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Arriving in Greece. Credit: Aris Messinis/AFP/ Getty
They arrived at church last Sunday, slightly dazed looking, their inadequate clothing a sorry indication that the British weather had come as something of a shock. Our smells and bells high church Anglo-Catholicism was also new to them. But it was recognisably Christian, and this was what they were looking for. We offered them food and money. They declined. What they really wanted was a Bible in Farsi. And a new life away from Iran.
When their small boat left the continent last week, the weather was relatively calm. But half way across the channel the wind picked up and the crossing was terrifying, waves crashing over the side of the boat. I doubt their young daughter — seven perhaps — will ever forget it.
I’m not interested in arguing the toss about the rights and wrong of taking a young girl on so perilous a journey. Those of us who have safe and comfortable lives over here should listen more and talk less. The parents who turned up at my church were clearly fighting for their daughter’s future in the way they thought best, and that is a parent’s job. Stuff your politics if you disagree. Humanitarianism trumps politics.
Save The Children estimates that over 200,000 unaccompanied children have sought refuge in Europe over the last five years. Seven hundred of them perished at sea. These statistics are just so unspeakably appalling that I think we block out the full horror of them, unable or unwilling to comprehend. While I cuddle up to my children in bed at night, other people’s children are on their own in the dark, frightened, in a boat bobbing about on the Med. Some of them die that way. It’s hard to think about it for long. But we must.
Many of those who survive the trip go missing. Lost in Europe, a collective of journalists, estimate that between 2018 and 2020 over 18,000 unaccompanied refugee children have disappeared from state care in Europe. They came here, on their own, seeking a better life, escaping horrors back home. And thousands of them have now vanished from official records.
The picture painted by various NGO’s working in the field is horrendous. There are now more than 72,000 refugees and migrants stranded in Greece, Cyprus and the Balkans, including more than 22,500 children, according to Unicef. “They are unable to move forward, unwilling to go back to their home countries and struggling to fit into their host communities.” These children, they say, are increasingly showing signs of deep psychological trauma. Those who are not herded into camps, sleep in doorways or under bridges. Some are taken in by people they hardly know — to God knows what fate.
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Subscribe“The parents who turned up at my church were clearly fighting for their daughter’s future in the way they thought best, and that is a parent’s job.”
What you don’t seem to respect Giles is that people in this country, including people of all colours who emigrated here lawfully, are increasingly worried about their own children’s future.
You chose an idealised Christian immigrant family from a country that persecuted Christians. Most are not in this bracket. Most are young men. Almost all undocumented. Are they ex fighters, escaped convicted criminals, running to escape justice, etc etc?
It is the poor who mostly have to live alongside these new arrivals with questionable backgrounds, it is their children who find that their teachers have huge classes and no time for them as they are overwhelmed with children with greater needs.
I am not poor, but I am also very worried about my children’s future and indeed their current physical safety in most European cities.
Giles, my family does not come along to your Anglo Catholic Church, because, I have learned that the CofE is in the main, like most of the Woke middle classes, not at all interested in my concerns about my children’s future.
I knew the Arch Bishop of Ispahan, Bishop Barden, “Kevin William Barden (3 June 1908 – 4 December 2004) was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Ispahan from 1974 to 1982. He had previously served as parish priest of the Dominican church in Tehran. Early life and ordination He was born in Dublin in 1908 and was one of five children.”. I recommend reading this wiki article on Christianity in Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Iran
Converting from Muslim to Christian is a crime, but Christians are allowed in Iran, there are 500,000 to a million of them.
I left my Union, many years ago, because they were far more interested in the rights of Chilean Postal Workers than my own employment conditions.
Now you can argue that ‘transactional relationships’ are a sad development in modern life, leading to failed marriages, loneliness, social decay, and so on – but there are far more people asking ‘what’s in it for me?’. Unless you can mount a sensible answer to that question the plight of others is less pressing that more immediate personal issues.
Being worried about one’s children’s future is rather different from having to risk their lives in order to have a future.
We are letting into Europe and the west the very worst that you could select. People feel overwhelmed by it all. But given the right leader the unwanted could be expelled, their schools, businesses, homes and places of worship seized or removed in a matter of months. In reality they could be closed and curfewed in one weekend. With modern transport, there’s no reason whatsoever why a million people a week couldnt be incentivised to take suitable flights out. People need to remain positive and believe that anything is possible.
Most refugees are fake. You just make sure it’s worse to stay than leave. Maybe place all the detention centres in South Georgia.
I doubt if Putin would be all that keen on taking in fake refugees, especially if they are Muslim.
Falklands Islands would be a better destination.
The famous story where the infant , together with his parents Mary & Joseph had to flee is well known . They fled as a family , we know what they were fleeing from & they returned when it was safe. They didn’t just send Joseph’s nephew away ( who turns out to be a criminal and have a drug habit) who claims to be a refugee but is able to return home many times ( at presumably considerable expense) to a country where, apparently his uncle & family feel safe. It doesn’t add up & we know this because of these people’s behaviour. When some of my family came to England they ‘kept their head down,’ fitted in ( no prototesting outside schools) & even changed their names as they looked too foreign ( ie at that time they didn’t want to be mistaken as German) and were difficult to spell. This was the story of the immigrant & the refugee who have contributed towards Britain.
Don’t twist the argument Judy. You may want to live in a world where men have the right to come here, make my daughter, my Jewish neighbour’s daughter indeed my Muslim neighbour’s daughter less safe because you hate the idea that we should take back control of who we let into our communities.
I don’t.
Giles needs to remember that Jesus taught us to love our neighbour. It is not loving or indeed sensible to totally give up on the notion of right and wrong.
The good samaritan chose to act in that way. For certain people to decide that the rest population are being cruel or bad because they don’t agree this is the right way to behave.is surely different.
Who knew France was that dangerous-thank goodness we left the EU. Should we send the navy to rescue all those ex-pat one year in province types who moved there?
