*** Official Putin Started Shootin' Thread ***

[Poopadoop]

You start this post with a comment about "refugees". Let's just clarify something here... those fleeing Ukraine are refugees. Those fleeing France on boats are migrants. There is a difference, and it's an important difference.

Let's get real. The people who float across the channel on a dinghy are asylum seekers. Migrants are people who apply for a visa from their home country, get it, then come over. As if people are going to risk their lives on a dinghy just to get here and be told "you're not seeking asylum and you have no visa, so sorry we have no obligation to let you stay here, you have to go back."

We're not just trying to deter people traffickers and migrants, we're trying to deter France from doing nothing. France have an obligation to secure their borders, including coastlines. France should be doing more to stop these boats leaving their territory. But they don't want these migrants, so they allow it to happen. What should the UK do? Just say "ok, you've got us, they're in British waters" and let this play out indefinitely? Ludicrous.

There's no international law that says a country can't let people leave their country and go out to sea. Nor does any country have an obligation to help another country's immigration system. France can choose to help us if we cooperate with them but since we have such a poor attitude towards France and the EU in general, I think we've pretty much shot ourselves in the foot on that one.

France are to blame for this crisis. We're trying to secure our borders. France are not. France are encouraging people traffickers. If France did more, this would be resolved.

How can we get them to do cooperate? By being cunts over fishing?

Of course there's a law against it.

Seems like it'd be hard to prosecute. First you have to find the person, then get them in your juridiction to arrest and charge. Do you know how many dinghy traffickers have been convicted?

Turning away boats at sea is a terrible thing to do. But allowing them to arrive is worse, because it encourages the people traffickers to keep doing it, to keep putting these people at serious risk of drowning.

There is no good way for the UK to deal with this problem.

We could help the people who want to get here to get here without having to cross in a dinghy. That's one way.

No. The solution is to pressure France to secure their maritime borders.

Let's assume the French are dicks or whatever and they dont' want to help us. What do we do then? Send a battleship?

This isn't about cost. There's a lot more to it than that. This is a battle of political will between France and the UK, with France allowing these people to be put at risk, and the UK refusing to allow France to palm off their migrants onto us.

The French can't tell asylum seekers they can't go on to the UK.

Let's say a refugee comes from Syria. He travels first to Turkey, the border guard says "Who are you and where are you going?" The refugee says "I'm fleeing the war Syria and I have family in the UK I want to go there." The Turk guard says ok and let's him in. The same thing happens at the borders of Greece, Italy, Switzerland, and then France. The refugee finally gets to Calais and finds out there's no help to get to the UK. He still wants to meet up his family in the UK so he ends up taking a dinghy.

And you think France should do what, arrest him? Sink the dinghy? What? Do you think France should spend all their resources patrolling their entire coastline looking for refugee dinghies full of people who want to get to the UK and herding them back to Calais to go sit in a tent again, and wait and hope the UK will get their finger out and do something to help them get across?