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We all acknowledge that war is hell and the two world wars extended their strife to parts of Africa and the Middle East. Refugees did head this way and that but there was no mass migration on this scale.
Okay, they would have had to trek through axis territory, where they'd likely have got short shfift but, aside from allegiances of the time, why not, back then? What is so different now?
It must be that living standards were so similar, 70 years ago that they decided to stay where the weather was warm, the winter fuel bill was negligible and bombs rarely fell from the skies. The weather is the same (or, perhaps uncomfortably hotter in summer, of late?) but the other two sides to the equation have changed, providing a strong draw factor.
Sealing the land border only reroutes some of the flow elsewhere. Sea is not the barrier it once was and modern sensibilities do not permit using gunboats against unarmed civilian vessels.
I have used the phrase "unarmed invasion", in recent weeks. I expected to be given a pounding for doing so but, this being AB, no-one batted an eyelid. Not even the ones so often derided as being "politically correct".
Anyway, my argument is that the UN needs to re-examine the parameters of what constitutes one country damaging another, to include economic damage by population pressure. No weapons but still crossing borders and using up the resources, such as education services, with which we achieve social advancement, above that of a third world (sorry for that term) country.
A UK resident who is not willing to cut family ties, as migrants are more than willing to, move out of the sticks to London, or other conurbation and take one of those better-paying jobs is destined to have a more lowly lifestyle than the educated children of a migrant who got themselves housed conveniently within commuting reach of such a city.
If migrants were housed in an area with only farming, tourism or retail as employment sectors, they'd hate it (****ty wages). It would be like being back on the farm, back home.
I've grossly over-simplified the situation but I have to ask myself why I don't cross the UK, in search of a better job. My parents are elderly but it's only seven hours, by train, if they fall ill, suddenly.