Channel crossing policies are not working - Yorkshire Post Letters

IT is perfectly clear from our television and newspaper pictures we see nearly everyday that the current methods of control of migrants crossing the English Channel are not working (Andrew Vine, The Yorkshire Post, November 23).

This is, of course, both dangerous to those making the crossing, and also does not discriminate between the genuine migrants seeking asylum and those just wanting to enter the UK for economic purposes.

Currently co-operation between the French authorities and UK Border Control boats lacks any form of joint effort with the dinghy boats keep arriving.

The use of these outboard craft may possibly provide a solution to improving control by agreeing the tighter regulation with the owning, purchasing, importing of the outboard engines used to power the boats.

Why not something similar to gun control with a licence needed to acquire an engine or permission from the gendarmerie in France to use and own such an engine, together with better control over acquiring such an engine with ID and address details being needed?

Every trip across the Channel uses an engine, and by cutting off supply, there would be no crossings. The people smugglers operation would cease before they could start and then we could see an end to this trade.

It only takes a willingness to do this, plus assistance from the French and Belgians authorities, to implement this method of greater control to the benefit of all concerned.

From: Alan Tidswell, Dacre, Nr Harrogate.

THE migrant situation in the English Channel is getting worse by the week, and despite the UK paying the French to increase security on the French side, the authorities say they still lack the resources to control the people smuggling gangs who operate there.

Our own Border Force, however seems to have no difficulty in ‘rescuing’ hundreds of migrants each day mid Channel and escorting them safely to their final destination, thereby completing the final leg of the people smugglers’ contract.

If the French are genuinely doing all they can with their limited resources, then the solution would appear to be to provide more practical assistance. A bilateral agreement between the two countries would allow our border protection force to return all illegal migrants, picked up mid Channel, to their port of embarkation. This is the norm all over the world for people arriving without visas.

It is in everyone’s best interest that a solution be found before winter sea conditions in the Channel become more challenging. We must break the people smugglers’ business model where door-to-door smuggling services are openly advertised in Turkey with British Border force providing a water taxi service for the final leg of the journey.

It cannot be in France’s best interest to act as a mass staging post for thousands of people spending months in squalid conditions. France must know that a break in the business model of the people smugglers’ is the only solution unless of course France wants to use the issue as leverage for future disputes between our two countries.

From: Janet Berry, Hambleton.

WE are never told where all the asylum seekers arriving in Kent are being taken. Let us be honest. England is full. Far too many people living here and too many cars on the road. Every journey is a nightmare.

I was horrified to here that someone who had been staying at Selby Fork Motel was told he could no longer stay there as it was full of Afghan people.

Hardly fair is it? Our streets are full of homeless people yet more people are arriving with huge families.

We are a small island and cannot look after everyone. I am of the opinion that charity begins at home and we are not in a position to house and look after these thousands of people who are illegally coming here.