MICHAEL Clarke (Letters, August 20) accuses me of not reading his letters properly.

It is a pity he does not read mine with similar care. I did not say that he had stated all the Calais migrants were terrorists. What I said was that he wants us to believe they are all terrorists.

He may not have said it in so many words, but I cannot help feeling that was the message he wanted people to read into his letter.

He is peddling scare stories to persuade people it is okay to ignore the humanitarian crisis faced by refugees.

S Nicholson in the same issue suggests that refugees cease to be refugees as soon as they reach a safe country. No they do not. They are refugees by virtue of the fact they have left their home countries to avoid war or conflict, and they remain refugees until such time as they are able safely to return to their home countries.

What Mr Nicholson may be thinking of is an agreement between governments as to which country is responsible for dealing with refugees.

It is a typically heartless bureaucratic response to tell refugees that they should have applied somewhere else before they got here, and it is little more than yet another excuse for ignoring the plight of refugees. I suspect that few if any refugees will be aware of such international agreements until they are told about them by government officials. The plight of refugees needs to be dealt with now, not batted back and forth between governments, each trying to ensure that somebody else has to deal with the situation.

CHRIS ROBINS
Foxdown Close
Kidlington