Migrant Crisis
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2015
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Migrant Crisis There is a "swarm" of migrants coming into Europe according to the Prime Minister. Where are they coming from and how many are coming to Calais to try to get into Britain? Are 70 percent of migrants in Calais making it to the UK, as claimed in the Daily Mail? We scrutinise the numbers.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this program from BBC Radio 4. I'm Tim Harford. |
| 0:05.9 | Hello and welcome to a brand new series of more or less, |
| 0:10.4 | your convivial guide to the numbers that surround us in the news and in life. |
| 0:15.8 | This week a statistical smackdown between economists and epidemiologists. |
| 0:21.1 | We play the generation game, and since the football season has just hit us squarely on the forehead like a lump of wet leather |
| 0:27.7 | We ask whether football is getting too predictable |
| 0:31.4 | But first strong words have been used in the debate about the migrants |
| 0:35.8 | coming to Europe and massing at Calais, but there's also been a call for facts and several |
| 0:41.7 | newspapers and columnists have tried to fill this gap and we've |
| 0:45.2 | decided to look at the numbers ourselves so Wesley Stevenson is here hello Wes |
| 0:49.1 | Hello Tim yeah there are two different stories here the first are those migrants coming into Europe, many across the Mediterranean Sea, some over land, and then there are those coming to Calais who want to come to Britain. |
| 1:02.0 | So let's start with those getting into Europe. |
| 1:05.0 | The Prime Minister talked of a swarm of migrants coming into Europe which is a turn of |
| 1:10.2 | phrase that's caused some excitement but let's just assume he means a lot of |
| 1:14.2 | migrants. Where's are there a lot of migrants coming to Europe? Well compared to |
| 1:18.7 | previous years yes the European Border Agency Frontex says that in July alone more migrants came across the |
| 1:25.5 | Mediterranean Sea into Greece than the whole of 2014. |
| 1:30.0 | Asylum applications in Europe have almost doubled in the first three months of this year compared to last and we haven't seen this kind of level since 1992. |
| 1:38.0 | So why are people coming? Are these economic migrants or are they genuine asylum seekers? |
| 1:43.2 | There has been a suggestion that those coming across the Mediterranean are economic migrants |
| 1:47.4 | from Africa. |
| 1:48.4 | However, the figures show this isn't the whole picture. |
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