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?

Look, I CBA to continue arguing.

The anti overseas student approach = smaller economy, low growth, fewer jobs, fewer shops, less regeneration etc.

You could read up on it if you want, but if you just want fewer people from overseas here, I assume you won't.

Overseas students have fuck all to do with the NHS, social housing etc.

Iwasafool
Did the rooms you saw at St Andrews and Durham have 4 to a room, how big were they?

The two-bed rooms I saw were smallish, a bit grotty with no room dividers from what I can remember (2019). Not four to a room but they were £7,000 per annum per student. I haven't seen any photographs of the bedrooms with four beds on the Bibby Stockholm - how many are there? I thought most of the rooms had one bunk-bed with an en-suite shower and toilet?

I do know someone who used to host language students on summer courses in her home (6/8 years ago) - they were indeed hosted four to a room in two bunk beds.
Four to a room here as well -
https://www.yha.org.uk/dorms

Don't they have two or three students to a room at colleges in the US?

It's really difficult to rent at the moment and there is a shortage of properties

If people think immigration into the west is bad now, wait till climate change really gets going, and some places become uninhabitable (ironically largely down to what the wealthier countries do).

Well played, super wealthy, get the proles ripping poorer proles and each other apart while you keep making more profit.

and like Gary Lineker, the phrase ‘these people’ sounds unpleasantly familiar.

@calmcoco Well you did reply!

The millions of people who come here on work and student visa's put pressures on roads, schools, NHS and housing... they also come with dependants

We could of course fund Uni's properly, along with all the other public services that are falling to bits, instead of relying on ever more people from overseas to do it instead..... its just not sustainable.

The UK’s skills shortage isn’t just highly qualified roles. We lack lorry drivers, fruit pickers, hospitality staff, care assistants - the shortages for the higher qualified roles are to do with how the UK decides to value those roles. The shortages of the min wage type jobs are down to ‘controlling our borders Brexit’. When Remain pointed out this would happen, exactly this, it was called Project Fear.

So well done, you kicked out the Eastern Europeans, but because of also stepping out of the shared system with France, you’re now unhappy with the number of brown people coming. No one in the countries people are coming from reads the British news, so barge, Rwanda, whatever, they will still come, for any number of reasons.

This thread has confirmed what I suspected, and it’s scary.

And then there's this

The Eastern Europeans haven’t been really kicked out though.
I‘m an EU citizen myself and I totally get it that some people decided to leave following the Brexit referendum result, but as an EU citizen, if you arrived in the UK before 2021 (so years after the referendum) you were able to apply for the (pre) settled status.
If I remember correctly, I only had to prove I‘d arrived before that date and my status was granted, at no cost to me.
FWIW there is a large community of Eastern Europeans where I live.

@Swansandcustard So well done, you kicked out the Eastern Europeans,

errr, nooo.

You obviously haven't been to Boston (Lincs) it's like the capital of Poland now.

https://notesfrompoland.com/2020/02/03/this-isnt-my-birthplace-but-its-where-i-belong-poles-face-future-in-britains-most-pro-brexit-town/

Its not that people moved back to their country of origin (they did, i no longer see the EU plated cars or hear the european languages spoken in my local supermarkets as before) its that the UK is no longer attractive for EU workers to come here.
Why pay for visa's health min savings etc when you can move to Germany etc with none of these issues?

Brexit was also the UK telling the EU and its citizens that we don't need you.

Hopefully I won't be alive

That is nothing new.
It's one of the arguments against immigration from some areas.

From You.Gov- TB in migrant populations
"People born in a country with a high incidence of TB represent one of the groups at highest risk of developing active TB in the UK. People born outside the UK accounted for most TB notifications in England (76.4%) in 2021. Most non-UK born cases were from the Indian subcontinent and Africa."

@Alexandra2001
A foreign registered vehicle can be used in the UK for six months if it is fully taxed in the home country. After this, the vehicle must be registered with the DVLA and will no longer have a foreign registration plate. link

No one in the countries people are coming from reads the British news, so barge, Rwanda, whatever, they will still come, for any number of reasons.

