Read Sunday’s NYT Magazine cover story on the Haitians who tried to come to the U.S. on a leaky boat. A reporter and photographer, both clearly insane, went along with them. Amazing.
My own relatives came to the US from leaving Rotterdam (lot ehse many generations ago). I guess that’s appropos of nothing, except when I heard Rotterdam mentioned as part of the story it reminded me to watch my ass about “immigrant” attitudes.
The two survivors from the lorry are now under police guard, as the authorities fear that whoever organised the plan will seek to “silence” them.
First of all, the fact that it got so hot over the weekend is a fucking miracle. I’m quite sure that there was no intent to kill them or anything. If you’re planning to kill people coming to England, hoping that they boil to death is not a method you’d pick.
Second, they were illegal immigrants. This country is already being run into the ground through fraud and mismanagement by the government. I don’t care to make that situation any worse.
It’s heartbreaking that there are people in this world who are so wicked to take advantage of people’s misery like this. This isn’t about immigration, this is about cruelty to human beings from other human beings.
I don’t know about your country, PeterB, but I know that my country has been enriched by our immigrants, both legal and illegal.
Purplebear and Vestal Blue, well said. I remember visiting East Berlin as a teen and seeing all the white crosses along the Wall memorializing those that were killed in the attempt to be free. We’re all damn lucky and should never forget.
Well, no. If you’d read the article (or any other articles), it’s said that the presumed cause of death is asphyxiation, not heat. Sixty people, fifty-six men and four women, were packed in among tomato crates in an air-tight refrigeration compartment.
Not that I like to make assumptions, but if it were that easy for them to immigrate legally, you’d think they’d have chosen that instead of supposedly paying smugglers up to $60,000 a person to ship them into the UK over a grueling trip of four months.
I’ve had experiences with relatives in Asia waiting thirteen to sixteen years for visas just to visit. And if ruadh is to be believed, UK immigration laws aren’t any more lax than US laws. Given this and the fact that the men and women were presumably fleeing from China, it’s not hard to believe that these were desperate or at the very least really hopeful measures.
Obviously, illegal immigration is a problem, but as one of the Home Office Officials said, “We will always look at cases where compelling compassionate circumstances are to be found.”
Now you can all flame me for knowing nothing of what I speak.
Tiny, no one would ever flame our sweet, tender, little, itsy-bitsy, tiny cow… 
Proles Unite!
Yeah, you’re right, PeterB. They were illegal, so why should we care? Illegal is almost subhuman, after all. In fact, wouldn’t you agree, PeterB, that they’re probably better off dead?
Ya know, for not wanting to sound like a bastard, you sure do…
Ningún ser humano es ilegal.
Anyway, “my country right or wrong” is like “my mother, drunk or sober”.
Of course there was no intent to kill them. That would, like, suck, you know, in the brochures. Some nasty smallprint that would be: “Over 20,000 customers served!! [sub]Of which 300 actually lived to tell about it, but we digress.[/sub]”.
What is your point? If I get into my car staggering drunk, I do not intend to kill 25 nuns on bicycles either, but what if I do? Is it OK because I didn’t MEAN for it to happen?
My righthonourable Tory friend is more than free to vote for the Thatcher Army the next time around. But please try to keep legal and humane issues separated. We all do so here. You might as well try to blend in :rolleyes:
In other words, perhaps better understandable: we KNOW they were illegal. We were discussing the human tragedy that resulted because of the greedy need of a bunch of Dutch scumbags to make an easy buck over the lives of others.
This is ina way, a parallel to what is happening on the NW coast of Australia. We are in the middle of a flood of illegal immigrants, refugees, asyluim seekers, call them what you will…, that are mainly originating from middle east countries like Iraq and Iran.
This has led to a massive detainment of people unlike anything else in recent years, save for the flood of “boat people” who fled Vietnam after the war.
There is divided opinion amongst the general public here as to what should be done about them, and it would appear that compassion is in short supply. There are many people in my country who want to bury their head in the sand and forget about those who may possibly be fleeing persecution in their own part of the world. All these bigots see is television images of freeloaders trying to bypass the system. Given that our immigration program would never accept anyone from the coutnries mentioned above, what chance does a genuine refugee have?
Thankfully we haven’t had a tragedy like the one in Dover (yet), but we do have the same sort of mongrels profiting from human misery by charging a king’s ransom for a dodgy passage across the Indian Ocean on a deathtrap ship that’s likely to sink well before land is reached.
Unfortunately, only a couple of these lowlifes have been caught so far, and have yet to be sentenced. We can only hope that the Dover incident may spur some serious action from the powers that be.
Update: the truck driver had been charged with manslaughter. Fifty-eight times.
Excellent! Now let’s bring down the whole chain of bloodsuckers…
ruadh is right about UK immigration laws–they’re pretty harsh. The term “economic migrant” has virtually a term of abuse in British political discourse at the moment (as in “They’re not genuine asylum seekers, they’re economic migrants”).
Full details are at the Home Office’s Immigartion and Nationality Directorate website.
If anything, our system is more rigorous than the US’s. Being born here doesn’t give you automatic right of residence and we don’t have the green card lottery.
Personally, I would rather live in the country that people flee to than the country they flee from. If taking a certain number of immigrants and supporting them till they find their feet is the price of that, then fair enough.
If you want to work in this country, and have means by which to support yourself, it’s not hard to immigrate, in my experience.
If they are seeking asylum, then you can come to the UK – not in the back of a truck or anything, just on a boat or a plane, like normal people – and when you enter the port, you can apply for asylum right there and then.
Plenty of people manage to do it the proper way, without having to sit in the back of a tomato lorry.
And it costs them a damn sight less than $60,000.
Sure, their application might be refused, and they might be deported.
Peter, Peter, Peter…
It looks like you´ve led a very sheltered life so far. I´m glad for you. But let me explain a few things.
Mainly: Getting from China to the UK is something else than taking the central line to Bond Street, dear Peter. China will not allow its citizens to leave the country just like that. They need a specific reason, and even THEN a lot of people are stopped at the border.
This might explain all the castaways at container ships and in the back of tomato lorries. Any more questions?
Well your experience can’t be very extensive, then. If you are an EEA national you have an absolute right to live and work here (free movement of goods and people). If you are not, it’s damn hard to get into the country. If you follow the link I’ve posted above, you can read the Home Office’s immigration rules.
As Coldfire pointed out, the Chinese government doesn’t let its citizens leave.
Further to that, the airlines are required under UK (and US, for that matter) law to check passengers’ immigration documentation before allowing them on the plane. And most asylum applicants won’t have the proper documentation to enter the UK because most asylum applicants are visa nationals (meaning they need visas, not just passports, to enter), and there are pretty stringent requirements for them to be issued tourist visas - precisely to avoid the kind of scenario PeterB refers to. It simply isn’t possible, in most cases, for them to enter the country “like normal people” and then apply for asylum.
And besides, you have to have the “means to support yourself”. Most of these people either come from rural backgrounds or are the urban poor, and have no skills at all.
Only in America could a simple peanut farmer become President (but then, he was born here).
An update. 
Perry Wacker has been convicted of all 58 counts of manslaughter and has been sentenced to 14 years in jail.
Also going to jail is Chinese translator Ying Guo, 29, of South Woodford, Essex, convicted of conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants into Britain. She’s getting six years.
And there’s still more to come.
Geez.