Channel Crossing Victims

 

I don’t suppose a couple owning mobile telephones with satellite navigation facilities would, necessarily, be denied claiming that they were fleeing from persecution, war, famine and liberal intolerance.  They might well be.  On the other hand, owning a sophisticated mobile telephone and paying the bills, implies some sort of economic independence.  It must be expensive to travel across most of Europe to reach the northern shores of France, conveniently just a few miles from the draw of the United Kingdom.  I expect the insignificant cost of a foot passenger ticket on the ferry from Calais to Dover would have been welcome for the final leg of the long trans-European odyssey but most recent visitors to our channel shores have preferred more unconventional transportation.  Again, I understand, not an insignificant expense but, one assumes, a bargain into which the travellers and the boat providers entered into freely?   I doubt whether tickets for the Channel passage are issued or whether various consumer protections would be applicable in event of vendor default.  In short, if a deal looks too good to be true then it probably is so caveat emptor could be helpful advice to potential travellers in future.

Meanwhile, in UK, the bills mount up: temporary food and accommodation, medical treatment and vaccination, permanent housing, welfare support, education, and, of course, the fat salaries of the army of lawyers generously provided so that none who make it here are ever returned from whence they came, whatever the circumstances.  Indeed, less than one in 1000 of the 45000 or so known illegal immigrants has even been prosecuted  never mind dealt with, in the last couple of years.  Then add the millions we are paying our French friends to regulate their own coastline. We do not hear of the cumulative cost of all this and, of course, we could not possibly have a free discussion about the social consequences.  And yet the tide of migrants/refugees/asylum seekers/economic chancers/potential 5^th columnists, however classified for political correctness, are all, universally, “victims.”  But I just wonder, looking at the respective profit and loss, who are the real victims in this crisis?