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The UK has a responsibility to welcome and protect refugees and migrants – not help drive them to take risks

Editorial: Now is the time for progressive and cooperative action to bring back order and decency into Britain’s immigration policy

Sunday 03 November 2019 19:37 GMT
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Container deaths court hearing- Lorry driver part of 'global ring'

Nothing can ever wipe clean the slate after a human tragedy on the scale of the loss of life of the 39 migrants who died in a lorry in Essex. But one thing we can do, indeed must do, is to seek to learn from it. It is our duty to them, and it is our duty to humankind.

There is an immediate response, which is to blame the people who “organise” the human traffic. That is understandable and, in its own terms, correct. That people should seek to profit from the misery of others in this way is utterly abhorrent. The law must carry through its course. But this is the most partial of reactions, for we are not just dealing with 39 avoidable deaths.

We are dealing with thousands more. As we report today, the UN Refugee Agency estimates that at least 18,900 men, women and children have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea since January 2014. The Foreign Affairs Committee, responding to this catastrophe, makes the central point that by closing borders the effect is to drive migrants to take more dangerous routes. The beneficiaries are the criminal groups that run these networks. We should accept that we are part of the problem.

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