StatCounter

Sunday 10 October 2010

The unasked question

The Telegraph have a headline investigation into human smuggling via Belgium into Britain. The article contains two interesting passages:
'The men, all from the Punjab region of India, were locked indoors and brought cheap supermarket food once a day. Some had been living there for months. If they complained about their conditions, they were beaten.

The immigrants were a human commodity; each had been charged €20,000 (£17,350) to make the long journey via Moscow and Italy.

...

"Britain remains a destination of choice, and India has many takers," Judge David Moeremans told the Brussels court when he sentenced the gang. '

Any Punjabi who can scrape together £17,350 (around 1127750Rs or as an Indian would say over 11 lakh) is not poor or destitute.

The unanswered question - Why are some people so desperate to get to the UK that they will pay a small fortune in order to do so? What benefit(s) do they expect to accrue from such a journey?

1 comment:

Weekend Yachtsman said...

"What benefit(s) do they expect to accrue from such a journey?"

This is a rhetorical question, no?