Helpless refugees fleeing persecution?

IN her letter (November 4), Catherine Pickles states that refugees have the right to choose which country they wish to live in. That may be so, but any country also has the right to choose who and how many it will accept.

However, she is correct in describing the situation as ‘broken’– it was broken from the moment the Blair Government (of which current Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was a member) decided to ‘open the doors to migration’ and it has gone downhill ever since.

Ms Pickles also objects to the word ‘invasion’ used by Suella Braverman... this word can be interpreted in several ways, from invasion by force, invasion of privacy or an invasion of insects; two more examples are quoted here, the first taken from the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary: ‘The fact of a large number of people or things arriving somewhere, especially people or things that are disturbing or unpleasant’ and from the Britannica dictionary: ‘The act of entering a place in large numbers, especially in a way that is harmful or unwanted’.

And before those who like to trash the British Empire throw their toys out of their prams, yes, it would include those as invasions as well!

In 1066, William the Conqueror invaded with 7,000 men; in 1485, Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) with 5,000 men (admittedly all in one go); this year alone to date we have had an invasion in the region of 40,000, apparently mostly made up of young

men, arriving unannounced in small rubber boats.

All have to be processed, accommodated, fed, clothed, etc, and put somewhere in the UK at a cost estimated by the Home Office at £4.7 million for 37,000 migrants per day (not the seven million a day quoted in many papers).

If we times that by 365 – that’s £1 billion, 715 million, 500 thousand a year, or more if the figure is really around 40,000 (with a cheap oneway ticket to Rwanda costing around £600, that’s a lot of migrants who could be sent there for that sort of money!).

Yet those advocating a ‘let them all in’ policy seem to conveniently forget that here in the UK we have homeless people of our own, others having to rely on food banks and young people unable to even get on the housing ladder, so try asking them what they think when they see coach loads of perfectly fit and healthy young men being put on a coach to a four-star hotel at that sort of cost to the country, when they are struggling to get by.

Of course, there are some that are genuine refugees seeking shelter from war and of course they should be welcomed and treated with compassion, but it would appear the majority are just ‘economic migrants’ who have crossed several perfectly safe countries in Europe in which they could have stayed because of the lure of the benefits available in the UK.

The scenarios of helpless refugees fleeing persecution as described by Catherine Pickles just does not ring true.

Paul Mercer Tavistock, Devon