Summary
Vietnamese migrants accounted for the largest group crossing the English Channel in small boats in early 2024, despite Vietnam’s economic growth.
Many are escaping “relative deprivation,” where inequality and limited opportunities prevent upward mobility.
People-smuggling syndicates charge up to £35,000 for risky journeys, luring migrants with promises of success abroad. Remittances from migrants fuel aspirations as returnees flaunt wealth, overshadowing the risks involved.
Efforts by the UK and Vietnam to deter illegal migration have had little impact, as cultural pressures to support families and a lack of appealing local opportunities drive demand.
Even tragedies like the 2019 Essex deaths, where 39 Vietnamese migrants suffocated in a lorry, are seen as rare misfortunes rather than deterrents.
“For a majority of workers with limited skills, there is a glass ceiling. Even if you work 14 hours a day you cannot save enough to build a house or start a family.”
Replace the 14 hours with 8-10 and you’re no better in Europe, the US, or the UK. I can definitely understand that the working conditions there are much worse than here, so fleeing for a better life is only normal.
“In Vietnam, people believe they have to work hard, to do everything for their families. That is like a shackle which they cannot easily escape. But with enough good information put out over the years, they might start to change this attitude.”
But the campaigns are up against a powerful narrative. Those who go overseas and fail – and many do – are often ashamed, and keep quiet about what went wrong. Those who succeed come back to places like Nghe An and flaunt their new-found wealth.
Survivorship bias.
If the UK (or any country for that matter) want to have less immigrants (or have more skilled immigrants), they have to make the home countries of immigrants attractive enough to stay there. Simply flying the back or “getting rid” of them by signing a contract with a third country to deport people to is not going to work.
[Preferred refugee destinations] have to make the home countries of immigrants attractive enough to stay there
Most governments take a very dim view of other governments interfering in their region’s affairs, and further, the aforementioned destinations generally used to be colonial powers and don’t have a good reputation in that regard to begin with.
Sending boatloads of cash to the migrant source won’t fix the problems either, because it will just end up in the pockets of a small, corrupt few as it does literally everywhere else in the world, and nothing will change.
If you’re in favour of abandoning ethics for a quick fix there are two or three “solutions”, but there doesn’t seem to be any easy ones otherwise.
FWIW, I’m very much not in favour of abandoning ethics.
Nowhere did I mention a method. You built a strawman in your head and attacked it. I would invite you look up foreign investment before jumping to whatever methods you’re jumping to that are “unethical”.
When something is stated simply with an “all you need to do is…”, it’s not much of a reach to imagine that the person who said it has either no understanding of how difficult that would be or that that person has some simple solution in mind.
I was trying to cover all bases with my response to it, but I guess I made it sound like too much of an accusation. Sorry about that.
