a persecuted individual and their family when we can give them to several persecuted individuals?

Unfortunately, the question of Britain making its appropriate contribution to alleviating poverty and danger experienced by people around the world has been translated in the public mind into one of resettling a necessary tiny proportion of these people here.

This shows profound indifference or wilful ignorance regarding the actual problem, which proposals for migration barely scratch the surface of.

One suspects the ‘no borders’ approach of allowing mass migration actually has an agenda of deliberate national self-immolation, perhaps driven by national self-loathing.

From: Paul Morley, Ribblesdale Estate, Long Preston, Skipton.

It does amuse me that when people write to the newspapers trashing any attempt that the Government make to try and do what the majority of sensible people in this country want, control our borders, they always fail to put the word illegal before the word immigration.

Australia had been turning away illegal boats for years and I don’t recall them being shunned by the world. People still emigrate and holiday there.

If the Government can turn the tide on this serious situation then I believe the results of the next general election will show what the majority believe in.