We need mass deportations from the whole of Europe at some point. And the people will back it once they see that it can be done. Many feel that it’s too late to roll back the tide, but history shows time and time again it can be done if there is the sense of purpose.
Which particular “mass deportations” from history did you have in mind, Richard? And could you describe in what way those doing the deporting benefited?
Oh come on Godwin, spell it out.
No, there’s zero equivalence, not even a false one. Those you are alluding to were always an integral part of European fabric, even more integral than most if we look at their contributions throughout European history. NOT like the incoming greedy masses from the th¡rdworld, seeking self-enrichment.
Actually it won’t be too difficult , it just involves fair play. The papers were discussing the terraced houses in the north that house up to 8 people & can help spread covid. Lots of people were brought up in these houses in the past but with a slight difference. They didn’t have expensive cars parked outside , they didn’t travel a lot at cost of thousands & couldn’t afford expensive weddings Where is all this money coming from in areas with high unemployment or low paid work? ,
Opening salvo with a persecuted Christian family, followed by the all too predictable shoehorning of every economic migrant scampering for the goodies of European welfare states.
It is precisely the economic migrants who make it impossible to save the persecuted groups – the Christians, Yazidis, apostates, Ahmadis etc.
Not “we”, but you should be shamed, Fraser, by this article. You can take a columnist out of the Guardian but you can’t take the Guardian out of the columnist, apparently.
Giles, like all other Guardianistas, will never read comments btl, they are just too “above all that”.
I wonder how many Guardianistas you know. Very few if any if your comment is anything to go by!
Lack of contact with Guardianistas would be to her credit, I think. If only I didn’t know so many!
Since mercifully the Guardian has few readers at for the paper edition,it is difficult to find them except in state schools,the NHS and civil service.I read the online version since Google give to you for nothing and what self deluding nonsense it mostly is.
So do i, heh. A completely self-unaware satirical, it fills a gap on the market now that official comedy is dead.
Yes it’s sad, but there are several realities that have to be dealt with and the truth is that reality can sometimes be pretty unpleasant.
Take the EU member states who are at the forefront of the immigration flows, Italy, Greece and to a lesser extent Spain. None of these countries have had any help at all from the EU in dealing with the migrant crisis (originally catalysed by Angela Merkel back in 2015) and they have been asking for it since 2017. No wonder they are now simply choosing to act tough. The EU washed its hands of the whole affair after doing its ‘deal’ with Turkey to keep a semi lid on the wave of immigrants, and now Turkey has the EU over a barrel. When the great ‘club’ cannot bestir itself to help its weakest members then those members will increasingly start to look after their own and EU solidarity can go hang.
The next reality is that europe can’t really afford a tidal wave of immigrant from poor, regressive and mostly muslim countries. It cannot afford it financially and it can’t afford it culturally. France and Sweden are furtherest down the curve on this, but others are not that far behind. If you want some depressing reading look at the Pew Research centres assessment of the percentage of muslims in european countries by 2050 under zero, medium and high immigration scenarios. Sweden is projected to be 30% muslim by then, France and Germany ~20%. In 2000 these were basically catholic and lutheran protestant countries and 50 years is a *very* short period of time for such a major shift in religious and cultural make up. The growing situations in France and Sweden I think is a grim foreshadowing of what will happen elsewhere in Europe if these trends continue unchecked.
It may seem hard, in light of pictures of children dying on beaches or drowned in the water or huddled in a tent on some Greek island, but the politicians and elites of europe have a duty of care to their existing citizens, a duty which is arguably much greater than any they might have to anyone seeking to find a better life in europe, and one which they have been dangerously ignoring for far too long. My fear is that if they continue to avoid this duty then the consequences could far worse and wider spread than the current plight of these migrants.
And of course what is not acknowledged here is the plight of poor white girls in British cities who are being raped on an industrial scale by the type of migrants this lot will grow up into.
I’m far more concerned for the safety of those here now.
Spot on well said
We are not the worlds dumping ground for everyone
Why will you never put the people of this country first?
My sympathy is for the poor working classes of this country not a never ending supply of illegal immigrants.
Just another middle class hand wringing liberal who expects us to cry for everyone and everywhere but no thought for us, our country, our culture or our future.
And the only thing I am ashamed about is people like you who show your right on credentials to use like a hammer against citizens who believe in borders, our people and our country first and foremost.
When I started work in 1990 on building sites in london it was 90-95% English, now Englishmen are a rarity working on building sites, council workers, gardeners etc etc
They stopped apprenticeship because 50% of school leavers had to go to university and damn the rest.
The people in charge have done well out of mass migration cheap nannies, cheap builders, cheap gardeners etc
They turned their backs on us decades ago and we still dont know why they love the foreign population but hate the indigenous people?
Once we were the hard working backbone of this country and now we are just worthless scum to them.
It did not have to be this way and as brexit shows they are out of touch, out of time and hopefully out of luck
I really wish that Giles Fraser would read and respond to this comment.
He’s piously self-regarding for a living.
I’m afraid Giles (“did I mention I have a PHD”) Fraser is very unlikely to stoop to answering practical questions.
It’s not that they love the foreign pop more than the indigenous, it’s just that they love their money most of all.
The supply of ‘cheap nannies , cheap builders and cheap gardeners etc’ is why apparently the middle classes think refugees come supplied with the cloak of invisibility. They fortunately don’t need to live , eat ,& generally consume so obviously can’t affect the country’s supply. Areas now given over to extra housing which affect flood plains , nature , water & road supplies-which also affect climate change (one of their favourite causes) are not due to these millions of new people.
Young black youth never bothered to work. I take the Mexicans any day.
Millions migrate to the First World from the Third – net result – nothing changes in the Third World but growing parts of the First World become Third World – especially in terms of social oppression, political corruption and inferior ethics. It is nothing short of criminal stupidity to promote mass migration and those who get the violins out are childishly naive. If people are serious about improving the lives of Third World masses they should help them in their country of birth and, being real, if those countries are oppressive it is up to their people to fight for freedom.
