It’s time the world knew that Britain is not a land of milk and honey

[Dowser]

Then these migrant tragedies might be averted.
The uk is a fabulous place to live and I feel very privileged to have been born here and to still live here but it is not a cheap place to live and it can be very difficult to scratch a living.
My relative is now single and fallen on hard times. After a 6 month stint in a hostel which was hell on Earth, he’s now got a flat and on UC
I rang to see how he was doing the other day and was shocked to find he can’t pay his bills.i know last winter he didn’t put the heating on and ended up very sick
His rent is paid but even without heating on yet he’s already going under. Water rates are £45 a month..we pay half that for our house.
It’s an 8 month wait for a meter.

I mentioned food. He said he’s starving and has lost weight.
He’s 64 . His pension kicks In When he will be 67 . He’s unable to find a job and is constantly sick...when a short while ago before this happened he was as fit as butchers dog.
You can’t live on what you’re given he said. We live in a high unemployment area and there’s not a lot of jobs around for ageing 64 year olds with dodgy knees.

One side of my family is from a country regarded as similar in terms of economy as Vietnam. They have a completely unrealistic idea as to how much life here actually costs. They know how much legal workers here can earn, but they don't understand that the average worker here probably spends pretty much all of their wage on a mortgage/rent, utility bills, food and transport.

Despite all those horror stories of female domestic workers in the Middle East, some relatives considered working there as the advertised money (which I doubt they would get) looked great on paper. The awful stories are not always widely publicised in their home country. I guess the little money people could send home was being circulated into the economy of their home country so perhaps their government doesn't want to put people off working abroad, legally or not.

I would doubt that the poor woman in the lorry would actually be able to take home, in her hand, £1800 a month. She would be working without the necessary papers, bonded to the job she was placed into, with presumably no rights to a minimum wage, maximum hours, and would probably have what she owes the traffickers, and living costs taken out of her pay before she actually has some cash given to her.

Being poor here really is easier than developing countries, it certainly isn't easy but the poverty levels aren't comparable.

I remember living in a Latin American country when the bedroom tax was kicking off in the UK and trying to explain the outrage to locals who were listening to UK radio with me.
They couldn't get past the fact people were given money for their housing so the upset seemed beyond unreasonable to them. Running water and non dirt floors were luxury for the working poor.

I haven't read the whole thread but I'm guessing that the OP hasn't travelled much.

Being very poor here is no easier than being very poor anywhere else.

I agree somewhat with the OP, but not this! People cant believe this surely? Give me poor in britain with access to healthcare and my DC to an education still, than a war-torn country where that doesn't exist.

That's not to say Britain doesn't have Poverty it definitely does.

These nail bars are in every high street! Does anyone from the immigration authorities check them??

ConFusion
I haven't read the whole thread but I'm guessing that the OP hasn't travelled much.

Well, I have travelled a lot and I largely agree with the OP. Precisely because I've met so many people who are desperate to come to the UK, asking me to sponsor visas, who are actually in a much better position where they are! Not understanding the cost of living here, or the difficulty in obtaining work (compared to their home country) seem to be the main reasons. And we are talking places with growing economies, job opportunities, access to healthcare/reasonable health insurance and so on - not really desperate people living without water or a home. Obviously those people exist too but that's a different situation.

I find it really bizarre if people are paying £30,000 to be trafficked. Where on earth are they getting the money from? And wouldn't there be better places where you could set up a really good life on that money? Even here, you could live on it for quite a while whilst yo got sorted.

There's obviously a lot of lies and false hope being sold to people.

Being very poor here is no easier than being very poor anywhere else. Cold and hungry is cold and hungry
You’re kidding right?

Why would this poster be kidding? Do you think the 9000 deaths attributed to fuel poverty last winter is a laughing matter? Do you think that's acceptable in a so called wealthy country? Or the other 30,000 'excess winter deaths'? NHS wasn't much use to those people was it. And that's every year. But those victims are old and British so not a trendy enough cause I guess. Certainly don't ever see threads on here discussing those outrageous statistics or people marching on the streets in protest. I think it's very easy to downplay poverty in the UK when it doesn't affect you.

find it really bizarre if people are paying £30,000 to be trafficked. Where on earth are they getting the money from?

A lot of them are not paying upfront, they are going into bonded servitude (in nail bars, prostitution, cannabis farms etc) to repay a debt to the traffickers.

Why here?

Well the most refugees per capita are in places like Turkey and Jordan, much closer to the troubled places. Then in Europe, Switzerland and Germany have more.

And the draw for some of the UK is language (thanks to colonialism and post colonialism), a community already here, and a strong economy which means jobs (and lazy-arsed population who don't want to clean toilets or pick fruit). Fortunately Brexit will put the economy in the toilet and sort a lot of this out.

Remove borders that should help.
I don't suppose that's a popular remark though, as we are so greedy as a society.
The mc champagne socialists say ooh what a shame, but they wouldn't house an immigrant or asylum seeker. They do nothing to change the situation.

Immigration is the price we are paying for the past Empire years.

Quite.
We spent many years waltzing into other countries telling them that they were doing everything wrong and we were better than them. In fact we know so much better that we are going to rename the towns and countries and possibly even change the language to English.

Then we get pissed off when people pitch up here to see if it really was as good as we made out.

True we are not a land of milk and honey but:
We are unlikely to get prisoned, killed, tortured for our religion.
As long as you pass a driving test anyone can drive.
Education up to 18 is free
As a nation we are not starving.
We are not aw war
We are not a refugee camp.
I could go on.

