I think some sections of the press are deliberately using language such as immigrants to group everyone together when there are really very distinct groups.
You've got European migrants coming in under European freedom of movement. That's not going to stop unless we leave Europe or their is a drastic change to European law.
Then you've got economic migrants, some trying to enter legally, some illegally, who are coming here as they think they will have a better life.
Neither of those groups are anything to do with the Syrian refugees. They are people fleeing a terrible civil war and need our help. Its a complete myth that they are all trying to get to Europe or the UK.
Amnesty International said:
3.8 million refugees from Syria (95 per cent) are in just five countries Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt:
- Lebanon hosts 1.1 million refugees registered with UNHCR, which amounts to around 26 per cent of the country’s population
- Jordan hosts 618,615 registered refugees, which amounts to 9.8 per cent of the population
- Turkey hosts 1.6 million refugees, which amounts to 2.4 per cent of the population
- Iraq hosts 225,373 registered refugees, which amounts to 0.67 per cent of the population
- Egypt 142,543 registered refugees, which amounts to 0.17 per cent of the population
Around 190,000 people have been killed and 10.8 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria
More than 10 million Syrians, or 45 per cent of the country’s population has been displaced
Of those, 6.5 million are displaced within Syria and approximately 4 million have sought refuge in other countries.
For those that think 'we do our bit' we really don't. We lag way behind other European countries
note that is applications, we have one of the highest rejection rates in Europe so you have to factor that in as well.
There's no easy solution. Ideally you would bring an end to the civil war in Syria, a war many would argue we played a part in starting. On the basis you can't do that then a Europe wide, if not world wide, solution to the refugee issue has to come into play. It can't be left up to a handful of countries to deal with the problem. My feeling is the refugees need to be processed and allocated to a particular country a lot closer to home to avoid the dangerous journeys they are undertaking.
Of course there is then the issue of how to fund action and what to do with them when they arrive. These are not people expecting to come over and live a nice life on benefits in a free house. We managed to take hundreds of thousands in WW1 and WW2 so why can't we now? In all likelihood if we took a large number you'd be looking at creating refugee camps. Would the EU fund it or would we be expected to fund it ourselves? Are countries like the US going to contribute to the cost?
And of course remember the expectation would be that at some point, when the civil war ends, they would return to their own country.
