Hotel Accommodation Not Good Enough for Asylum Seekers?

Twenty die in blaze at Paris hotel used to house homeless migrants
By John Lichfield and Rhiannon Harries in Paris
16 April 2005
From the Independent on line edition
Twenty people, 10 of them children, have been killed in a fire at a hotel in central Paris used to house homeless immigrants. It was the most deadly fire in the French capital for two decades and it provoked a furious row about the provision of suitable accommodation for immigrants.

Terrified guests jumped from the upper storeys of the six-floor hotel after the blaze broke out in the early hours of yesterday. Some of those who died were killed by the fall, others were overcome by fumes as they slept.

All the victims were believed to be from African families housed by the state or the city in the downmarket Paris-Opéra hotel for ¤20 (£14) a night. More than 50 other guests, including American and Canadian tourists, were treated at a first-aid post established in the Galeries Lafayette department store across the street.

Pete's Points:

I am very sorry to hear that so many people were killed and I am appalled at the potential suffering of those who remain to bear the brunt of the aftermath.

That said, and at the risk of being thought insensitive, I find the comments from people who object to people being housed in hotels in the middle of large cities and suggesting that it is not suitable accommodation for asylum seekers, a bit rich.

I am sorry, but as someone who was a refugee I KNOW what it is like to be in a camp with barbed wire around the compound and with the constant demands for your papers before you are allowed to go anywhere.

I can assure the bleeding heart do gooders who are now caterwauling that to house people in a hotel is inappropriate that this was considered to be the lap of luxury for my parents and myself when we left the camps and were able to live in cheap, but decent accommodation, in the middle of large urban city (in our case it was Vienna) and be in a position to take our meals nearby in cheap, but decent eating establishments and stay alive and in good health living in freedom while our situation was assessed and our request for asylum were processed.

It certainly beats the situation imposed on asylum seekers in this country who are either behind barbed wire in the desert or on some off shore island.

Get a GRIP is what I would advise. I think the French were doing a much better job than our government seems to be managing and a damn sight cheaper for their taxpayers as well!