The immigrant barge - what’s actually wrong with using it?

[NC523]

Educate me!

I looked at pics from the inside, it all looks very much like standard student accommodation to me, including common rooms/relaxation areas/health support on board. Residents can go on & off the boat, it’s passed fire etc safety and been used to house people in lots of other situations. I don’t understand why people think it’s not ok. Can anyone explain please?

This is in response to Elepunt's comment

I understand that a minister this morning on a media show said that it is right to process applications slowly as this acts as a deterent. Or in other words, government policy is to keep people in hotels for as long as possible.

@NC523 what sort of student accommodation have you seen? my DD stayed in a very nice room, large, only her, communal facilities.

Regardless of the quality of this barge's accommodation, its going to house 500 out of a total backlog of 137,000, so we will need 276 barges around the UK, the chances of a migrant ending up in this boat is going to be very small, so zero deterrent.

The public support for these barges will very quickly wane when we have barges in dotted around the coast.

Something that is perhaps not much discussed is that the government want us to think of these barges as a deterrent and somewhere that it would be not very nice to live, whilst simaltaneously insisting that they are pleasant humane places with adequant facilities.

@bellac11

There is a 4 star hotel in the town next to us with hundreds and hundreds of asylum seekers in. A very tiny amount of those housed are women and children.
The crime rate has gone through the roof. Theft has gone through the roof. 4 school girls have been sexually assaulted by the asylum seekers that have been reported to the police. They are mostly men, they catcall, beg, harass women. It's a really big problem. The hotel is a 10 minute walk from the town centre and they are causing so much trouble for residents. They are stealing bikes, money, they are rinsing the local sainsburys. Before anyone comes at me, I know there is crime everywhere. I know that non-immigrants do plenty enough of the crime.

But the crime levels have sky rocketed. To the point the hotel has been bordered up outside and the general public can't get in. (The asylum seekers can get out.) I don't know if they've done this to try and control the issue. My cousin was a housekeeper at the hotel (which only has the immigrants in, no other people can stay) and she had to leave as grown men were sexually harassing her. 2 men tried to lock the doors when she was cleaning their room. The guys hang around women workers with their phones and make a nuisance of themselves. She has been groped and followed. She got followed on nearly every shift. They steal from the local pharmacy and hang around you when you're at the cash point.

Genuine asylum seekers deserve dignity and respect. They deserve to have suitable accommodation and basic human rights. But a lot of the men that have been put in our local 4 star hotel, from the behaviour of them, it maybe wouldn't be such a bad thing to put them on the barge. A lot of them come from safe European countries. They haven't got here on a dingy from their fleeing country.

Yes, they have the rights to respect and dignity. But the girls that go to the school next to the hotel have the right to a safe journey to school without being ringfenced down an alleyway by these men.

People moaning about the barge, perhaps if you lived with this in your town, you would have a slightly different mindset.

They did exactly the same with Rwanda.

It's happening all over.
This is what you get when you introduce men whose culture allows poor attitudes towards women into our country.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1736568/Skegness-migrant-Lincolnshire-police

My DH dealt with 14 illegals on a lorry at a well known drop off point last week. The system means they are taken in, prints taken then put in taxis to go to another place to check in, unescorted, then let go. The vast majority do not appear at this place. They disappear. That’s the issue, in my eyes. They won’t adhere to the rule of returning to the barge.

Its probably goverrnment policy to hope that they disappear, then they won't be on the asylum list.

See https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1687901561282772992.html

Wouldn’t amaze me, bit like the French policy of ignoring the many boats which are nicely visible once they’ve left the dunes and are in open water. How much are we paying them? 500 mil?

That article is appalling and there is no evidence of any issues towards women in it
People have been shocked. Ladies are feeling very threatened because they are all men in their early 20s.

Very Little Britain

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) have called it a potential death trap because of concerns about overcrowding and access to fire exits on the vessel.

These vulnerable and traumatised people. They shouldn’t need to be on a barge, or in refugee camps, or in luxury hotels. Their applications for asylum should be being processed as quickly as possible so they can settle & get on with their lives.

This issue with asylum seekers is because we left the EU so are no longer part of the Dublin convention

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/the-facts/what-is-the-dublin-regulation/

Conveniently a lot of right wing Brexit supporters won't acknowledge this. But saying Brexit would mean we "took control" of our borders and could reduce immigration was a lie.

