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They do not have names.

They do not have needs, or rights, or jobs, or a tax code, or a passport.

They are your choice of collective noun: a swarm, a flood, a tide, a horde.

They are not Bob, or Sue, or David or Kate or Charlotte or Adrian. They are not like us. They are Them.

They are stateless and helpless, foodless and friendless. Why should we share?

(Image: Getty)

“The migrant crisis” sounds so much more threatening than “the humanitarian crisis”. The need for “austerity” sounds more important than the need for “common sense”.

Let’s put to one side for a moment any arguments about space and what we’ll do if the entire population of the world wants to move to these few cold, wet, paedophile-producing square miles of rock.

Let’s look at the facts.

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1) There are about 5,000 stateless people in Calais

And 64.1million people in the UK. That means if we let in every single person who’d currently like us to, the population would explode by 0.000078%.

That’s not a flood. It’s barely a drip.

2) They would not cost very much

Total UK welfare spending is expected to be £217billion this year, 29% of our overall budget. It includes benefits, tax credits, and pensions.

That works out to £3,385 per head of current population, or £7,406 per taxpayer.

If we let in those 5,000 extra people, and we assume they get benefits and pay taxes at the same rates as everyone else, we'd turn a profit. They'd cost us about £17m, but make us at the current rate of GDP £100m extra.

Even if they didn't work, that £17m divided by all the taxpayers is an extra 57p each.

That’s not a drain on resources. And when you consider that over their lifetimes those immigrants are more likely than those born here to work harder for longer while taking less out of the system, it might even turn into a plus.

(Image: Hulton)

3) Most people don’t want to come here

The argument that letting these people in would mean everyone else would do the same is common, but unreasonable.

Yes, each immigrant may have family members who would join them – but if you multiplied their numbers by five, 10, or 20, they still have virtually no impact on our population or finances.

Most of those trying to come to Britain are from Syria, Libya, Somalia and Eritrea, which have a combined population of 45m.

Those 5,000 immigrants represent 0.01% of them. That’s not a horde.

(Image: Reuters)

4) It’s not their fault

The fact their home states have collapsed is not down to these people’s failures.

The fact ISIS are rampaging across the Middle East, Boko Haram are stealing children and fascist fundamentalists are undergoing Islamic schism while Britain enjoys a post-colonial reputation as a place of peace and tolerance is not their fault either.

They’re not a swarm, bringing discord and terror in their wake. They’re coming here precisely because there is little of either.

(Image: Reuters)

5) It’s our fault

There was a building in Calais where asylum seeker claims could be processed. Health was checked, children were fed, women were protected from rape.

No-one had to die under trains or drown in the world’s busiest shipping lane. Unworthy claims were thrown out before they set foot on British soil, and the ones who genuinely needed help got it.

In 2002, we told the French to close it.

And we put up a fence.

(Image: Daily Mirror / Jon Fuller-Rowell)

Then we bombed Libya, were unable to pick a side in Syria, complained about Somalia, did nothing at all about Eritrea while mining it of resources and watched the Arab Spring install schismatic warlords all over the Middle East.

It’s hardly a surprise some of them want to come here, if only to lodge a formal complaint.

6) We’re idiots

We cut resources for our border agency, which means there are only a few people at a time to check lorries at Calais. This means the queue backs up, the lorries have to stop, and immigrants have the opportunity to clamber aboard.

We put up better fences at the ferry terminal, which means those same people have gone to the Eurotunnel terminal instead.

We’re putting up more fences there, so now they’re cutting the normal fences further away and walking up the track. We’re going to have to put up steel fencing all the way to Tripoli at this rate, and that still won’t stop it.

(Image: Getty)

7) Crime is due to motivation, not opportunity

They’re not coming here because of some idle urge, like picking up a fiver dropped in the road. They’re coming because what’s behind them is utterly awful.

That’s not a tide. It’s an extremely small exodus.

(Image: Getty)

8) Troops will not help

In Eritrea, the government is accused of being involved in sexual slavery, murder and forced labour. People must do 18 months’ national service in the army at 18 but are not allowed to leave for a decade. Anyone who refuses is considered a traitor and given the death penalty.

In Somalia, citizens have a government which refuses to hold elections on one side and Al Shebaab’s terror group on the other.

As for Libya and Syria… these people have seen enough of soldiers. Let’s not throw any more at them.

(Image: PA)

9) Every single refugee in Calais would be a better British citizen than Nigel Farage

The refugees are degree-educated (Nigel isn’t), capable of speaking half a dozen languages (Nigel’s not), and have worked very hard to get there (Nigel takes part in less than half of all votes in a job he gets paid £109,000 a year to do).

Their camp in Calais contains a cafe, mosques, a church, paintings, and cut flowers.

Immigrants, by definition and throughout history, are people who move great distances for a better life for themselves and their children. America was founded on immigrants and seems to have done quite well.

Nigel’s home is 2.3miles from the place where he was born and 92% of the electorate didn’t vote for him.

As immigration point systems go, the refugees are winning.

(Image: PA)

There is no swarm. There are no hordes. There are merely a handful of people who’ve had the wit and resources to get as far away from genocide, slavery, rape and murder as they possibly can.

There is Samira Ahmed, aged 27, whose father was a political activist in Eritrea and was killed when she was a baby. She sleeps under a tree and says: “I just want a happy life.”

(Image: Daily Mirror / Jon Fuller-Rowell)

There is the unnamed 16-year-old girl who was knocked down and killed by a car at the ferry terminals. There are the two Sudanese men in hospital with gruesome injures after being hit by trains.

There is the doctor from Darfur clinging on to a lorry axle who says Britain will welcome him. There is 17-year-old Aida from Eritrea who walked from Greece to Calais.

There is Mouaz al-Balkhi, a Syrian student who bought a wetsuit to swim the Channel and was never seen again.

(Image: BBC)

They don’t want to hurt us. They don’t want to steal or squat. They just want a place to rest.

Yet we threaten troops, we build higher fences, we define them by a collective noun and demand the French do something about the terrible disaster on our doorstep.

It confounds logic to have our politicians commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day while talking about sending a small number of desperate, clever, useful people back to the Nazis they’re fleeing.

It boils my bowels to hear people talking about troops and fences and walls when what we need is to find our soul.

I am not proud of this. I am not proud to see my government treat the needy like a leech to be brushed aside.

I do not want my taxes spent on barbed wire when they could more usefully be spent on an immigration centre, diplomacy, or nation building.

And I do not want to hear one more person talk about floodgates.

There is no flood. There is a drought.

That’s the crisis, there’s your disaster – the paucity of compassion, the poverty of thought, the total lack of humanity from a nation which, for all our faults, has always had a heart.

Until now.