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Asylum seekers to the UK sent to Rwanda

689 replies

Dodie66 · 13/04/2022 23:06

What do you think about the governments plan to send all asylum seekers that come to the UK to Rwanda to be processed. I think this is inhumane. A lot of them have come from places like Syria, Iran etc and travelled across the channel with all the associated risks only to be sent 6000 mile to be processed. What about the cost to do this? I think it’s a big mistake

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14
Parker231 · 16/04/2022 22:42

[quote DelilahBucket]@BewareTheLibrarians yes huge groups of young men wandering around a village in the middle of nowhere late at night or travelling into a very small town at 10pm is worrying and it is clear they are here to to work. Don't condescend me. A large group of any sex/colour/ethnicity late at night is petrifying in a tiny village.

@Parker231 my point is these men are not running from war and compared to the countries you mention, what is the population to land mass vs the UK? Perhaps that will answer your question. Rwanda needs young men to work to build the country and economy, we do not.[/quote]
Actually the U.K. does need young men to work in the economy - they would replace those who left because of Brexit.

Sounds like you are supportive of forcing immigrants to Rwanda even though the majority would have the right to remain in the U.K. - the money would be better spent on a faster and more effective process of assessing them. If only there was a U.K. government that could organise anything other than illegal parties

HalfShrunkMoreToGo · 16/04/2022 22:47

[quote DelilahBucket]@BewareTheLibrarians yes huge groups of young men wandering around a village in the middle of nowhere late at night or travelling into a very small town at 10pm is worrying and it is clear they are here to to work. Don't condescend me. A large group of any sex/colour/ethnicity late at night is petrifying in a tiny village.

@Parker231 my point is these men are not running from war and compared to the countries you mention, what is the population to land mass vs the UK? Perhaps that will answer your question. Rwanda needs young men to work to build the country and economy, we do not.[/quote]
Delilah, why are you so convinced they are not fleeing war?

Syria - UN report from Last month

"Presenting the latest UN Human Rights Council-mandated report on the nearly 11-year-old conflict at a virtual press conference in Geneva, Paulo Pinheiro, Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, described the “devastating” impact on communities.
Half the country displaced
“Hundreds of thousands have been killed, more than half of the pre-war population – somewhere in the order of 22 million - have been displaced. More than 100,000 are missing or forcibly disappeared. Syria’s cities and infrastructure have been destroyed. Today the poverty rate in Syria is an unprecedented 90 percent; 14.6 million people in Syria depend on humanitarian aid.”
In Syria’s northwest, many Syrians forced from their homes “are still living in flimsy tents, stuck in snow, rain, mud,” Mr. Pinheiro continued, before insisting that “some actors seem to spend more energy on preventing aid to get to them, rather than facilitating it”."

Afghanistan - UN story from last month

Assistance to survive the winter
Since the beginning of the year the UN agency has helped more than 500,000 Afghans through assistance and relief programmes – including more than 130,000 people to survive the winter, and over 370 thousand who benefited from health centres, schools, water systems and other infrastructure.
Mr. Grandi also visited UNHCR-built sites, including a health centre in Kandahar and a girls’ school in Jalalabad.
“Some 3.4 million people are internally displaced due to conflict, the healthcare system is experiencing severe shortages amid the COVID crisis and a measles outbreak, key workers in vital services like schools and hospitals are without salaries, while the liquidity crisis, rising global food and energy costs are having a devastating effect,” he spelled out.
“Overall, 24 million people throughout Afghanistan require humanitarian support this year and we appeal to donors to fund a large humanitarian effort.”

BewareTheLibrarians · 16/04/2022 22:53

@Justanotherlurker I’m not sure that I have said “we should do more” in any of my posts. Differently, yes, but “more” isn’t the discussion that’s being had.

The point of raising that “simplistic” percentage is that people have been misled into believing we take a much larger percentage than we actually do. It’s important to address that.

Stating that we take 8% is not asking that we should do more. It’s showing the current facts.

As for what to do to address the imbalance, as there currently is a huge imbalance with the south east bearing the brunt of the numbers, is again based in government policy. Or the lack of.

Due to the lack of safe resettlement schemes, boat crossings rise. Boat crossings invariably and unfairly affect Kent, whereas safe resettlement scheme would spread the numbers more fairly across the country.

Further to that, the answer lies in scrapping austerity, investing in communities, services, education and housing. This has been possible in the past, harder now considering the pandemic, but there’s zero political will from the current government. That’s a more pressing matter to be fixed than any complaint about asylum seekers (in my opinion).

cakeorwine · 16/04/2022 23:12

As I posted before, the polls are showing this is just a small echo chamber and not in tuch with the wider population

A poll

And you forgot to mention the YouGov poll that did not show similar

yougov.co.uk/topics/travel/survey-results/daily/2022/04/14/8bb29/1

I suppose with more discussion, more facts about what is going to actually happen to people - it's not just processing but relocation, maybe the polls might become more reflective of opinion

Asylum seekers to the UK sent to Rwanda
cakeorwine · 16/04/2022 23:17

a quick rebuttal is how to does that relate to density rates, offering a simpistic percentage is not addressing the situation at a deeper level that is going to be asked

So how many refugees do you think we should take in?

Germany took in 1 million refugees and its population density is about 10 - 15% smaller than ours.

cakeorwine · 16/04/2022 23:22

Curiously, Rwanda has twice the population density of the UK

BewareTheLibrarians · 17/04/2022 00:37

I suppose with more discussion, more facts about what is going to actually happen to people - it's not just processing but relocation, maybe the polls might become more reflective of opinion

I agree cake
For all that we can want the big answers right now, it’s not going to happen quickly. What needs to change is government policy, and one way that can come about is by us regular people being

  1. aware of policies
  2. checking that we understand the facts behind those policies
  3. protesting against those policies when we don’t agree with them.

