News from Migration Central re migrants/asylum seekers.

British values have been eroded to the point of non-existence. It’s the most unfunny and scary joke.

We should stop asylum full stop

🙄

In answer to your question on why people would pay you’d have to suggest how many will be granted asylum by safe route.

Can you meet the demand? How many from say Sudan would meet their demand, or Eritrea? Multiply by the countries you’re thinking of, can you provide a safe route to everyone who wants it and meets the criteria?

If not the option is there to pay, arrive on shore and by law expect to be processed for asylum.

I absolutely am not advocating shooting people in the Channel, to be clear.

But... if shooting people in the channel reduced the overall number of channel crossing deaths (because people stopped attempting it), would it be the right thing to do?

It wasn't a lot, no, but it did happen (after both wars). After WWII it was mostly a share of industrial assets, plus prisoner of war labour (up to 400,000 people for three years after the war).

By the time an arrival is onshore, immediate danger in the sea has passed, so that doesn’t apply. The obligation to process does not override asylum rules. Detention & processing with no release into the community until ILR is granted is perfectly legal. Deportation if ILR is not granted, subject to a right of appeal (while still detained). If the asylum rules are applied correctly (ie if there is no advantage to illicit arrivals & less likelihood of vanishing into the community) why would anyone give smugglers tens of thousands of pounds to avoid the ‘safe routes’? The HO processing is slow & unkind. Sorting that would help. I’ve known people wait 10 years for a decision. I realise they are still processing the Boris Wave but the problems go back a lot further than that. The HO lose passports, birth certificates etc & there have been claims that some HO staff let personal bigotry affect their decisions. It does nobody any good to let it carry on as it is.

Many neighbouring countries—including Muslim-majority countries—already host very large refugee populations. Your suggestion that they aren’t “doing their bit” is not supported by the facts.

UNHCR's figures from last year report that 65% of the world’s refugees were hosted in countries neighbouring their country of origin.

Iran and Pakistan host the majority of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers between them.

Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan each host very large numbers of Syrian refugees and asylum seekers.

Chad and Egypt host vast numbers of Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers. Egypt also takes in quite a large number of refugees and asylum seekers from Eritrea.

It is, of course, true that the UK could not host all of the refugees and asylum seekers in the world, but nobody is expecting it to. Relative to population, we actually take far fewer than many other countries.

As for "their cultures" not aligning with ours, that's a sweeping generalisation that doesn't take individual differences into account. I mean, I'm British and I don't think your values align with mine, but I'm not arguing that you have no right to be in the country because of that.

It was all that was possible. Germany was on its knees.

@Snowwhiteandthe77dwarfs Most of the people being granted asylum in the UK from the countries you have mentioned would be seeking asylum because they do not align with that country's culture, e.g. they have left Islam (which is punishable by death in some places), or have offended their government by standing up for their rights in some way. So why do you think the surrounding countries would help those individuals? People seeking asylum for those reasons wouldn't be any safer there.

However, internationally the vast majority of refugees are living in countries bordering their own. It's a very small minority that travel further to countries such as the UK, and if our asylum system was working as it should then their claims would be investigated thoroughly before the decision was made to accept them or not.

@Snowwhiteandthe77dwarfs So in a quid pro quo arrangement, we can seek reparation from Germany

This did happen, yes.

Ok if you limit it how will you overrule international law that says any shore arrival must be processed?

So, yes. If there were safe routes, they would be far easier to police & we could say ‘only these routes, other routes will not be considered’. That would limit the numbers. There would need to be provision for those fleeing persecution. Lebanon takes far more people than its size justifies, just because it is close to the places people are fleeing. When we were in the EU, the Dublin Agreement made it easier to return people from small boats. It is arguable that we have a responsibility to help those we bombed. It is difficult but arguing that people should be shot at in the Channel, which some do, is not a sensible answer.

The fact that I am a random Mumsnet user, without access to the relevant evidence or statistics, means it would - in my view - be spectacularly unhelpful for me to suggest an arbitrary number plucked from the air.

I believe in pragmatic, sustainable policy making, based on facts about need and capacity, and on what is actually possible, within the U.K’s unique geographical and cultural circumstances. And I personally think more safe, legal, efficiently managed migration routes are an important part of that.

For the sake of being factual, it’s also worth noting that the UNHCR Global Trends report also tells us that 65% of refugees are hosted in countries neighboring their country of origin. So, I don’t think the headline figures are useful on their own.

As an aside, I also think we need a much more rational, much less emotionally charged tone in the way we speak about immigration. I am increasingly unconvinced threads like this help with that, so I’ll bow out now.

I don’t disagree. I suppose my view, though, is that the Home Office has been very inefficiently run, for a very long time.

And I do think part of that, is that immigration has become unhelpfully and aggressively politicised. So, policy decisions have been made based on posturing, rather than on actual evidence as to what will or won’t work, within the cultural and geographical context of the U.K.

So, to my mind, the most responsible thing for any government to do at this stage is to take the heat, divisiveness and polarisation out of the debate and focus on efficiency. That way, we can at least get accurate data, then review that data and revisit the policy, based on facts.

Ok it’ll take the Australian system, I’m assuming you don’t want to withdraw from international asylum laws? Or Bardella convinces his party to take all arrivals back, if they win.

It is possible to stop on shore arrivals, with those three options pretty much. If it’s just introduction of safe routes and international law allows arrivals you’ll get both methods of entry.

I guess it all comes down to the system design. If we could run an ideal system like that, I’d be much more in favour. But I’m not sure we can, other than for targeted cases (eg specific wars, famines, etc). Verifying people’s identity and story is just very hard, and gets harder the more open you make the funnel.

I think we’re in agreement - the whole aim of safe and legal routes is to provide controlled pathways, so less people come by small boat, and there are therefore less risks of death at sea.