Why is the public directing their anger at the individual asylum seeker that arrives at the shore…

No xenophobic fear of “brown people” here - I married one and birthed another.

We have idealogues on the left (team “poor souls”, most asylum claims are granted and it’s only 0.3% of budget anyway) vs. realists who think that the first responsibility of a government of any stripe is border control and that the arrival of undocumented migrants requiring bed, board, education and healthcare in their tens of thousands is problematic. More so when services are on their arse, with the declining number of working taxpayers about to be mugged for at least another 20 billion, most of which is just to keep the IMF at bay.

The unpalatable truth is that there are millions of people who would qualify for asylum in the UK - all women in Afghanistan for example, most of the population of Iran, gay people from anywhere in the Islamic world, etc. Self-evidently, we cannot take everyone. The current system is the worst of all worlds: a hunger games-style battle to reach UK shores undertaken (quite reasonably) by men. Some arrivals will inevitably have a history of criminality, but this cannot be checked if they are undocumented.

It’s a fallacy that anyone can “stop the boats” without fundamental law and policy changes, and any anger at the failure of successive governments to do so is misplaced. I would remove any chance of citizenship for these arrivals, after setting up legal routes from outside the UK offering asylum to a fixed number of people every year, depending on our own population trends and economy. This will mean ECHR withdrawal - but as a hastily drafted piece of law implemented in the wake of a humanitarian crisis, it’s not ideally suited to current levels of global mobility or indeed any proportion of economic migrants taking their advice from TikTok and criminal gangs.

And like a PP I can simultaneously be angry about the appalling mismanagement of legal migration under the previous government.

If it’s not safe to leave certain countries and people have to escape, how come when granted asylum their families are all able to join them straightaway?

This is the new buzz word isn’t it?

Exactly. I doubt if many on MN, for example, are familiar with Bradford or Luton.

Ok, you seem dead keen on arguing the advantages so let's debate this one. I'll accept your stats though i know not if they're correct.

1. Only 0.3% - except that

1. they’re a tool right now... No. It's not like they've been imported to sow discord. They exist. People have opinions about that fact. You seem to be saying that people having an anti-migrant view are just being duped. Perhaps its you that's being duped.

1. only a small part of >200 million try to come here. That's a silly argument. It's like saying only 1 of 200k drug addicts burgled your home. The fact it could be much worse doesn't mean people should rejoice.

1. why they come here is as irrelevant as where I choose to shop or holiday. Unless you want to start meddling with those things to dissuade them. The fact that they prefer the UK to France doesn't seem like a positive reason to accept large scale immigration.

1. overall migrants are net contributors.

I won't even get on to successive governments treating the need to house migrants as "a legal requirement" when actually it is not, thereby providing that feeling of a two tier system.

If >I< lost everything tomorrow I'd be dependent on finding a hostel every night (zero chance) or sleep on the street.

Dear God are these women sick or evil.

During threads like this we have to bear in mind that the privileged aren't really affected and thereby can't see a problem and get dismissive, the not so privileged see the degradation of everything up close and personal.

Because we are tribal at heart and these people are not like us.

Because lots of them are racist and it feels good to have what they perceive to be a legitimate opportunity to shout abuse at a foreigner.

I find it very positive, personally.

I think it's great that people who come here without a pot to piss in, having fled war and/or persecution, get the chance to settle, work, contribute and have a decent life where they're not living in fear.

I'm especially pleased about the Kurdish plumber, there's a dire shortage of plumbers where I live and most of the existing ones aren't taking on new customers. He's really fulfilling a need in a shortage occupation! 😁

This is the challenge, why don’t they stay in the first safe country ? Why don’t they stay in France? It’s because our health and benefits system is very very appealing.

and to answer the OP, the individuals are part of the problem because if they didn’t pay the gangs then the gangs wouldn’t exist.

@LakieLady thank you for answering my question.

Is that supposed to be exciting or something?

None of what you describe is positive.

I've no idea, but as a critic of the government in his home country, he might not have felt he had time to go through that process. He and his wife came here for him to attend a professional conference and they applied for asylum on arrival.

I can't remember now what country they were from, but it was somewhere in west Africa where French is the official (or most common) language. I first met them because a local refugee support group had helped them find accommodation in the next road from me and it's the sort of area where people say hello to each other, and one day I translated for his wife, who spoke no English and was trying to buy something in the local shop. Then it turned out that they were being supported by one of my colleagues.

They were a lovely couple, and I often wonder how they're doing now.

My family were immigrants as were my husbands family but I am angry that we house and feed anyone that "breaks" into our country rather than going through the legal channels. I welcome immigrants to this country but not illegal immigrants. We have no idea who these individuals are or whether they have a criminal background. You want to live here then do it the proper way.

Immigrants want to live here -smugglers dont

Actually, it's 4 out of a caseload of approx 20 refugees I worked with over a period of 3 years while part of a specific project.

All of that sub-set of clients worked though. Some worked in hospitality, others in social care, one as a TA in a local school. And when I needed an emergency plumber over Christmas a couple of years ago, the guy who rocked up was a Kurdish refugee who knew my Kurdish refugee friend!

Why should they pick another African country over a European, Asian etc. one

Because if they were fleeing on safety grounds there are other places nearer. Why do they have to choose Europe?
I don’t think that many go to Asia - not East Asia, anyway. According to Google ‘China hosts about 1,160 registered refugees overall, and while the total number is rising, it remains remarkably low’.

When I was a kid, that list would have included the Irish and people from the West Indies who came here to work because we had a labour shortage.

Yes and you are angry at them for assaulting women: criminal activity.

I would be angry at men who assault women but that has nothing to do with the topic of people seeming refuge / a better life for me.

Why should they pick another African country over a European, Asian etc. one?

A foreign country is a foreign country?

In the case of one of my former clients, she would not have been allowed to leave her country of origin officially. She had been arrested for opposition to her government's persecution of people from her ethnic minority group and spent 2 weeks being tortured in prison.

She was helped by others who had fled and crossed Europe by a modern-day "underground railroad", and came to the UK in the boot of a car on a cross-channel ferry. But some of the other refugee clients had come here on scheduled flights and then claimed asylum on arrival.