Protesting, contacting your mp, supporting charities who support people affected by the policies, spreading awareness to others who can do the same is one way to get the message through to the government that certain policies will not be a vote winner.

Peregrina · 17/04/2022 07:18

Further to that, the answer lies in scrapping austerity, investing in communities, services, education and housing. This has been possible in the past, harder now considering the pandemic, but there’s zero political will from the current government. That’s a more pressing matter to be fixed than any complaint about asylum seekers (in my opinion).

Indeed, making "levelling up" more than a two word slogan. Just think of how much could have been done with the money wasted on Dido Harding's failed Test and Trace, the money given to dodgy mates for PPE which failed to meet the standard and wasn't usable, fraudulent furlough loans which Sunak has written off, for just a stater. In accounting terms these are "sunk costs" i.e. the money is gone, but we don't see the will to tackle such abuses so that the same doesn't happen again.

I agree with 3) protesting against those policies when we don’t agree with them. Marcus Rashford, with the public well and truly backing him, shamed MPs into voting for providing meals for children during school holidays. An outcry over the Sunak family choosing to quite legally avoid tax has also led to an outcry, when laws haven't been written to allow us ordinary folks to pick and chose which taxes to pay.

Public opinion does matter, and while Johnson's Government is busy trying to court the Red Wall electorate who gave them their majority, they are quietly losing a lot of Tory votes in the 'blue wall, having taken that electorate for granted for decades.

cakeorwine · 17/04/2022 08:30

There will be a lot of Christians listening to Justin Welby this morning. Including the so called Christians in the Tory Party.

Those Tory MPs won't be happy to hear what he has to say about the Government's decision.

carefullycourageous · 17/04/2022 08:34

Public opinion does matter, and while Johnson's Government is busy trying to court the Red Wall electorate who gave them their majority, they are quietly losing a lot of Tory votes in the 'blue wall, having taken that electorate for granted for decades.

This is very important and like all very broad voter coalitions the Tories are struggling to hold it together long term. The latest poll in the DM has Labour with a 9 point lead - and there is serious concern that the Tories are under threat in rural counties.

annabelindajane · 17/04/2022 12:02

There’s a lot of hysteria and hand wringing around this . Even if we had an open arms policy for everyone it wouldn’t stop the illegal people smugglers . It’s targeted at Economic male migrants .

If there was less corruption in African countries where the leaders steal all the wealth then maybe they would stay there .

And please don’t say it was Colonialism that made them all so corrupt .
Liberia and Ethiopia were never colonised and they are as poor and corrupt as rest of Africa . Malaysia and Singapore were colonised and look at them now .

Peregrina · 17/04/2022 13:18

None of you seem to be able to answer what is wrong with what you call economic migrants want to come to a country and find work? If we had 50% of young people without work then yes, I might agree, we didn't need more, but we are an aging population.

annabelindajane · 17/04/2022 13:48

I think the Elephant in the room that none may whisper is that a lot of the economic migrants from non war torn countries often don’t work once they get here .

Peregrina · 17/04/2022 13:51

I think the Elephant in the room that none may whisper is that a lot of the economic migrants from non war torn countries often don’t work once they get here .

And you know this because......?
Or it is just that their skin is the wrong colour and they don't worship in the same way as we used to?

annabelindajane · 17/04/2022 14:05

No just a different culture entirely from ours . Different values and way of looking at things . Nothing wrong with that at all just doesn’t always fit in so easily in UK

Ylvamoon · 17/04/2022 14:35

None of you seem to be able to answer what is wrong with what you call economic migrants want to come to a country and find work? If we had 50% of young people without work then yes, I might agree, we didn't need more, but we are an aging population

The majority of economic migrants are male and besides a job they need:

  • housing
  • access to training
  • acess to health care
  • a partner as they might want to start a family OR bring a partner over from their country in which case they need
  • a bigger home
  • school/ nursery places
  • additional acess to health care.

We currently don't have enough for our existing population, so naturally people who have experience with the overstretched services will not be very welcoming.

woodhill · 17/04/2022 14:55

Will they be prepared to work in care homes or pick fruit which is what is needed?

Peregrina · 17/04/2022 15:09

Will they be prepared to work in care homes or pick fruit which is what is needed?

How about letting them try? I don't exactly see a flood of British people queuing up for those jobs and a lot of us are now too old to do them.

As for "we don't have enough for our own population" - it's bollocks. It has been a political choice to run down the NHS and to not provide enough housing.

annabelindajane · 17/04/2022 15:11

I think the care home work and fruit picking are largely seen as womens work - as I said different culture .

woodhill · 17/04/2022 15:18

Exactly, so what jobs can they do and is there a requirement for their skills?

I agree that our own population may not want to do caring but it's complex because the wages are so low and rents high

woodhill · 17/04/2022 15:20

Surely if there are even more people here then the housing and hospital waiting lists are going to get worse.

lollipoprainbow · 17/04/2022 15:49

As for "we don't have enough for our own population" - it's bollocks. It has been a political choice to run down the NHS and to not provide enough housing.

Political choice or not it's still a massive issue.

lollipoprainbow · 17/04/2022 15:50

@woodhill well of course anyone with a brain can see that but it's not allowed to be said here without the racist card being handed out.

woodhill · 17/04/2022 15:54

It causes resentment

Ylvamoon · 17/04/2022 15:58

As for "we don't have enough for our own population" - it's bollocks

It's not bollocks. There IS a housing shortage and the NHS ISN'T coping with demand.

You can give as many reasons as you like, even with extra funding, the bottom line will stay the same for many years to come: sadly there isn't enough to go around.