Re: Stopping the boats

Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 5 Jun 2024 21:23:46 +0100
> Citizen Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > Yeah I get that, but the traffickers wouldn't have a business if the
> > migrants were returned as soon as they arrived. No one is going to pay
> > thousands of whatever currency it is they pay to end up back where they
> > started. The French is seems would rather be rid of them than care if any
> > drowned on the dangerous crossing.
> 
> 	My problem with this is that it's punishing the victims while the
> criminals continue to rake in the money. None of the victims know what's
> going to happen to them or what has happened to their predecessors,
> whether they drowned or wound up in brothel or sweatshop.

AIUI they get their information through social media. There they learn that 
most *channel-crossers-in-inflatable-dinghies* arrive safely. They also learn 
that a few of them drown. Weighing the odds it seems to them to be a chance 
worth taking. If they knew there was no chance of them staying because they'd 
be returned to the French coast then none of them would drown. 

> 	Somebody is buying those boats but nobody seems to care enough to
> find out who and track the perpetrators down.

That'd be the French not tracking the perpetrators down.

> It seems they'd rather make
> desperate and miserable people more desperate and miserable. Stop saying
> "migrants" and say people - visualise your mother as one of them, you might
> have more trouble being heartless about it.

We're all people and defined by where we live, what we do, etc. My mother was a 
migrant as were my wife's grandparents, and when you go back far enough we are 
all migrants from Africa.  I think giving desperate people hope so they attempt 
a very dangerous crossing is far more heartless than just returning them and 
showing all that are contemplating this that there is no point in it at all.