Well said
“Brutal”? Give me a break.
No successful nation has any obligation to let in a tsunami of economic migrants trying to “escape” from lives of poverty in failed or floundering states.
Poverty and struggle is the default human condition. Just being poor and wanting a better life doesn’t make one a refugee; it makes a person one of the overwhelming majority of human beings who have ever lived on this planet. Life was and is f***ing hard, for most people, and it’s probably supposed to be. Because when it isn’t, we tend to become soft and weak to the point that we get trodden on by the tougher and stronger.
But there’s a middle ground. Struggling nations need to be given help (NOT handouts) to succeed and prosper so much that their people don’t want to leave in droves. And the motivations for them leaving, i.e. rich nations’ wide open borders and generous welfare states – need to be removed. With these two factors, you’d be surprised at how much could change for the better, in the parts of the world currently being emptied of their human capital due to promises of easy lives elsewhere.
Human beings are intelligent, persistant, and extraordinarily creative and resourceful, when they have to be. I’m here because my own ancestors struggled and survived unimaginable hardship. No-one gave them anything for free.
We need to stop seeing people in poor countries as hopeless victims (and always strategically portraying them, as you do in your photograph, as parents with children, even though the vast majority are young single men) with no agency whom we must care and provide for. It’s insulting.
And if you want “brutal”, talk about the immigration policies of Japan, or South Korea.
In what way would be the immigration policies of Japan or South Korea be brutal?
I will be most impressed if you can convince me they are.
Japan routinely imprisons visa-overstays and illegal immigrants pending their asylum claim, the vast majority of which are denied. I don’t know about S. Korea, but I would expect similar behavior (with the exception of N Korean migrants.)
Both countries are relatively xenophobic by Western standards. To give you an idea how xenophobic, most other countries import 3rd world labor to care for their babies and elderly. Japan builds robots. They will have seniors nursed by a machine pretending to care before a real human from the Phillipines who actually might.
To be fair, Japanese take their ethical obligations seriously. A Sri Lankan woman who overstayed her visa recently died in custody and it has been in the national news on and off for several weeks. In contract, American press doesn’t say anything when illegals die in US border patrol custody.
Sorry, still do not see which part is brutal.
If you are talking about imprisonment for deliberate visa over-stays, what should the punishment be? No punishment? A fine? Do they have the money?
You say will have seniors nursed by robots. So not doing it yet then. So I do not think this is brutal. And surely this sounds like what lots of businesses want to do, namely replace manual labour by machines.
And a woman dying in custody – you do not say why. Beaten to death? Brutal. Illness? Not so brutal.
Sorry, still not convinced.
Japan granted asylum to less than 1 percent of refugees and asylum-seekers who applied in 2019, despite having the third-largest economy in the world. Germany, which has a similar GDP, took around 53 percent of refugees in the same year’ – foreignpolicy.com
Japan is famously homogeneous, has miniscule amounts of immigration and it’s all but impossible to migrate there without a firm job offer.
Whether that makes its immigration policy ‘brutal’ more or less seems like a moot point in this context.
They have a very low crime rate. The Japanese are fundamentally honest and respectful. The majority of crime is committed by gaizin
You apparently missed her scare quotes.
If by scare quotes you mean you think she is being sarcastic and meaning not brutal, I do not get that impression. So no, I did not miss the quotes.
I presume she meant that if rejecting some migrants is “brutal” then surely a country which rejects nearly all migrants is extra “brutal.” I don’t consider it actually brutal though and evidently neitiher does she.
Japan’s immigration and refugee policies are far from brutal. They just don’t accept them. Moreover, word has long since gone out that they don’t so few try their chances by coming. Contrast this with Britain which is known on the migrant grapevine as a soft touch and presto, we have the problem we now face.
Even those reprehensible grifters in Brussels acknowledged last week that 60% of those that arrived in 2015 were ‘economic migrants’. (Of course, most of us knew this in 2015). And even the repulsive Barnier has admitted that some of those that blithely wandered into Europe were terrorists. while suggesting a three- to five-year ban on immigration to France. The whole world cannot live in north-western Europe and North America. We are sick of it.
Emotionally manipulative and recklessly selective with the facts. Articles like this help no one. They undermine fellow feeling and fuel political polarisation.
I loved the bit about the “children” who’ve disappeared. These would be the “children” who are actually 35.
The vast majority are not refugees, but economic migrants, and have no right to be here.
Do a story on how MUCH the Crime Cartels charge to smuggle them into Europe! It is not cheap. You have given the migration/immigration policy over to crime gangs.
Sure but there’s nothing inherently wrong with being a migrant. Many of my favourite neighbours and best colleagues are migrants. I have worked overseas on many occasions too….But there are laws that must be followed. By tolerating this, we degrade the category of lawful refugee and insult law-abiding migrants. The recent plans to deport bona fide refugees in Denmark are the perfect example of this. People are now so fed up with bogus claimants and the migrant tsunami that they have exhausted their compassion for genuine refugees.
Absolutely nothing wrong with being a migrant. I have been one; I have worked in about a dozen countries; lived in five (where “lived” = stayed there and worked for more than three consecutive months). Always respected the law; always there legally; never demanded anyone adapt to my preferences.
Same. Lived and worked in 7 countries. I was grateful for the chance and, as a guest, I followed the rules and never expressed an opinion about local politics.
Same here.
Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. Horribly racist and disgusting book, but it asks a fair question: What is the limit of what France can absorb without ceasing to be a France? Mr. Fraser is uncomfortable with this question for the UK. But his discomfort doesn’t make the question any less relevant.
Believing you can take in everyone is delusional. So how do you choose? Mr. Fraser says we destroy our moral core if we choose. I say we destroy our moral core if we don’t. What does UK citizenship mean if not that your fellow UK citizens have an obligation to consider your needs before those of the rest of the world?