Why would the EU want to spend time and resources preventing refugees coming here? They don't need to any more.

The government have entirely caused this problem with bad policy and horrific underfunding of the public sector.

Anyone who was a GENUINE asylum seeker, that is, a tiny proportion of the vast numbers of young men coming here, would surely not object to this. As many of the towns now housing large numbers of these men are finding, it has a negative effect on the local population, with women and girls being harrassed, petty crime, fighting between different ethnic groups/nationalities.
What is so wrong with housing these people on a barge? Many homeless people would welcome a free roof over their head, 3 meals a day, free transport, legal assistance, healthcare, activities, trips out.
Yes, I have had experience of this before I get jumped on - I used to work in a language school where we had to give English lessons to these people, again all young men (why do whinging liberal objectors never question the absence of women and children?). Some female teachers were in tears every day due to harrassment and groping and refused to continue, under threat of dismissal. Sometimes we asked these young men what they were fleeing from, to be told 'ha ha, no problem, my cousin/uncle/etc called me and said come to UK and live for free' .... and words to that effect. I met only ONE genuine asylum seeker during my three years there, an Afghan man.
The system is way beyond broken. No-one objects to helping those in genuine need, but those are now a tiny minority of the number paying to get to the UK, as they know they will be housed, fed, looked after and never asked to leave.

Alexandra just visited Imperial, ‘choice’ of rooms (obviously not everyone gets their choice). One option was a shared room, each person get a single bed, storage under, plus a bedside table/desk (v narrow for a desk). Student showing us round said people would go to the library to have space to work. Shared bathroom & kitchen facilities (10-15 people). Looks to me like previously single rooms have just had a partial partition added, there’s really only room to sleep & store your (minimal) stuff, and only 1 person gets the window. It’s clean, functional & perfectly ok, but frankly, much worse that the barge.

Adam I confess I haven’t read the article, but several pp’s are describing actual sexual harassment events in the ‘real world’. Are you suggesting they are all made up?

0021 I don’t disagree, but given the existing situation, the immigrants have to be housed somewhere right now. Where would you suggest?

This was the point I was trying to make yesterday. This problem won't be solved until large numbers of migrants are housed in the likes of Henley-on-Thames. That'll focus minds alright.

Look what happened when the Governor of Florida moved a coach load of migrants up to Martha's Vineyard; they were moved back out in no time. Funny that.

so everybody gets a place to sit down?
everyone has the option to go to the library?
everyone has a day time timetable that will keep them busy in any case.
everyone has the option of going out in the evening.
(everyone has the option to go! just go! anywhere!)
there are kitchen facilities, there is the option to eat out, or aet your own supermarket bought food, anytime, anywhere
And most important, everyone gets the option of living somewhere else if they choose to!

so in other words, hundreds of times better than the barge. There is no comparison, and I can't think why you would think that there is.

These are not "immigrants" these are asylum seekers, and they only have to be housed at pubic expense WHILE they are asylum seekers, before they are processed - so what I would suggest is PROCESS THEM

then there won't be all thee people needing asylum seeker accommodation, will there!

Why is this hard to understand? The back log exist because the government has not processed these claims - process the claims= no back log

I, on the other hand have met hundreds of woman and children asylum seekers. So I don't have any time for anyone claiming to work with refugees or asylum seekers and saying they have never met any woman and children

It’s an accepted fact though that 90% are male. That’s not me making a value judgement, it’s the recorded figure.

no its not, it is not even that in the UK, where it is more like 3:1, and internationally it is 50:50.

20% of people granted refugee status in the UK are officially under 18.

And it is likely to be more in reality, but if you don't have a record of your birth, the home office gives you an official birth date, and if you are around 15 or over, that is likely to be a birth date that places you in the over 18 catagory

Nevermay can’t you understand that it is just not possible to increase processing capacity so quickly? I totally agree that needs to be done, and I think the gov should have been doing it before now. Still, People to process the applications need to be recruited and trained, and as has been pointed out, there is a huge backlog. So asylum seekers (regardless of their age, sex, status) need somewhere temporary to live right now. If you don’t think the barge is ok, where do you suggest?

Plus, everyone has been very clear that people can leave the barge at will, so no, I don’t think your reasons make it worse

In answer to your question, I’d favour hotels over the barge, which feels like performative cruelty to cover up for the governments own complete incompetence in creating such a huge back log.