The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #113211 Message #2413933
Posted By: irishenglish
14-Aug-08 - 03:51 PM
Thread Name: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
WAV, on the one hand you believe,
" And England should continue to accept it's share of genuine asylum seekers, in line with my last post, and some immigration (medical, love/marriage, etc.) but NOT economic/capitalist immigration."
And on the other you believe,
" that genuine asylum seekers should be helped to their NEAREST safe country. And not just "cuturally" but socially as well."
That's a contradiction. So which is it, and what do you mean by the nearest safe country? Haitians should be returned to what, the Dominican Republic? Western Saharans should be returned to...Spa...I mean Moro...oh no, Mauritania, yes thats it. So if I was to venture a guess, I would say you are saying that asylum seekers who have been persecuted for political, religous, or sexual grounds, rather than economic grounds are acceptable. Except when, for some reason (and here's the contradiction) they are not, in which case they should be helped to their nearest safe country, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. Keep in mind, I'm only discussing your notions of genuine asylum seekers here, not immigration. You made the distinction, so keep it confined to that. Please, tell me on what possible basis and precedent do you have for thinking the "nearest safe country" is a viable option? Give me an example. It does not seem grounded in any sense of reality. Its a nice notion perhaps, but its not at all likely. What if what you propose as the "nearest safe country" doesn't want asylum seekers. What if the UN deemed that the UK would be the nearest safe country for all the South Ossetians and Georgians left homeless, right now as we speak? What if unspeakable human rights violations were happening in a Commonwealth nation. Wouldn't that make Britain the de facto nearest safe nation?
Also regarding what you said about immigration, what you label economic/capitalist immigration. I'll not even discuss that one, but I find your use of economic/capitalist interesting. Call me crazy, but I've never heard of an immigrant from lets say, Guatemala, consider their act of immigration capitalist. For economic reasons, of course, but capitalist? I can't make a living here in Guatemala, so I'm going to the US for capitalist reasons. Doesn't scan.