Giles ignores the fact that the people who turned up in his church would have arrived via France, where they were safe from persecution… So the perilous journey across the channel was unnecessary and voluntary, and they presumably just wanted to upgrade their residency to somewhere better. Their daughter is now in competition with mine for employment, housing and education, so their arrival on our shores has now made my children’s future harder.
And – more so for the boys – competition in the quest for marriage partners.
It probably depends on the country but certainly in some it seems that young immigrants are in the majority male. Sweden seems to have managed to achieve a large imbalance, for example.
Oh, well, Let them be gay! as a modern Marie Antoinette might say.
‘it seems that young immigrants are in the majority male. Sweden seems to have managed to achieve a large imbalance, for example.’
Which is why even the very left wing Het Parool (Amsterdam’s newspaper) is today reporting that Sweden now has the second highest firearms murder rate in Europe (4 people per million per year).
This article has already received a well deserved shredding in the comments, but amongst all the holier-than-though grandstanding and moral gaslighting, this statement deserves questioning :
Are you really that naive (or do you think your readers are that thick)? These “children” have disappeared from the authorities because they’re not children. 8 year olds do not walk across a desert and swim across the Med on their own. Young, able-bodied men do (or, more likely, pay people smugglers to do so). Then they claim special treatment by lying about their age.
Too much critical thinking, Andrew. You’re definitely not his target audience!
I belive football clubs take a Xray of the wrist of young footballers from Africa as it confirms their approximate age. That would be an abuse of human rights if European governments did it.
Of course, if you accept young adult men (while struggling to keep a straight face) as genuine “children”, then you are legally obliged to provide them with schooling until their alleged 18th birthday. Why not teach them at your local secondary school? Obviously not the one where you send your 12 year old daughter.
Fraser says they “disappeared from state care in Europe”. The correct word is “absconded”.
Well maybe if your ilk did not encourage them by allowing illegal migrants they would not make the perilous trip. Europe could have all the migrants it wished by processing legally, from their home nation.
The current system is to have outsourced the immigration policy to Crime Cartels, called ‘People Smugglers’. Is it Really they who you feel should be managing European Immigration Policy? Deciding who gets to settle in the crowded land of UK? Foreign Criminal Gangs?
(It goes without saying, even from the maddest, that 100% open borders is NOT viable, I assume, or would you have that? Or would you wish the numbers remain limited as they are by requiring this trial by ordeal, and then berating yourself about it?, and also they pay of great deal of money to the mafia)
I have seen some desperately poor peoples, starving children – do you think the answer is to bring them to live in Europe? Because you would get a billion of them. In another article I gave a link to Kipling’s ‘White Man’ Burden’, I think you should read it. I have known a great many missionaries who devoted their life to serving the poor and wretched in the third world. That is admirable. Opening the borders to the people smugglers is not.
The scandal Mr Fraser should be exposing is just how few Christian refugees are selected from the camps to be resettled in Britain. For whatever reason – UN, NGO, and HO prejudice against them, or their failure to survive in the mixed boats and camps – Christian refugees come here officially and legally in pitiful numbers. Most of the resettled are moslem. Common sense would surely dictate Christians should be given priority, as they are being severely persecuted, but the reverse seems to be the case.
I think we can put Giles in the category of enemies of the people.
He opens with propaganda – look, they are Christians! – and of course can read into their hearts and know what they really want, namely a Bible.
Now that part I agree with, Giles. Maybe you could start by listening to some of the victims of multiculturalism?
For anyone who can read French, the site fdesouche.com is a good place to hear some of these stories. It is a depressing litany of assaults, rapes, murders and other crimes.
I’m surprised Giles didn’t refer to them all as aspiring brain surgeons.
You mean they weren’t all aspiring architects, like all the “victims” of knife crimes?
It is hard to engage with the topic of immigration – legal and illegal – in the current environment of porous borders, politics disguised as legal activism and crappy systems. We need to get in place a thorough and widespread acceptance, with solid policing and procedures, that you may not, in any circumstances, enter the UK other than though official channels – and ideally, that if you do, any and all rights to settlement you might have had vanish. Add to that a very aggressively enforced policy that states that if you come to the UK from (say) France, Germany, Holland, America, Canada… you cannot seek asylum as by definition, you were in a safe place to do so.
We could open an asylum processing center on a remote Scottish Island, and in several another countries. Asylum could be applied for there, and any applicant thoroughly documented with biometrics etc so that should they abscond or re-enter, deportation can be instant and without appeal.
With that sort of policy and associated systems in place, we can start to discuss the finer points of making life better for new arrivals. We should include within that a firmly enforced position of expectation of integration, and a stout defence of our human rights. Adaptation will be required by the immigrant, not the host. That means immigrants who commit crimes are deported – and no sob story will be allowed to affect that. It means firm, aggressive if required, insistence that our rights to free speech utterly outweigh your desire not to see something you you consider offensive.
With all this in place, we can start to engage with making the process effective, decisive, attentive, supportive.
I’d add to that only that anyone who arrives in a way that put dependent children at risk be charged with the appropriate crime, and the result of the criminal proceedings be a factor in whether they get to stay or not.
I don’t see that someone who’s prepared to risk their children’s life for a free house and a life on our benefits is any way an immigrant worthy of welcome.
Well said far to much common sense for our politicians and civil servants to take on board.
If a nation does not have the right to police its borders then it will fail. Oh, and will Giles Fraser personally pay for all those ‘refugees’ he wants to welcome or will he expect the rest of us to pay for his moral position?
Does Giles ever consider a bigger picture? How about the shortage of UK housing driving up prices. So younger people will not have children because they lack space. Does Giles say build build build. Then go on a drive about saving the natural environment?
Arguing for open borders, while pretending it is about refugees is underhand deception.
Giles,
You use an emotional language to put forward your case.
In reality, England has a finite ability to take in poor children from nasty countries – let alone single young men of fighting age.
When the capital city of my own country has less than 50% English people, I believe we have allowed too many people in already.
Do the indigenous people of England have no rights?
The answer to your last question,when posed to labour,liberal and some tory political candidates was no.So no votes for them.
