A good answer to "how many asylum seekers do you have living with you?"

[SomersetBrie]

I see this quite a lot in a fairly supportive group I belong to.
Lots of people dispelling the myth that asylum seekers are raking it in, taking jobs and benefits, etc.
A positive space and then someone comes in saying "if you are so supportive of asylum seekers, how many fighting age men do you have living with you?"
It really annoys me! It's possible to be supportive of a cause without actually taking people in.
All I can think of is really rude responses, I'd like something measured and decent and not allow them to get away with shutting people down with that.

(and I know I'll get negative responses to this post, but I will be super grateful to anyone who can come up with something I can use)

I’m more responding to posts who answer with it’s terrible here as if there’s an equivalence. I don’t think there is, and given the chance to swap most would agree the culture here is better for women and girls.

I believe that everyone in the world should have a safe place to live, enough food and water and good sanitation. That doesn't mean that Britain as a country of 70 million can afford to pay for it for any if the 8 billion people on the planet that don't have it.

I don’t have any firemen living with me, but I support the fire service. I don’t have any lollipop ladies living with me, but I like that there’s one outside my child’s school.

Oh dear. Do you know how many veterans and their spouses there are that work their socks off to find homes, food, support for homeless veterans? Don’t ask that in front of a veteran. Veterans are last on the list to be helped, by government, local authorities, even charities.

Don’t you think a homeless veteran is more worthy of our admittedly limited public support????

No, but you should be supporting British veterans first.

Your taxes aren’t there to simply provide for the less fortunate or lazy.

They should be there to give us an actually quality of life, not just to act as a life support system for those with endless ‘needs’.

I truly believe British people are becoming depressed through a lack of beauty and enjoyment. Councils are closing swimming pools and libraries and letting our towns descend into graffiti and rubbish ridden shit holes to throw every penny at SEN and elderly care.

Our spending money to do with what we please - and bear in mind this isn’t just money to buy ‘stuff’ it’s also money to buy healthy food, gym memberships, educational or cultural activities and mentally stimulating hobbies - is dwindling as everyone cries for higher taxes because ‘what about people on benefits??? What about pensioners???’

Public good will has been so stretched far beyond what is any reasonable level that they’ve become angry, resentful and this inevitably leads to right wing politics as the politics of low taxes. It’s utterly predictable yet the left whine on about yet more taxes and more immigration, like that won’t lead to more resentment and more support for parties like Reform.

I won’t be voting Reform but I don’t care if they get in because like half the population I’m sick to death of our country revolving around those who can’t be bothered to look after themselves, or who believe they are entitled to live off us for free while catcalling our daughters

Veterans are slightly less likely to be homeless than non veterans from the same demographic. It's more that they require specific mental health support etc that isn't always available than that they are pushed to the back of the queue for the resources. The general resources that are available aren't always what they need.

They changed the rules recently to give veterans greater priority to council houses/social housing. On the surface this was a good move. However, "Veterans" included non citizens, resident in the UK who had fought with the UK army or served as interpreters. Of course it did. They risked their lives. They are veterans. But this meant the papers could run headlines like "refugees given priority over British citizens for council housing". They completely neglected to mention this very specific group of refugees were those who fought with the UK army. Many of whom had been evacuated due to immediate danger and had been staying in hotels.

But if Afghanistan is an unsafe place for women and girls, what else can that be down to other than the behaviour of Afghan men?

So unless you honestly believe in good faith that Afghanistan is a no more dangerous place for women and girls than the UK is, mustn't it follow that Afghan men are - on average - more of a danger to women and girls then UK men are?

So why should we welcome them?

Of course you might actually really believe that Afghanistan is no more dangerous for women and girls than the UK is...

And I'm not sure that most posters do agree that asylum seekers and refugees are fleeing unsafe countries. I'm sure many are economic migrants

Exactly.

If the Afghan men crossing the channel aren’t part of the pool of men oppressing women in Afghanistan, then who is? Some special subset of men that aren’t crossing the channel for reasons that aren’t clear?