Why do people keep saying medical care and education are free? It’s not it’s paid for by taxpayers.

That's true Frosty and if your not a citizen NHS costs a lot.

No it isn't free but if I lost my job tomorrow my DC will still be able to go school/have an operation thanks to other tax payers. A privilege some countries dont have and one I quite like.

yes it is paid for by taxes but the amount of education / healthcare your child receives is not dependent on how much tax you pay or indeed if you pay any at all

@june2007 NHS entitlement isn’t linked to nationality, it is linked to residency. For children it is free at point of use from day one, for adults it is free at point of use after 12 months. The yearly fee paid is fairly small, about £400 a year.

If a person with British citizenship left the UK for a few years they also couldn’t receive free at point of use care via the NHS until they have been in the country for a year.

I agree OP

Panoka7 Thats how some sociopaths in the UK want it

metro.co.uk/2019/10/24/girl-4-in-wheelchair-told-shes-a-drain-on-society-and-shouldnt-be-alive-10975552/ Girl 4, in wheelchair told she’s a ‘drain on society’ and shouldn’t be alive

A four-year-old girl is ‘traumatised’ after a man screamed abuse at her in her wheelchair and told her she ‘shouldn’t have been born’. Quinn Ross, who has a rare childhood condition called Perthes’ disease, was on her way to school with her mum Emma and big brother Alex, 10, when the thug began ‘yelling in her face’. Emma, 32, said the abuse in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, was ‘appalling’. She said: ‘The man was yelling in her face, saying she shouldn’t have been born, she was a drain on the NHS, a drain on society and that I should have had her aborted if I’d known she was going to be disabled. ‘I pushed him away, power-walked off to school and it was the school who phoned the police.’ Quinn, whose condition affects her hip bone making it agonising to walk, is now in counselling after telling her mum she didn’t want to be seen in her wheelchair

Emma added: ‘Quinn is now scared of men and doesn’t like going out in her wheelchair. It left her feeling very angry at the world, but we’ve had a lot of support.’

t is hoped that Quinn will one day not need the wheelchair but she can currently only walk 10 to 15 steps at a time. Police are treating the attack last month as a disability hate crime. PC Terasa Holden said: ‘No-one should worry about leaving home and facing abuse, particularly a little girl who is in too much pain to walk to school because of a rare medical condition. ‘My colleagues and I have worked to support Quinn and her family and hope other people will come forward and report this kind of crime. ‘We want people to know that we take all reports of hate crime very seriously and will always investigate.

I think the issue is that economic migrants are often lied to by unscrupulous traffickers.

Yes, life in the UK is better than in many countries, but not for an illegal immigrant with no access to benefits who is bonded to work for a gang master for a pittance. It is very different from an immigrant who is in the UK legally and entitled to work a regular job.

They would probably be better off staying at home, financially and physically, but by the time they find this out it is too late.

Could something more be done at source to advertise the realities to people before they pay the traffickers and/or more be done to catch and punish the traffickers?

I am particularly wondering about the statement often made that you wouldn't undertake such a horrific journey unless your home life was even more horrific.

In many cases this may be true, but I'm not convinced the migrants realise exactly how horrific the journey will be until it's too late. If you were told you were to travel in the back of a lorry without further information, would you anticipate that there would be no air, that the lorry would be refrigerated, that the journey would be so long? Probably not if you had never heard of incidents where people have died.

If a person with British citizenship left the UK for a few years they also couldn’t receive free at point of use care via the NHS until they have been in the country for a year

Not true, you just have to be “ordinarily resident”. So moved back and taken up a job, etc.

It’s true you can’t swan in and out of the country using the NHS when you actually live in the USA regardless of citizenship, but if you move back here permanently you are entitled to use the NHS as soon as you are back on UK soil.

I think there’s a delay before you’re entitled to claim benefits, which might be what you’re thinking of.

From gov.uk:

www.gov.uk/guidance/nhs-entitlements-migrant-health-guide#special-groups

“Free Services
GP and nurse consultations in primary care, treatment provided by a GP and other primary care services are free of charge to all, whether registering as an NHS patient, or as a temporary patient, which is when the patient is in the area for more than 24 hours and less than 3 months.

For secondary care services, the UK’s healthcare system is a residence-based one, which means entitlement to free healthcare is based on living lawfully in the UK on a properly settled basis for the time being.

The measure of residence that the UK uses to determine entitlement to free NHS healthcare is known as ‘ordinary residence’. This requires non-EEA nationals subject to immigration control to also have the immigration status of indefinite leave to remain.”

excess winter deaths'? NHS wasn't much use to those people was it. And that's every year. But those victims are old and British so not a trendy enough cause I guess

Nail on head. Ive said the same thing on here before. It seems to be a very middle class thing. You wont see what youve mentioned written about in the pages of Grazia. It reads a bit like a race to the bottom. It used to be the Africa argument that got used against the British poor I voted Remain (feel free to check my posting history on this) but i wonder if the reason some of the working class voted Leave was because they were sick of being patronized and sick of the insinuation that they should be grateful.

Look you havent got it so bad because they have got it way worse.

And "Look you being able to feed your kids so they dont starve is not as important as climate change"

Because another example of this attitude was brought to the fore when Extinction Rebellion targeted the tube in the working class area of Canning Town.

Maybe just maybe the British poor are sick of being used as collateral damage in the race to the bottom.

And the right wing press have to take some of the blame. All a trafficker has to do is show the DM website to "prove" that what they are saying is true.