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?

I thought people working in this field signed a confidentiality clause? My bad.

Exactly - it your child is at school in London, it is likely that they only have a maths education because of refugee maths teachers

Really? How many are there?

firstly no, so yes, your bad, and secondly, in what way has any confidentiality been broken? I guarantee there isn't a single sector in the country where no refugees are employed - that must be so blatantly obvious that I am wondering why you are pretending not to know?

I have no problem with student visas, I'd gladly increase them.

It is amazing what you learn when you take an interest in people and chat to them as a fellow human being.

Student visas are going to increase, because home undergraduate tuition fees haven't increased for 10 years and we all know what inflation is like. The only way universities can continue to be viable is to increase probably to over 30% the proportion of international fee payers.

I don’t begrudge them at all either. It’s good we have an attractive system where people pay over the odds to study here.

And despite posts regarding fees not rising enough in pp it’s pretty expensive already.

25% of 75,000 is 18750.

So less than the population of the largest village in the UK.

Or are you objecting to the UK granting asylum to anyone?

@Nevermay Oh, so now you're a mind-reader and have magical insight into my motivations.?

Maybe their employers respect their confidentiality.

Don’t be ridiculous- there’s nothing a landlord could be taken to court over, nor that a local housing officer would be interested in. Some very privileged people on this thread.

Would you? how many?

There were 3,057,654 visas granted in the year ending March 2023, 90% higher (1,449,071) than the year ending March 2022. This was primarily due to 944,957 (+155%) more grants of Visitor visas, but also due to more grants for:

• work visas (including dependants), up 211,285 (+76%) to 487,771
• study visas (including dependants), up 161,771 (+34%) to 632,006, including sponsored and short-term students

(May 2023)

Over 600k! thats more than twice the size of Plymouth, crazy, Students or those on temp work permits shouldn't be allowed to bring in partners and children, thats called settling here.

Tbf I wouldn’t 58,000 people or so as a village - more as a large town or even a small city.

I think maybe I misunderstood you.

I thought you were concerned about those asylum seekers whose applications were rejected, who would not fill the largest village in the UK.

This was wrong, you are worried that there are too many people coming to the UK who are fleeing war, persecution or whatever the reason was they were granted asylum.

I can't quite understand why one would be concerned about the less than 10% of migrants to the UK who are fleeing persecution, and not the other 90% who aren't.

Students come and pay fees, plus spending their money in our economy.

The 600,000 are spread across all universities, not in one single settlement

The visas are up because European students have been replaced.

What are you frightened of?
Why do you want less money to be brought into our economy - do you like people being out of work?

@calmcoco Well that was a good deal then, replace EU students with more students who bring their dependents with them and many don't return home or even complete their courses.
UK is notorious for not returning over stayers, estimated to be over 1m.

600k over many Uni's across the country? that would apply to cross channel migrants too...... & you want more, how many 1m? 2m? or 5m ?

The UK simply doesn't have the infrastructure, housing etc to just keep inviting more and more people in but course if we didn't have e.g in Plymouth, 1100 people biding 110 social houses each year, then of course but thats not the situation.... folk are also waiting 3 weeks to see a GP or can't get their kids into a local school.

Immigration, inc Student and temp worker visas needs to be managed but atm, its a fee for all.

The challenge with keeping the number of overseas students static or reducing it is that international fees subsidise home students and this is becoming increasingly acute with inflation being high and home fees being static. There are suggestions that without a significant increase in the number of international students some universities will go bust in the next year or two.

Ooh...I know!
Sunderland!
Slough?
The stadium of light...?

I don't fully understand why the govt is paying so much to house 500 migrants in a barge if there are 77,000 here. Seems like pissing in the wind tbh

Has anyone kept count of the numerous bigoted/xenophobic posters I imagine this thread has attracted?

I think a count of how many new to MN posters we have welcomed to this thread would be interesting.

Alexandra2001
160k people have been given the visas, 82 refusals... seems open border to me

You have misread the report - 82 is the number of in-country BN(O) visa refusals from October to December 2022. There were 353 visa refusals in total during that 3 month period and 9132 BN(O) visa grants.

We know more about the people coming from Hong Kong than we did about the people filing in from the EU. And recently you claimed that we could easily deport EU citizens who were not economic contributors to the country - but it was quite the opposite of easy:
In exceptional cases, your host country can deport you on grounds of public policy or public security - but only if it can prove you represent a serious threat.

When the claims are processed, they will be able to work, and so access private rented housing or council housing etc, like everyone else.

Is this a joke?

We have massive housing shortages and affordability issues in the uk. Hundreds of thousands of existing residents are already on council waiting lists decades long. Private landlords will not touch a new resident to the country with zero credit & employment history. Many asylum seekers can be lacking the language and education (or evidence of it) to gain well paid employment even once asylum is granted.

Asylum seekers are likely to move from the barge, to equally low quality overcrowded b&b type accomodation for the homeless, as we simply have nothing else.

The government says there are 700,000 empty homes in the UK, they don't actually count all empty homes, so the true number is likely to be over a million.