What is happening at the borders?

A new website has been set up to help co-ordinate Scotland's response to the refugee crisis. (sic)

ScotlandWelcomesRefugees invites people to donate "time, skills, goods, accommodation or other practical help to refugees arriving in Scotland".  As vacuous statements go, the web site name rates pretty highly.  Perhaps that can be expected of the Scottish Government as it seeks to divert peoples attention from its own failings on the NHS, education and policing.  But I really would not have expected it from the Scottish Refugee Council.

I have a friend who lived and worked in Hungary for many years.  They still have friends there.  And the story coming out from them is not the story we are being told here.  Yes, there may be refugees amongst the crowd, but the vast majority are not.  They are economic migrants.  They want to come to the West for a better life.  Understandable.  Who can blame them.  But if you want to go to Australia for a better life you better get ready to meet their entrance criteria.  So why have we abandoned all such criteria in this desire to welcome anyone who seeks to cross a border not as a refugee but as someone who wants to live here for a better life?

Is it not right that Hungary should treat them as economic migrants until they can prove otherwise?  The UN are the experts in this area.  Can’t we rely on them to tell us who is and who is not a refugee?  

Which is exactly the approach the Conservative government are taking in the crisis.  And that is why the UK will be taking real refugees from UN camps. 

A BBC reporter today labelled the Hungarian government as hard line.  Sounds like they took sides in the conversation to me. That pejorative term simply showed the narrative in western Europe is so out of touch with what is happening at the frontiers.  The Hungarians know who they are dealing with.  We, and the BBC reporter, clearly do not.

I do find it rather strange that on one hand when we want to do certain things people rightly say it must be taken before the UN.  But on this occasion the UN is being side-lined for political expediency by some people.

Oh yes, I know people will accuse me of being heartless.  But the real heartless ones are those people who are seeking to label themselves refugees when they are nothing of the sort.

I want to welcome genuine refugees.