This issue has so many of the Rotherham hallmarks. Women’s lives are so cheap in order to preserve the ‘greater good’

There’s a simple answer to that!

Just be honest and say you don’t want them living with you, what’s their defence to the argument anyway? That they should be out on the streets completely unchecked? - they’re already here so they need to be put somewhere.

Personally (unpopular opinion incoming), they should be kept in detention centres until asylum is granted or at least identity verified. There have somewhere safe to stay, food provided but they are kept within a gated area until they are deemed safe to integrate. Only problem with that is reviewing asylum is a very slow process!

Allowing people unchecked into the country when you have no idea of their criminal background, intentions or understanding of if they even want to integrate is just asking for trouble.

The maths here is flawed.

The number of people to be housed is often rising by 1000 each day. When the person is allowed to stay they will still need to be housed - in a country with a housing crisis putting further pressure on housing. The cost of providing temporary housing is bankrupting London Councils and the pressure is only rising.

Two houses beside me housed asylum seekers. It didn't affect me one way or the other.

We support them by using the taxes they pay, and the wealth they generate. The same way as we do for those who were born here. By every single metric, migration benefits the economy. Study after study has shown that.

The reason we are in the mess we’re in is NOT migration. A combination of factors have led to an increase in prices, most of which are global and outwith our control, then there is our self-own Brexit which hasn’t helped the situation. On top of that you had a Tory government who for 14 years refused to get to grips with growth and instead, gave preferential treatment to large businesses and wealthy people. The biggest impact on government spending over the last 50 years is the aging population, the ponzi scheme which is the state pension and that subsequent governments have been too afraid to make any changes to it because of their solid voter base being in that age bracket.

The end of the free movement of people has been catastrophic for businesses, particularly in the construction, agricultural and service industries. Many businesses have been forced to shutdown or reduce their opening hours because there is a shortage of staff. I work in construction. The latest tender return I’ve had is charging £30 per hour for a site labourer. That’s an unskilled operative. 5 years ago that charge out rate was £20. That’s a direct result of a shortage of workforce in the construction industry. Construction projects are stalled, shelved or cancelled because they are too expensive. That means they are generating fewer taxes, and putting less money into the economy. Hospitals and care homes are having to rely on bank staff, paying agencies a % of their costs in order to keep places running. More money going to corporate UK and shareholders rather than in to the services which are suffering because of it.

I am really, really concerned that the narrative blaming migration for all the UK’s ills will lead to a government who has promised getting rid of migrants will solve our problems. What then? What happens when it doesn’t?

We saw it with Brexit. Eurosceptics in politics grabbing the opportunity to “up yours Delores” Europe, as they have been trying to do for decades, regardless of how that will impact the country. Telling the U.K. that Brexit would solve the problems. We’d be awash with cash and the pesky forrin people would go back to their own countries, and that would be great. Now that it hasn’t, now that we are still spiralling the economy into the toilet, they want to say it’s still the migrants’ fault, but this time it’s those brown ones from over there. Oh and, Covid and the Ukraine war handily masked the worst effects of Brexit so we’ll blame a lot on that.

Once we’ve got rid of the migrants, and things aren’t getting better, what next? They’ve already started going after disabled people, calling them lazy and workshy. When the tiny portion of money we spend on disability benefits is wiped out, who’s next? Could it be you?

There are powerful people in the western world who are using electorates in every country to get back to a time when rich white men benefitted from largely poor, largely white societies. This is not a conspiracy theory, these people are out there, saying what used to be the quiet parts out loud. They stoke up the culture wars, prey on people’s worst fears and sow division. Don’t fall for it.

Constant wars
Poverty
Far Right theocratic governments. That the Americans first put into power because they wanted a foul to communism. Which at the time was the "big bad" and threat to the West.

