Talk of ‘legal migration’ is a fig leaf to hide our shame

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A group of people thought to be migrants are brought into Dover by the RNLI following a small boat incident in the Channel on Thursday (PA)

Even before the body count was confirmed in the latest Channel migrant tragedy, politicians, including our vile home secretary, and pundits were singing the same old tune about “legal routes” and the evil of people traffickers. Well, yes we know all that.

What we need to face up to is that there is, in reality, no such thing as a legal safe route in many circumstances. Our laws and systems are out of date – our compassion is worn thin by the friction of jingoism.

Take for example the fact that there are around a billion climate refugees around the globe. Rules for potential refugees originally established in the 1950s have never been updated to include them – although that position is beginning to shift. I could go on about the way the UK and US have destabilised and exploited many of the countries these folk flee – but you’d need to have been living under a rock not to know that.

Talk of “legal migration” is a fig leaf to hide our shame.

You don’t fail to rescue a family from a burning building because you didn’t light the match.

Amanda Baker

Edinburgh

The tragedy of lives lost in the Channel has resulted in the government once again focusing on deterrents. How can it be made more difficult for desperate people to get into the UK? A wholly immoral stance.

The real question should be, what is creating the situation that makes people take such desperate measures in the first place?

The role of the UK as a seller of weapons into conflict zones is possibly one cause, as is the failure to take adequate measures against climate change. War and climate devastation both create desperate situations, so people have to flee.

Nor has the decision of the UK government to cut foreign aid helped at this vital time.

Failure to deal with the causes driving asylum seekers to these shores will do nothing to stem the flow. The measures being taken amount to nothing more than sticking plasters on an increasingly gaping wound.

Paul Donovan

Wanstead, London

It is no use the UK and French governments blaming the people smugglers for the drownings of asylum seekers in the Channel. It is the UK government which is to blame for not allowing legal ways for them to claim asylum. Shame on Priti Patel!

Peter Tutt

Oxford

The tragedy in the Channel must be seen as an opportunity for all parties, governments, charities, migrants, and the public to honestly look at their views, opinions and positions to see if these are valid and stand close scrutiny.

For this to be effective we have to accept that this is an international crisis spanning all of Europe, not just France and the UK. Indeed, it affects most continents and can only be resolved by working together.

Forget the past and the empty idea of “fortress Britain”. We are always stronger together. It’s why in times of war we look for allies. Why turn our backs on what is blatantly obvious just for short-term political point scoring?

John Simpson

Ross on Wye

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Let us be in no doubt as to who is responsible for the loss of a further 27 lives in the Channel.

What drives people to risk their lives in the English Channel, as in the Mediterranean, is the realistic hope that they will be helped to the other side and be able to stay, earning what seems like a fabulous income. They are given this hope by those who sustain them with aid in their embarkation camps, monitor their passage so they enjoy the benefit of archaic maritime laws, obstruct and sabotage the deportation process at every turn and give them illegal employment.

These are the people upon whom opprobrium should be heaped. Unfortunately, they are served by a preponderance of people like themselves who would rather emote than think. Dramatic deaths, particularly those of women and children, are exactly what their cause thrives upon, even though it has engineered them.

John Riseley

Harrogate, north Yorkshire