November is Islamophobia awareness month

November is Islamopbobia Awareness Month and the horrifying petrol bombing at the Manston migration centre, proves that when inflammatory rhetoric is used by politicians and the media, then the result can literally be incendiary. The bomber's Facebook page was filled with hate-filled rants against migrants and Muslims. Politicians must be held to account for their words. They stoke fear and anger that is often misplaced and can be dangerous.
No-one's political goals or ambitions should endanger others.
We have to be very careful when we bandy around notions of invasions, an overwhelming force determined to overrun us. What we do have is an influx of migrants that we are ill-equipped and politically unwilling to deal with. Some politicians seem to revel in our isolation and undermine good relations with our European neighbours - they have to deal with the same influxes of people but in much higher numbers. Criminality is where the problem lies, not with the people whose desperate circumstances send them on journeys of hope.
At present we are seeing large numbers of Albanians make these journeys. Why? Many who set out are leaving relative poverty and seek better jobs to help support their families. The average annual salary in Albania is £1,720, in the UK it is nearer to £25,000. We are told here that our services like Home Care are at breaking point due to the high number of staff vacancies. Our industries and farming complain of the lack of skilled and seasonal workers. Criminal gangs feed these stories back of the workers needed here, they offer economic hope. People pay their life savings and take out huge debts to set out on these journeys to fill these beckoning jobs. But they are met with fear, distrust and sometimes aggression.
We shouldn't be targeting the genuine asylum seekers or the hopeful, skilled economic migrants. We have put up so many obstacles to migration that all who should be welcomed, are not, and criminal gangs fill the void. We should be joining forces with our European neighbours to counter criminality, not target their victims.
No-one sets out in a rubber dingy to cross a dangerous sea unless they are desperate or have been fed false hope.