What a simply dreadful piece of saccharin drivel! What sanctimonious piety!
Europe is facing an invasion, a massive folk migration*, and we owe it to our children, and grand children to stop it now, and forever.
Did you not witness what happened a few days ago in Ceuta?
As I write, and the azure Channel is bathed in sunlight, Sinbad & Co are mustering on the French beaches preparing for invasion.
I gather you cannot buy a lilo, canoe, dinghy or even water-wings for ‘love nor money’ anywhere in Calais, Boulogne or Dunkirk.
(* a technical term beloved of the woke self-styled intelligentsia)
Haven’t heard or seen that term yet – guess i’m a bit behind, but thanks for the heads-up! ‘Folk migration’ quite verbatim translates to ‘völkerswanderung’, the archæological term for the great migration period during the decline of the Western Roman Empire.
I do find articles like this appalling. The whole premises is an attempt at “shaming” the people into a line of thought because it is “progressive” or “moral”. But their is nothing progressive or moral about the stance taken by the author. Naming checking NGO’s without comment on their role in encouraging migration is like the church without God. The NGO’s operate boats to pick people up meaning the smugglers only have to get the boats to sea. Instead of returning to the place of origin the NGO’s take them to the desired location. This is a massive pull factor for refugees and if the NGO boats returned those they picked up to their point of origin the trade would dry up very quickly.
Then there is the use of a 7 year old girl as the poster child. It’s like the fake stories doing the rounds on Twitter about children being targeted and killed by Israel. Nice story, but utterly devoid of actual reality. The majority are economic migrant men in their 20’s and 30’s. The way this statistic is studiously ignored by those advocating opening our borders tell’s us they know the truth but want to ignore it!
Stop the shaming of the population and start looking at how to stem the flow so a more balanced program can be implemented which fulfills the needs of refugees not economic migrants.
Another re-print of the naive articles constantly doing the rounds.
They never contain suggested limits, funding sources, cultural protections, or the number of individuals the author is prepared to allow to join their own household.
This is a pretty sad portrayal of what is undoubtedly a crisis. However, the article is a bit naive and lacks any balance. The root of the problem is the Arab spring but the solution cannot be a never ending flow of migrants into Europe. More has to be done to tackle the ssues leading people to leave their own countries and the criminals making money from them. Could it be that the well meaning charities working in the med and other places exacerbate the problem by encouraging even more to make this perilous journey?
An even sadder truth is that the better off people get, the more likely they are to want to move to London. In the fifties and sixties only the upper classes did that.
We’ve heard about the “well meaning charities”. In their air-conditioned vehicles, they can offer food for a woman’s children, tarpaulins and a litre of clean water. In many cases, the tariff is well known.
I have said it before and I will say it again. take all the arab christians and bring them to Europe. Give them papers and spread them around Western Europe. I doubt it any of them want to live in Poland.
Keep the muslims out. They are just trouble.
Crikey, Jeremy, we agree on something i.e. the muslims. The problem is that Europe is now home to tens of millions of them, the vast majority of whom are either scrounging off us or plotting to kill us.
There was a report on one Syrian Christian who had been accepted into Poland. He said how wonderful it was to walk the streets of Warsaw in safety.
Why would they not want to?
Poland and Hungary are welcoming persecuted Christians, who are indeed very happy to live in those countries. You know, some of the asylum seekers are actually seeking asylum, and not welfare-state freebies. It is a small number, but we shouldn’t discount those few genuine refugees just because the vast majority of “asylum seekers” are frauds.
You lost me at “humanitarianism trumps politics”. What is it you suppose politics to be if not the art of the possible? Good politics would mean Iranian Christians — and every other kind of Christian — would be welcome in Europe and Iranian Muslims would be happy in Iran.
There are two ways of stopping this. One is to set up a free airline to transport people from poor countries who would sooner live in Europe to the destination of their choice. Good luck getting political backing for that. The other is to not let anyone in ilegally and enforce that rigorously. They did that in Australia and it worked. Of course the left equate turning people away with the war atrocities of the SS. What we have now, and what we will still have after any amount of tinkering is a situation where people from poor countries know if they get here it is highly likely they will be able to stay so they are incentivised to make these journeys and pay people traffickers. If we opened our borders like the far left want or offered amnesties like the stupider centrists want, it would only increase the incentive.
And how do they get the money to pay them back? Not by working as architects.
As always, it takes two to tango. If woke progressives feel a deep urge to take in vast numbers of migrants, they should expect those migrants who do get in, to be forever grateful and to show it each and every day. But do they? Of course not. Hoards of them come in, most with no skills whatsoever to offer, but instead of behaving decently and gratefully they make demands and try to force the host society to bend its knee to accept the dominance of their culture. They bring in barbaric behavior and crime, and anyone who has something to say about it is “racist”. Apparently, woke progressives think that it’s natural to bite the hand that feeds you, and blame themselves when their hands get bitten. Pathetic, even for woke progressives.
This is very sad, but just do the sums. For example the populations of Africa and the Middle East (just to mention two) cannot fit into Europe.
Instead of berating us for not being ‘welcoming enough’, how about examining who and what are driving these desperate and unfortunate people from their homes and countries. Perhaps you could bring the issue up at your next interfaith meeting.
Why do the able-bodied enterprising refugees and economic migrants have a greater moral claim to our resources and hospitality than those who have no choice but to endure the poor conditions in their own country? Why should those young men who have the money and drive to make it to the UK be prioritised over the disabled, elderly, pregnant, sick, and immiserated they leave behind?
Surely, Giles, we have a duty to actively help those who cannot make it here on their own. What about a shuttle service of airliners to bring to the UK the world’s most poverty-stricken people? The Foreign Office could find the world’s poorest countries where such a service could safely operate, then off we go. We could run it until we can no longer afford the aviation fuel. It would mean that the UK would have a population of hundreds of millions crammed into shanty towns, and – of course – the end of anything like our national culture.
But we would all feel better, wouldn’t we? And at least we would be acting consistently.
