@Jellycatspyjamas
I think you're confusing migrants and illegal migrants.
Asylum seekers and refugees aren’t illegal migrants.
Exactly this.
People can claim asylum regardless of route of entry.
Most refugees claiming asylum do not come to the UK. In 2020 (the latest period for which data is currently available), the highest number of first-time asylum applicants was registered in Germany with 121,995 first-time applicants followed by France with 92,200, Spain with 88,530 and Greece with 40,560.
There is no such thing as a bogus asylum-seeker or an illegal asylum-seeker. As an asylum-seeker, a person has entered into a legal process of refugee status determination. Everybody has a right to seek asylum in another country.
The majority of asylum-seekers do not have the right to work in the United Kingdom and so must rely on state support.
Housing is provided, but asylum-seekers cannot choose where it is, and it is often ‘hard to let’ properties which Council tenants do not want to live in. In Kent, near derelict and unsanitary ex arm y barracks were used.
Cash support is available, and is currently set at £39.63 per person, per week, which makes it £5.64 a day for food, sanitation and clothing. Hardly living the life of Reilly!
Subsidiary protection can be given to people who do not meet the 1951 Convention’s legal definition of a refugee but are still in need of international protection.
Across the EU, the Qualification Directive provides subsidiary protection for those facing the following threats if returned to their country: (1) the death penalty or execution; (2) torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; or (3) threats from an international or internal armed conflict.
Given most seeking asylum come from areas such as Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea or Yemen it is clear they meet the criteria.
What is wrong is not the few people (including families with young children and unaccompanied children) trying to flee across the channel in cheap inflatable dinghies after hazardous cross country transit. The major problem is the lack of basic humanity and compassion towards people with nothing. A bot more sharing of word resources might see less conflict and less need for asylum. We are fortunate by an accident of birth alone.