It is not illegal to be an asylum seeker

[antelopevalley]

It is legal to cross the channel in a boat and claim asylum when you reach Britain. People who do this are not illegal, they are acting within the law.

where is everyone going to live?

Perhaps you could ask Rishi Sunak to reinstate housebuilding targets.

here's some news all the anti asylum seeker folks on this thread will no doubt be really pleased about

Sickening.

It is illegal to enter the country with no visa.
Do you have the money to support them please do. I’d much rather spend taxes on sorting out the nhs, rather than economic migrants from Albania.

Not sure why anyone would be surprised tbh. The immigration system has been designed on every level to be unappealing, difficult, discriminatory and expensive. They've just stopped trying to hide it.
IMO it's no coincidence that the prime Minister and home sec pushing this through are who they are - makes it much more palatable to the masses.
Refugees and migrants in general are nothing more than political cannon fodder - and clearly it works.

it is illegal to enter the country with no visa

No. It. Is. Not.

If you are in danger in your country of origin or residence, and you want the UK to grant you international protection, you can claim asylum when you are in the UK.

However, it is not possible to claim asylum from outside the UK, and there is no visa which allows people to enter the UK in order to claim asylum. This means that most people have no choice but to enter the UK without permission. People may come hidden in vehicles, on boats, or by aeroplane using a false passport.

This thread (bar a few decent people) makes me wish Earth would be struck by a giant asteroid so that the cockroaches could have a go. I think they'd do better.

Yes, it really is illegal to enter the UK without the necessary leave to enter.

We just don’t prosecute those people who claim asylum because it is recognised that they have no choice but to enter illegally if they want to claim asylum. It doesn’t matter how many full stops you use. It’s still a law. It’s still being broken every time someone enters without leave. It doesn’t cease to exist simply because it isn’t enforced in a very specific set of circumstances.

And that's the point of the original quote. We can offer safe crossings for asylum seekers, combined with an efficient system for processing asylum claims. It's easily the best way to stop illegal and dangerous small boats from crossing. But the government won't do that because Sunak wants to play to the Mail and Braverman isn't bothered by drowning children.

But that wouldn't discourage small boats. What would, of course, is the availability of safe passage.

There is no reason to believe that offering safe passage will mean that everyone flocks to the UK. Job prospects are better in countries like Germany, and refugees tend to have ties in countries all over the world, not just here. If we couple the offer of safe passage with a quick, efficient processing system which means that false claims are weeded out and the individuals concerned quickly repatriated, that is a better disincentive. If people have a genuine claim to asylum, what difference does it make if people are processed inside the UK or outside?

We have major problems in terms of staffing a number of industries, not least health and care. We need immigration. The notion that genuine refugees are automatically a burden needs to be knocked on the head.

It really isn't. My post was taken from here.

I'll use as many full stops As. I. Like.

righttoremain.org.uk/toolkit/enter-uk-asylum/

If you disagree I suggest you contact them.

^^ This.
Whilst some of their fanbase are worked up about people on boats in the Channel, they aren't looking at the bigger picture.... everything from VIP channelling of money to donors and the likes of Mone, to 12 years of austerity meaning the NHS is on its knees.

Yes. And you need to bear in mind... I can see the twisting back and forth some posters are doing so they don't say what they really want to, which might well break talk guidelines. It must be wearing.

If you’ve read what that website says, and still think it isn’t an offence, then I can only assume you’ve skim read it and misunderstood.

And I didn’t suggest you couldn’t use as many full stops as you like. But it still won’t make your incorrect assertion correct.

@Roussette that document states it is against the law of this country to enter without permission.

AFAIK Australia successfully stopped the crossings without offering safe passage?

@MintyFreshOne if you think the Australian model is the way forward then I despair.

First safe country makes sense, until you realise that that means in every humanitarian crisis that means a very small number of countries, who often aren't in great shape themselves, are shouldering the brunt of it.

I would like to see a system where someone can claim asylum in the first county, and it's decided by an international court there and then they can put in a request for the country they would like to get to, and the reasons why (eg family). Then they would be taken to it safely.
Each country could be given a quota, and countries who for various reasons perhaps have smaller quotas would pay towards countries who can take more.

I wish that the asylum process could be made less brutal for those in it. We have to always remember that they are people too, and who knows what desperate measures we'd go to for our families if we were in their situation.

@MargaretThursday I assume that method would hopefully stop some of the trafficking that happens, and also all family could travel together.

Whether they’re left behind to deal with whoever the male is running from, or they’re left to feed and keep a roof over the heads of children in a patriarchal society where women are considered second class citizens and working is not the norm

So we accept the women and young children. I don’t see why anyone should accept healthy young men unless they are specifically targeted by authorities for their activism or anti-government activities.

Not sure where you’ve got that idea from, but that’s not true.

Albanian men do not generally have a basis for successful application as blood feuds are not part state persecution. I have known that women can get successful applications for trafficking and gender-based violence.

I also recall reading an interview with a British woman who claimed asylum in the US

Lets see if she’s successful. I highly doubt she would be.

You see, this is the trouble when people who have no idea about the asylum process think they have the solution. Who is neediest?

You take women, girls, elderly over young/single men. Tired of seeing boatloads of healthy, young men who are least in need of help.

And how do you tell until you’ve registered their application for asylum and interviewed them. And what do you think constitutes a proper background check on people who are very often undocumented and fleeing from the authorities of their home country

This is why intakes should be considered from refugee camps and the like, where background checks are easier to manage and will often have people from the same villages within to corroborate details.

The US often takes refugees from the MENA this way and it is largely uncontroversial because it’s mostly women and families. It’s the border arrivals that rankle

When did racism and xenophobia become so prevalent here.

@Gilead it was a long time coming, but it's accelerated since 2016. Mumsnet merely reflects what's happening outside it.

Spot on.

@caringcarer You mentioned your Syrian student came via a legal route with his family. Unfortunately, that legal route closed in 2020. What’s the option for Syrian people now?

The legal routes from Afghanistan aren’t working out too well either. There are 3 separate routes, and while one of them has been marginally successful, another has taken a total of 4 people, and the Afghan Citizens Resettlement scheme which has been open since January has taken 0 (zero) people. The boat that sank in the channel the other day had many asylum seekers from Afghanistan, forced into that position by being deserted by the UK government.

@MintyFreshOne
“I don’t see why anyone should accept healthy young men unless they are specifically targeted by authorities for their activism or anti-government activities.”

This covers asylum seekers from Iran (young men being executed by the state right now for supporting women’s protests.) And asylum seekers from Eritrea, where teenagers and young men are targeted for forced labour for forced conscription. And asylum seekers from Afghanistan, where young men were involved in security and diplomatic work alongside the British army, and were promised evacuation. That evacuation didn’t happen, and now they are being harrassed, arrested or executed by the Taliban. Basically, it covers the majority of asylum seekers.

That’s not a criticism of your post, by the way and I hope it doesn’t come across like that. Some posters suggest that asylum seekers must all be economic migrants because they’re all young men, and don’t ever seem to understand the realities of the countries they’re talking about.