Of course culture and upbringing make a difference. But also it's men reacting to what they are told they can get away with. Just like men everywhere do. We should tell anyone seeking asylum in the UK that women deserve to be treated as humans and that anyone not doing so will be punished. Hopefully they will believe it. However, too many men already here know the last part of that is a lie. If you want to make it safe for women, then we need to make sure that there are stronger actual disincentives to committing crimes against women.

Lots of men brought up in the UK rape and harass children and women because they feel they will get away with it and they are never ever proved wrong. Our "culture" doesn't stop this from happening because cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing when combined with entitlement and sex drive. That's why Christians can rape women but so can right on male feminists. They just tell themselves what they are doing doesn't count.

The only way to stop the boats is to literally stop the boats! Smash the gangs- another will take their place, Rwanda, one for one- never going to work. France must strengthen their borders. Embassies in countries where people are leaving can process applications, and an appropriate cap on numbers set for each country. Otherwise, there will be no end to this problem

I agree most won’t work (some more than others) although it’s not France who are responsible for our border control, it’s us.

We have a housing crisis in Scotland too. The numbers of asylum seekers here is tiny.

The maths was already flawed. But if we continue to focus on a small number of people who need housing because of our international legal obligations on asylum seekers, we are not solving the housing problem which would remain even if we didn’t house refugees.

According to Londoncouncils.gov.uk, almost half of London Boroughs are at bankruptcy risk due to SEND funding pressures. This is what they are self reporting, from the horses mouth, so to speak.

The funding black hole for temporary accommodation comes from the government’s housing benefit not covering the costs, because private sector rented accommodation prices are rising, and because governments sold off council housing. Here is another example of how “we can’t afford it” is only the case because government money isn’t being spent on services, it is being spent on making profits for shareholders in the private sector.

As I said, don’t fall for it. Be as angry as you are, but direct that anger at the actual problem.

So let's flip this around
If it's reasonable to ask other people if they would "have an asylum seeker in their house" would you be prepared to personally stand on the beaches and stop the boats as they come? If so how? Torpedo? Maybe hold someone's head under the water if they make it close enough to the shore? Yay, Straw men arguments!

But if not torpedoing boats and drowning people then what? Because the best options for me would be picking up and processing asylum seekers as fast as reasonably possible. Then sending back those without any genuine asylum claim and allowing those with genuine claims to work and integrate into society.

But we all know that's utter tosh don't we and that OP will no more race to find an asylum seeker for her spare room when her children move out than fly to the moon.

They really are not at the back of the queue. They actually get preference for social housing, and preference with right to buy. And there are many charities which have remits that are entirely focused on veterans.

Veterans do deserve to be wheeled out to make some kind of point when it comes to talking about asylum seekers.

You think that’s the choice? Those actions or let everyone in…

Ok you’re going to find numbers climb, it won’t be easy

This honestly drives a lot of my calculations. I was born in a country which isn't at war currently but has a history of civil conflict and huge amounts of poverty - think children in World Vision ads kind of level.

I imagine my child dying in a war zone and I imagine my child slowly dying of starvation and I can't rationally think of any reason why one would be more deserving of asylum than another. "Economic migrants" includes many desperately poor people who very earnestly are seeking a better life for themselves and their families. I cannot fault them.

But literally billions of people around the world live in such conditions.

You have to conceptualise the problem differently when you think there are a billion people who "deserve" to come to Britain vs 10,000. You can't just use need as a criterion, even genuine need.

The tent camps in Australia should act as a warning to us. We do not have enough housing and yet we are allowing hundreds of thousands of people to come each year.

They are not “leaving their wives and daughters behind”

Wives and daughters are given refuge in temporary camps in the next country, which already takes 80% of refugees. This can’t be a permanent solution, particularly if you have family. Staying with your family in these camps can also put them at risk if you are known to the Taliban. 50% of those granted asylum in the U.K. are women and children, because most men will make the highly dangerous journey by themselves, and bring their wives and children here via a safer route. That safe route is not available to any of them until a family member has already been granted asylum.