The world population is a little under 8 billion: 7,800,000,000. The UK has an area of a little under 250,000 square kilometres, including hill and mountain areas, and several thousand miles of increasingly stressed sewers.
Some in the UK take pride in an old tradition of protecting refugees; we single out Karl Marx as an exemplar (and look how that worked out). But Marx came on the limited shipping of that time. Very few refugees could come then to western Europe. That has changed, and when the facts change perhaps we should reconsider our opinions.
Those who come from vicious regimes, Fraser notes, “increasingly [show] signs of deep psychological trauma”. These signs include mass murder and rape, more often in the second-generation immigrants than the first, which is a failure on the part of the host country’s education and support systems, but short of going full-out BLM we must accept that those systems will never be ideal. A proportion of families coming from regimes of failed states will show such signs “of deep psychological trauma” (not significant to Fraser, but significant to people knifed in the street or adolescent girls pulled out of inadequate and soulless local care). Perhaps they will be cured by a cup of tea and a chat with an Anglican clergyman/woman, but how many cups of tea can Fraser provide each year in between his busy life of writing and preaching at us.
Fraser is “not interested in arguing the toss about the rights and wrong … Stuff your politics if you disagree.” Message received and understood.
It’s coming up to the first anniversary of that day when a refugee stabbed three gay men to death 100 yards from the front door of my church. Google Forbury Gardens stabbings. Obviously, as this was the intersection of homophobia and Islamophobia, it’s like the song:
You say it best
When you say nothing at all.
The 2017 Manchester Arena bombings were also refugee connected, though, like another song, we obviously don’t want to look back in anger.
OK – so apparently we’re all supposed to feel really bad now.
No mention of any practical solutions or is that coming in Part Two?
More taxes on other people to pay for Giles’ bleeding heart.
Not a hope in Hades ….
Genuine refugees are often the brightest and best of their home countries. Eventually, those countries usually need rebuilding, and if most or all of the most able people have left for pastures new, who is to do it?
Migration is often presented as a simple issue: if you’re in favour of welcoming the world and his wife, and their offspring, you’re on the side of the angels, but if you’re against, you’re the devil incarnate. It really is not at all that simple.
If we look at the Syrian civil war, for instance, we see a nation sundered, and in part because Western nations encouraged almost anyone, however unsavoury, who would fight against Bashar al-Assad, because he is a monstrous dictator. Firstly, and this is a side issue, in what way has life improved in Syria since large parts of it fell to rebel forces, and most of the nation, whether in government hands or not, appears to have been bombed and shelled to smithereens?
But moving back to the question of refugees, a few years ago the UK government was being widely criticised for not welcoming in large numbers of Syrian refugees. But I read that the UK was funding aid to Syrian refugees in camps just across the border in Jordan, were £1 would go ten times as far as it would in the UK. Which is better, given that money is a finite resource, to help one person, or to help ten? A hundred, or a thousand? One thousand, or ten thousand?
I acknowledge that the Jordanian camps were/are probably not especially pleasant places, especially compared with social housing in the temperate UK, but in that case, those who are forced to live in them will return home at the earliest opportunity, and participate in the rebuilding of their nation, a land which certainly needs them. History shows that once refugees arrive in a comfortable host, they tend to stay, put down roots, and, often, contribute to the prosperity of that state, as well as their own wealth. There is a case for arguing that unfettered immigration is a form of imperialism, and an especially lazy one at that: instead of going to a place, and stripping it of natural resources in the form of raw materials and foodstuffs, we sit here and wait for an even more precious resource, the best of its people.
We also can see, particularly with adherents of one religion more than another, that the adult children of some who likely came here as grateful refugees are not as happy with the attitudes of the UK, but instead of returning to the lands of their parents, or grandparents, they prefer to stay here, where they were born, and try to make this country into one more in tune with their own views.
There is also the fact that some of those who come here as refugees are not, as genuine refugees tend to be, people with families, but single young men of military age, and fighting fit. They have no documentation to prove that they are nationals of the war-torn states they claim as home, and, in some cases, do not even speak the right dialects or languages; equally, they have no documentation to enable officials to prove that they are falsely claiming refugee status. Perhaps the vast majority of these genuinely wish to make a better life in Europe in general, and the UK in particular, but what gives them that right? Contrary to the belief popular in some quarters, this country cannot simply accept all those who wish to come here, so for every arrival who has no right be here, one person with a better claim is turned away.
There is a housing shortage in this country, and there are many reasons for it, but increasing demand by throwing the doors open cannot help matters.
I have not even touched on the phenomenon of the people traffickers, who prey on the susceptibility of vulnerable people; the most vulnerable people, we are often told. I would dispute that. If you have the money to pay the traffickers, you are not as vulnerable as your former neighbour, who is still in the old country, because he lacks the funds to leave.
How many, Giles? The sanctimonious oikophobes never give a limit. Well, half of the world cannot live in less than 7% of it.
So Giles, how many colonists should Europe admit?
Giles is unlikely to answer, so I’ll have a go. I can’t guess at the actual figures, but people will stop wanting to come to Europe when the conditions in Europe (poverty, poor infrastructure, overcrowding, endemic violence) are the same or worse than the countries they seek to leave. We’ve already made big strides towards that point.
I can’t help but think that there are people, perhaps including Giles, who find your last sentence to be a feature rather than a bug.
“They are unable to move forward, unwilling to go back to their home countries and struggling to fit into their host communities.”
Two of these are not the problems of the West, especially the third point. How’s that worked out for the UK, when massive populations of immigrants essentially bring over there to over here? The essential truth of immigration is that it must first and foremost benefit the host country. It is up to the newcomer to adjust to his/her new surroundings, not the other way around.
No, it exposes the profound frivolity of you, your performative wokery, and the Marxist disgrace that is the modern C of E.
