“Refugees are welcome here” is a well-meaning but simplistic slogan which often means “refugees are welcome where you are, but not where we are”.
It sounds warm and cosy but is often posturing by people long on ideals but short on practical solutions to a complex problem, and who won’t be affected by any of the issues which a rapid influx of incomers to a community can bring.
And because solving the problem is very difficult, any discussion of it which doesn’t fit the narrative of those blithely espousing it is met with accusations of racism and selfishness.
In a recent video of an asylum supporters’ march, some of those protesting the treatment of refugees were asked to sign up to take refugees into their own home.
Their reactions ranged from wide-eyed panic to some quick thinking answers, the favourite being: “I would but I only rent and I’m not allowed lodgers.”
I sceptically wondered if such a response was followed by a “phew that was close” type exhalation once the camera and interviewer had turned to others.
Addressing practicalities
It’s easy to be glib about taking refugees in and housing them, but much harder to actually do it given current countrywide accommodation constraints.
Poland is looking at having a referendum on the numbers of refugees imposed on member states by the EU and the question posed will be: Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa?
It’s a very leading question but reflects the concerns of many in the UK too.
The issue shouldn’t be one of left or right political views but of addressing the practicalities involved.
The furore surrounding the Bibby Stockholm barge for housing asylum seekers is a case in point.
Would the complainers rather have refugees housed in tents while better facilities were found?
The current situation reminds me of the tourist in Ireland asking how to get to Dublin, only to be told well I wouldn’t start from here.
‘No realistic solutions’
The barge isn’t ideal accommodation longish term for anyone but we’re not in ideal territory with housing shortages in the UK, the result of years of poor government policy.
The Legionella issue that resulted in the first refugees leaving the barge was avoidable but hardly unique; Police Scotland had to close their Tulliallan HQ last December and send cadets home after a similar issue.
Many protesting the accommodation have no realistic solutions to meet the immediate problem because many of them bluntly think the UK should accept all refugees who wish to come.
That may be a very humanitarian view but it’s also a very naïve and unworkable one, and even mild-mannered folk are baulking at the cost of hotel accommodation for growing numbers of those seeking sanctuary.
We have obligations under international treaties and are duty bound to honour those but there’s no point pretending many folk aren’t angry at what they regard as special treatment for some asylum seekers while witnessing housing shortages for local people.
The EU and UK are attractive locations for those fleeing war-torn countries but also desirable for some who don’t come from conflict environments and want to come for financial reasons.
To deny that some arriving here are economic migrants, alongside those genuinely seeking shelter from the various troubles raging in their homelands, is simplistic.
The refugee crisis facing the UK and Europe must be tackled with humanity but it also requires realism.
We can help with some of the world’s refugee problems as is our legal responsibility but we can’t fix them all.
‘Goodwill and money wasted’
Money doesn’t grow on trees except the ones in the Scottish Government garden.
At Holyrood the SNP-Green partnership has squandered millions.
The latest figures show the failed Scottish census conducted out of sync with the UK one cost £140 million.
It is just one more example of chucking money down the drain and has dashed the hopes many of us once harboured that we could be better and different from the shysters at Westminster.
Instead we’ve simply proven to be equally useless and incompetent but on a smaller scale.
It’s almost like a re-run of the disastrous Darien scheme on home soil.
The incompetence of the SNP and Greens, signatories to the Bute House agreement, testifies to a posse of politicians without genuine business or life experience, cosseted from the real world by big salaries and expenses.
The Greens in particular have been heinously ham-fisted and guileless in their attempts to help govern.
Like student politicians playing with other folks hard earned cash, they’ve wasted money and any goodwill folk had towards them.
Their disastrous junior partnership role has revealed them to be without a modicum of capability and I suspect has also seriously wounded the embattled SNP.
Conversation