Wednesday 2 November 2022

Passports & Refugees

Those who complain incessantly about refugees hitting our shores maintain that they throw away their passports, without a shred of evidence as to why they have no ID.


  1. 3m people in the UK have no photo ID whatsoever. That is causing them concern if voter ID is brought in, as the cost to them would be prohibitive. 
  2. Most of the people arriving on our shores in small boats will never have needed a passport before in their lives and I would suggest that the percentage having no passport in the countries the refugees some from is far, far higher than in the UK, where foreign holidays are much more prevalent.
  3. A passport is worth its weight in gold on the black market. That's why passports are stolen in the UK and why their owners guard them closely. I wouldn't put it past people smugglers harvesting the passports of the refugees they marshal as a condition of carriage. 
It doesn't help the UK that, since Brexit, we can no longer send migrants back to |Europe under the Dublin Agreement. A bit of an own goal, which will contribute to rising numbers, which are still the lowest per 10,000 population in Europe.


It's being touted that the numbers coming into the UK are unprecedented, but that's not true - far more asylum seekers entered the UK in various waves nearly 20 years ago, peaking at over 80,000 in 2007.

As an aside, if you were the owner of a pub which has had to close occasionally through not having enough staff (and many are closing two to three days a week, especially in the countryside, from the double whammy of staff and electricity), the temptation to employ truly illegal immigrants (those who don't claim asylum) must be very strong, just to keep your business open and earning you some money. Payment in cash would be the mechanism, no questions asked.


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