And by the way we need to disestablish the monarchy, frankly. You don’t deserve to have the head of state, someone with the gravitas, intellectual heft and moral competence of the Windsors, as the head of your crummy church. Someone like Steve Coogan or Ian Hislop would be more the mark: suitably pious, very comfortable, angry with everyone but themselves, and crushingly lightweight.
Maybe start small by getting the bishops out of the House of Lords …
great to hear that this is all our fault. as usual. and that Giles is a humanitarian and the rest of us are politicians. They have no right to come to our country illegally. 700 dead children is awful, but hardly the “unspeakingly appalling” he describes them as: roughly 99.7% of them make it. no wonder they keep coming. as for the treatment of illegal migrants, it will get worse and worse as europeans get more and more desperate because people like Giles hamper any reasonable efforts to stop this flood. There is, however, a solution. We transfer the wealth of Giles and his ilk direct to the bank accounts of wannabe migrants so that they stay in their own country. then, no more economic reason for coming here. Cue screams of horror from Giles and friends.
What’s so unsafe about France that drives the people to leave. The cynical answer is the non contributory benfit system
I’m reminded of Jean-Jacques Rousseau‘s quote about the philosophers who “will love the Tartars in order to avoid loving their neighbour.”
Perhaps Giles Fraser has forgotten that Merkel unilaterally opened the floodgates to alleged refugees in Germany back in 2015 or thereabouts. Most of us will not forget the images of 1000s of boys and mainly young men walking through Europe to seek asylum in Germany. It has led to a rise in support for authoritarian ultra right wing parties.
Greece cannot be expected to cope with the numbers of incomers, neither can Italy which is another country dealing with an influx of migrants.Other European countries have seen the damage to social cohesion caused by mass migration of people from alien cultures, and have understandably taken a stand against immigration. In this they are only doing what their voters expect from them.
Perhaps Giles would care to explain how to stop people smuggling which is hugely profitable for the criminal gangs without stern and decisive action being taken as a deterrent.
Agree with your points except where you fall into the usual insult (although I’m sure you do not intend it as such) of implying that people who raise legitimate concern about the vast numbers of ‘incomers’ are supporters ‘for authoritarian ultra right wing parties’. Care to revise that assertion?
It’s not intended as an insult nor as a generalisation. Some people have turned to ultra right wing authoritarian parties, but many people – such as me – have not.
The one thing I never understood was the vast numbers of people in the camps in N France attempting to illegally get to the UK when, prior to Brexit, if they’d applied for French citizenship (or citizenship of whichever EU country they’d passed through to get there,) they could have legally come here under freedom of movement and no payments to traffickers to get them across the Channel.
It’s not that easy to acquire French citizenship. It is necessary to speak French, for a start, something many Bangladeshis , Afghans and Chechens might find a bit of a problem.
I lived in France for 15 years. I put in the effort and became fluent in French. Note the use of that word ‘effort’.
Frazer writes movingly and in emotive terms.
But there are three billion desperate, dirt-poor people in Africa and Asia. Six times the population of the EU.
The maths are terrifyingly simple. We cannot accept them. All the emotive words in the world don’t change that simple fact.
I am surprised that woke armies, armed with leaflets and placards, are not standing at the borders, warning desperate migrants about the evils of the West, encouraging them to turn back to societies which are obviously far superior to anything they might find in Sweden or Canada.
‘Stuff your politics if you disagree’ says it all. This writer has absolutely nothing to contribute to a proper debate about the future of this nation. We have been a melting pot for centuries, taking in refugees from Catholic France, Nazi Germany, and racist Uganda, among others. All well and good. The Huguenots, Jews and Kenyan Asians all assimilated. The sheer numbers arriving in the recent past now threaten our ability to cope in a country that is crowded, and where housing, education and health services are under pressure.
Our proper response should be as a contributor to an international effort to solve the problems that cause people to want to get out of their homelands, not to welcome all and sundry here.
The more welcoming the West makes migrants, the sooner the West will fall.
I understand you, you are a honest man, believe in God but,
Iran&Syria&Morocco & others countries used is on kids and children ,weapons against Europe,or Millionaires from China & Russia buy in Europe long parts of lands next to Mediterranean sea& passports from European countries.
And here in British soil rejected European people’s.
Turkish demonic president use the Syrians refugees to extortion Europa,,&now the progresive left protecting a fundamental intolerant Hamas&Hizbollah against us ,jewish people.
I think it is heart breaking hearing about this individual refugee story, you told us Fraser, and I can empathise with that Christian family, running away from persecution and trying to find a better life. But you also have to ask yourself honest questions how host countries will be able to cope with this huge new influx? Will it be 1 million or 10s of millions or more? Will whole Western Democratic and Social Systems collapse under the pressure? How will more or less Christian countries cope with the huge increase of a radicalised Muslim population? I just recently observed in Germany, which increased their Muslim population by millions in the last 30 years, how the anti-Israel demonstrations became vicious. I never thought, I would hear, in a country which killed 6 million Jews, Muslim demonstrators shouting “shitty Jews” in front of German Synagogues.
The refugee/migrant problem is extremely complex and can’t be solved by shaming Western countries becoming more reluctant to take in many more millions of new migrants.
Mr Fraser has written several favourable articles on Israel. Perhaps he could write an article comparing and contrasting the Israel policy towards non Jewish Africans with Western Europes policy. I suspect this would expose rank hypocrisy on his part. I also suspect he will be proud to have generated the comments on this article. I thought pride was a sin for Christians.
It is a shame because many of his articles are interesting and thought provoking.
Britain once did extend a welcome to the kind of family Giles describes, but another correspondent makes clear that the willingness to open the door to such people has been undermined by the sheer numbers of others, young men mostly, who are not escaping persecution but seeking to benefit economically. Of course, the reason it is young men is because they are best equipped to make the journey and most able to work, which in turn holds out the promise that at some point they may be joined by their families. I am not sanguine about the impact that especially those from Muslim countries have arising from their unwillingness to accept the status quo once here, but I do have a sneaking regard for their accepting work which is often treated with sniffy disdain by some among the resident population.