If that’s really the case, then why don’t they read the news? Wouldn’t you want to inform yourself about the country you’re planning to move to?
It‘s just strange that on the one hand people say that asylum seekers coming to the UK are doing it specifically because they speak the language and have friends/ relatives here, but on the other hand that they’re completely unaware of the issues widely discussed on the local media, even though those issues would affect them.

I know that, the point is, there are few new EU workers coming here, hence we have to get HCPs from Asia/Africa, with the result that their countries lose much needed skills and we often get staff with poor language skills and not equivalent training.

Also, the law on foreign cars was never enforced, how could it be? EU folk didn't have passports stamped etc.... who knew how long you'd been here.

Swansandcustard
The UK’s skills shortage isn’t just highly qualified roles. We lack lorry drivers, fruit pickers, hospitality staff, care assistants - the shortages for the higher qualified roles are to do with how the UK decides to value those roles. The shortages of the min wage type jobs are down to ‘controlling our borders Brexit’. When Remain pointed out this would happen, exactly this, it was called Project Fear.

Well, the lorry drivers complained that they were being undercut by Eastern European drivers on lower wages (who were often sleeping in their cabs) - now the haulage industry has been forced to restructure (to a certain extent) and train more homegrown truck drivers with higher wages - which to many people would seem a positive step. The fruit picker problem can be solved with seasonal work visas. The over-reliance on cheap agency staff (of all nationalities) was one of the reasons why Covid spread to different care homes - because agency staff often worked in more than one home. Some agency staff were also sharing multi-occupancy accommodation (but working in different homes) and/or sharing lifts to and from work in cramped vehicles. So a restructure in that industry is overdue.

stepping out of the shared system with France

Is that the shared system where we end up with more asylum seekers than we started with? Some stats here on the EU's website: In 2019 the UK transferred out 263 asylum seekers to the EU and accepted 714 asylum seekers in return;
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/DDN-20201009-1

Similar situation in 2018;
In 2018, the the UK received a total of 37,453 asylum applications, and made 5,510 outgoing requests under Dublin III. Of these 5,510 requests, 209 migrants were transferred out of the UK under Dublin III, whilst 1,215 came in, making the UK a net recipient in 2018.

Also happened in the building industry.

The smugglers likely play a role. They’ll know there’s political and legal wrangling which is slowing down change so they might say go now before you can’t or it’ll be fine.

They will be good at selling the process generally

i no longer see the EU plated cars or hear the european languages spoken in my local supermarkets as before

But that’s anecdotal - where I live you hear European languages (often Romanian, but also others) spoken all the time. There is a large Romanian community here.
And EU citizens who moved here before 2021 didn’t need visa and were able to get the (pre) settled status and stay.

No one in the countries people are coming from reads the British news, so barge, Rwanda, whatever, they will still come, for any number of reasons.

Well to be fair - Leo Varadkar was partly blaming the UK's Rwanda policy for the increase in asylum seekers in Ireland - but perhaps he was just looking for excuses.

Someone was trying to blame the U.K. for Tunisia to Italy deaths the other day

Plus you have stirring in Africa to destabilise EU via people movement

Yes, I think you’re right.

I know that, the point is, there are few new EU workers coming here, hence we have to get HCPs from Asia/Africa, with the result that their countries lose much needed skills

But wasn’t that also the case for the EU countries HCPs used to come from?

we often get staff with poor language skills and not equivalent training

Yet some people on this thread argue that asylum seekers could start working for the NHS upon arrival - wouldn’t that present exactly the same issues with language skills and more importantly, equivalent training?

No because in the EU, we had equivalent training standards, recognised across the EU, also, we dropped the English language requirements, sp my DD was working in the NHS, she even went to a training event about the pros and cons of foreign workers in the trust.. upshot is we need them but the trust also has to make provision to supervise in many cases.

I don't think anyone would compare Poland, Spain or Romania to Bangladesh, Nepal, the Philippines or Zimbabwe.

Yes, would be madness to just accept someone's word that they are a HCP.

BUT for those that wanted too, why not open up caring roles, agri work, give training in English etc?

atm they are just sitting in hotels etc doing nothing at all, for years, likely as not they'll stay here, so lets make use of that time?

Germany does something similar, giving a work visa for those waiting for asylum claims to be processed.

Estimates are around 1m who applied for settled status left the UK, it was always a rotation of workers coming and going, its just now those arriving has stopped.