Sir, Your reporter, questioning immigrants housed aboard the Bibby Stockholm barge (report, Dec 13), quotes one young man as saying: “I just want a house, a job, to study, to have fun like people my age. I’m just a person and I don’t believe freedom should be exclusive to people lucky enough to be born in the right place.”
It is difficult not to sympathise with these sentiments; indeed there are millions of young men and women in the global south who share them. But it is impossible for western democracies to provide the benefits this young man seeks, not least when so many of our own people are not able to share them. The no doubt unpalatable answer to the young man