I suppose I should be neither surprised nor disappointed that a clergyman should be so preachy, but Giles has really outdone himself this time.
Even giving him the benefit of every conceivable doubt, and making allowances for his arrogance (“I have a PhD and taught at Oxford”) and his inverse victim complex (“I’m dyslexic, but that makes me special.”) I have to say that not only would I want to avoid any church where he was vicar, but I would not even want to share a railway compartment with him.
The question is not whether we must be liberal do-gooders like this immoral priest. The question is what do we sons and daughters of Europe have to do to secure the existence of our peoples and a white future for our children.
And to the immoral priest, we are peoples of the land, not meaningless cyphers for experimentation by aggressive liberals seeking to exercise their fastidious sensibilities.
We need to protect ourselves from a culture that wishes to destroy us..perfectly natural.
Mark Steyn points out that the same politicians who want immediate action on climate change say there’s nothing that can be done to stop the population shifts that are engulfing the West.
We supposedly can change the clouds in the sky, the currents in the oceans and the temperature of the Earth, but we’re helpless to control the movement of human beings.
This should be read in conjunction with ‘Why does the West hate itself’ in the same issue. There is a lot in Euro-American history to be appalled by, some still emerging like atrocities in colonial Africa, not exclusively committed without some local help. Even with dense databases like Eurostat it is difficult to tease apart numbers of refugees from economic immigrants or ‘guest workers’ who intend to return or whose hosts can oblige to return. It is also difficult to enumerate different cultures that are close to those of host countries, or deeply rooted in dissimilar environments and may not travel as easily as people. One criterion has to be that the effect of immigration is sustainable – it seems to be levelling off in the UK. That does not mean its effect must stabilise. One also has to consider whether migration could radically reverse the nature and course of European culture, however flawed its past, from superstition and autocracy or theocracy towards representative democracy, which much of the world shows does not arise and sustain itself automatically. Europe is still teaching itself lessons from history after the turmoil of the 20th century. Are others doing the same? There are lots of things to hate about ourselves, but let’s come down from our cross and deal with them.
Why not address the poor managment by the home state governments, where from the migrants did emigrate? What is the agenda? This whole ” open borders bull… looks increasimgly as a big con-job. Much like the climate change hoax
I’m basically sceptic about the 200.000 unaccompanied children. I don’t deny that there is a lot of children among the fugitives. But if the 35.000 (about ) mostly Hazara fugitives in Sweden are included is this number. Many of them isn’t children, they are older. And they have close contact with relatives.Their land of origin is mostly Iran ( of course they came earlier from Afghanistan).
Is there a legitimate reason why an Iranian Christian family claiming to have been persecuted in their home nation would not claim asylum in France, or indeed any other safe nation on whose soil they first set foot? And what does it tell us about them that they would risk their lives and break the law to present their claim in the UK specifically? Difficult questions, Giles, but important ones too.
The EU’s behavior is criminal… and it is the member states who outdo each other. However, in this regard the UK is still very much in with the EU.
It’s a shame the article couldn’t find enough space to mention how many we have offered refuge in the UK? If the UK wants to influence policies in the Med, we need to do our fair share.
I am with Giles Fraser on this one. Regardless of how they got here or who they are, they should be treated humanely once here. Instead they are kept in destitution and often treated like criminals. It is the mark of a civilised society not to behave as if we lived in the Middle Ages.
They should be allowed to work while their cases are settled. Many EU countries allow this after a short period of a few months. The great myth that migrants impoverish the existing inhabitants is not supported by long term economic evidence. The experience of EU migration to the UK is that they generated economic growth, not sucked off state benefits.
Barriers will not work. If people are desperate enough, they will find a way round, over, through or under or whatever. They will just be angrier when they get here. It is astonishing that some contributors are suggesting we murder them in their boats.
Ultimately we need to reduce the push factors, and here, we are complicit in the conditions that cause these push factors. We are up to our necks in the Middle East wars and Afghanistan.
The UN reckon the by 2050, there will be between 250 million and a billion people on the move because climate change renders them unable to survive where they live. Much of the Sahel will become uninhabitable, and this region is already falling into anarchy.
Grinding poverty and corruption in poor countries is not a result of the roll of the dice by God. We have supported corrupt dictators for political and commercial reasons throughout the world, for example Mobutu in the Congo.
For years, the institutions like the World Bank and IMF have imposed Structural Adjustment Programmes which force countries to open up to western companies and hinder indigenous industrial development. Tariffs have to be abolished, social security programmes reduced to a minimum and state enterprises privatised. Ghana used to have a thriving tomato and chicken production, but was destroyed by EU dumping of Italian tomatoes and the importation of Brazilian chicken. Underdevelopment is not an accident or a random event.
If each community of 1,000 people in Western Europe ‘adopted’ one refugee family, we could solve this appalling humanitarian problem – and reverse our rapidly declining populations – in a humane and sensible way.
Really?
“The single greatest threat to the Western world is that whites won’t find the moral backbone to keep out the booming billions of rapidly growing Africans. (The 2019 United Nations Population Prospects forecasted that Sub-Saharan Africa will reach 3,775,000,000 people by 2100.)”
And given the record of success of Sub-Saharan Africa in creating prosperous and democratic nations, I think you’d be wise to expect a human tsunami to strike the Mediterranean from the south in the next few decades.
As climate change reduces the carrying capacity of the Earth, we will inevitably become more used to such scenes, and they will even come to seem natural.
This migrant/refugee influx has nothing to do with Climate Change, but more with African and Muslim Dictators either ruining their economy and/or intolerance of religious and Democratic freedom.
African overpopulation, not “climate change”. What do you expect to happen when there’s an average of 5 – 7 offspring per female, and s u b s a h a r a n Africa’s population more than quadrupled in a few decades?
The West is complicit in the problem indeed, by providing all manners of aid (medical advances, sanitation, food etc.) which facilitated a steep decline in infant mortality, without ensuring that a corresponding reduction of birthrates is established to mitigate the effects of low infant mortality.