[Osem]

It's odd isn't it. If these people turned up at a land border the authorities would do all they can to stop them going any further no matter how desperate they were.

Get on a boat, however, and the authorities are effectively forced to act to help them and the more help is offered, the more people are tempted to come. It reminds me of those scenes we've all see where food aid is delivered to the starving only to result in chaos - a mass of desperate people fighting to get it, the strongest getting more than their fare share and the weak being trampled. Help needs to be delivered properly and if it isn't it can do more harm than good I believe. What's required is a new approach to this problem before we get to the point where we're actively encouraging huge numbers of people to leave their homelands and head west safe in the knowledge that they'll be taken in.

As it stands, we have no idea who these people are, where they really come from, what they believe, what they've been exposed to and what harm it's done them. There's no way of proving their claims to be anything other than opportunist economic migrants or people fleeing persecution, and insufficient resources to even try. Whilst huge efforts are now being made trying to prevent Muslim extremists, for example, returning from wars overseas, it's highly likely that we're going to find more and more migrants turning up in the UK, via places like Italy, with no idea where their loyalties lie and what risk they may pose.

I have no idea how it's going to be done but unless we do something to stop the river becoming a flood, we're going to have to accept the significant risks to our way of life it will represent.