I was puzzled as to why Patrick Kingsley’s compassionate article exploring the reasons thousands of refugees are fleeing Eritrea for Europe (Report, 1 August) chose to argue that the country is not at war. Of course it is. There is a big difference between a failed and frozen peace process and the resolution of an armed conflict. The longstanding border conflict with Ethiopia cannot justify the well-documented human rights abuses committed by President Isaias Afwerki’s government, but it is more of a driving cause of this crisis than holes in a British fence.
The two states are locked in a costly border war, and their citizens are suffering the consequences. Powerful governments such as the US and the UK appear to have given up on finding a negotiated solution. Even the UN security council seems unable to uphold its own decisions on the boundary dispute calling for Ethiopian withdrawal.
We neglect the agendas of conflict resolution and human rights at our peril. The UK, EU and the UN should renew their full spectrum of diplomatic efforts to help Ethiopia and Eritrea resolve their border war. It remains the engine room of so much human suffering and arrested development.
The resolution of these multiple problems cannot be found in policies of coercion and isolation alone. To help prevent the deaths of future asylum seekers, we need to commit to the long-term, multilateral and difficult paths of engagement and dialogue.
Andy Carl
Executive director, Conciliation Resources
• The Guardian is spot on in focusing on the humanity of desperate people trying to flee to the UK to make workable lives for themselves in safety. These are not migrants in search of a better financial set-up, but asylum seekers who have fled from unwelcoming country to unwelcoming country, from dire situations in countries of origin such as Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan and Syria. It is to our lasting shame that the UK government joins the rhetoric of a beleaguered host trying to ward off greedy parasites. It is our own humanity that I find hard to see in this.
Sushila Dhall
Oxford
• As a retired “small” businessman, I am a buy-to-let landlord because of the difficulty of getting a decent pension. As such, I maintain the properties, carry out my statutory obligations and try to ensure my tenants are happy in their homes. In other words, I do my job and expect the immigration authorities to do theirs, which includes assuring me that anyone applying to live in one of my flats is in the UK legally (Report, 4 August). It is not my job to be an unpaid Stasi-type snoop, for which, in any case, I am unequipped, both physically and morally.
Ken Baldry
London
• Criminalising landlords who let their homes to migrants who are here illegally is guaranteed to increase racist discrimination in our private rental market.
There is already widespread discrimination against people who use housing benefit to pay at least part of their rent, and a BBC investigation in 2013 found letting agents discriminating in favour of white tenants. In high-demand areas, it’s tempting for a casual buy-to-let landlord to ask their agent to just take well-paid professionals. It’s a small leap to avoiding the risk of a criminal offence by suggesting their agent avoids anyone with a foreign accent.
Ethnic minority residents already face discrimination and poor housing conditions. Asking landlords to become border guards will only make this worse.
Tom Chance
Green Party housing spokesperson
• Matthew d’Ancona (Opinion, 3 August) is correct that those on the right who long for Britain to leave the EU will attempt to use the present situation in Calais and the “migration crisis” to boost their campaign. But the situation should give pause to those on the left who, in the light of the EU’s treatment of Greece, have renewed their calls for Brexit. It is obvious that the only possibility of resolving the migration crisis in a fair, humane and rational manner will involve more European cooperation and integration.
Migrants should be allocated to EU member states on the basis of a country’s wealth, size and number of those already settled of the same heritage. This would involve resettlement being arranged immediately after the application is made, to ensure a family or individual isn’t wrenched away from somewhere they’ve come to regard as home. It would almost certainly have to happen before an application is approved or rejected, with all the difficulties that entails for cross-border information sharing and language barriers. It would also mean countries that have previously experienced low levels of immigration having to accept more. As has been shown by both the deal forced on the Greeks and the unsuccessful attempt to reach a similar agreement earlier this year, such solidarity is not always forthcoming: more EU integration is the only possible way forward.
The main reason the British government would oppose any such arrangement is that it would mean taking in more asylum seekers. For all the cost to the economy of Operation Stack and the chaos on the M20 and the tunnel, the Tories put cutting immigration figures and being seen to oppose European integration ahead of seeking a rational and humane solution. The anti-EU left need to take note.
Jim Denham
Birmingham
• Your correspondent (Letters, 1 August) asserts that 99% of asylum applicants are economic migrants, citing anecdotal evidence of some Kurds he knows who worked in Greece before claiming political asylum in the UK. House of Commons library figures for 2013 show about 40% of applications granted, either initially or after appeal. In other words, 60% rejected. That doesn’t seem much like some soft-touch system.
Peter Walford
London
• Perhaps David Cameron could abolish English as the national language, to discourage migrants (Evictions with no court order: hard line after Calais crisis, 3 August).
Annabel Hemstedt
Brighton
