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)

How many do I have living with me? How many do YOU have living with you?
This would be my response. I won't have anyone living under my roof other that immediate family and they needed help. It's my home not a bloody hotel.

They have no documentation it’s impossible to establish their identity , background and possible criminal record.

Ask them how many white children they have fostered. So that they don’t get abused by these “grooming gangs”.

No it isn’t. It’s goady nonsense. I don’t want to share my living space with anyone, and it’s not my job to do that anyway. Often these are the same people who bang on about ‘our own homeless’ as though they aren’t overwhelmingly in hotels too, but they don’t have homeless drug addicts in their homes - which is the equivalent hyperbolic auestion as one about ‘fighting ’ men. Why not ‘working age’?

I’d probably say something like

“Jesus Christ they’ve been through enough already without making them come live in my house.”

Not all asylum seekers either. So that’s not getting us anywhere.

Well, that’s about it countrywide this year, but I think it rose today. 🙄🤷‍♀️

It’s coming out of the minuscule foreign aid budget. It’s literally irrelevant. If we stopped tomorrow nobody would be better off.

This plus: that is a deflection from the actual point rather than an argument.

The comment about having asylum seekers in your home is simply shifting the focus rather than addressing the topic. It reminds me of a time I reported a very nasty racist comment on my local Facebook group to the admins and one of them replied saying I couldn't have a say in the matter because I hadn't volunteered to be an admin for the group. I later realized although the group purported to be a local chat group, and some of it was useful local stufff such as lost and found stuff or bad traffic, a lot of it was about promoting far right values.

I used to help out at homeless charities. So I know that homeless people are deserving of support and suffer from complex needs.
I wouldn't take a homeless person I didn't know into my home. Not because I know deep down they are dangerous, or because I'm a hypocrite but because

• what they actually need isn't bunking with a random stranger. The needs of vulnerable groups are often quite specific. In the case of homeless people they often wouldn't have become homeless if their needs had been met sooner.
• I pay a lot of tax. I would gladly pay more tax to provide that support.
• some men, from all walks of life are risky. Some homeless men are homeless as a result of leaving prison. That doesn't make them inherently bad/dangerous and they still deserve support. There is a weird demand on women in particular to put yourself at risk. But if you did, and something bad did happen those same people would delight in I told you so's. You can care about other people while also caring about yourself. It's a zero sum view of the world where there are empathetic schmucks and smart, self interested people. And nothing in between.

The above points apply to all sorts of other groups. Eg I believe people should be comfortable in their old age. I don't want some random pensioner on my sofa. (I doubt they would want to be either.) I don't think we should euthanise disabled people. That doesn't mean I want all the disabled people in England in my house. I think our soldiers should be looked after. I don't want to quarter them.

It's a bad faith argument, creating a stupid binary choice.
A better question would be "would you be happy with asylum seekers being housed near you". To which my own answer would be yes, I lived near accomodation for several years and it was absolutely fine

😁

Of ‘them’? Are they all a homogenous mass then?

Also, unless someone is forcing them or other groups to put up asylum seekers in their spare rooms (and you are agreeing that this is good) it's a bit of a stupid argument.

Are you a surgeon? Whatever, you're never going to operate on your dining room table.
However, some people do have refugees staying with them.
Those two things are not at all comparable.

Absolutely. I wouldn't even engage with something so silly.

8 million a day? I think it could be better used!

“How many Women’s Refuges are you helping at / donating to” (Given they all want to claim it’s about protecting women)

About a quarter of them are women and girls. And most places that refugees come from there isn’t a way to fight back.
Specifically re the Taliban - lots of them did fight back. They helped our troops. And now they are at great risk, yet you don’t want to help? Nice.

That's a good response.

Given that there is zero possibility of more than one random family being housed near me, I don’t think it’s appropriate to respond to this line at all. I can be both sympathetic to asylum seekers and empathetic to concerns for people who feel threatened in their own neighborhoods.

Dropping dozens men into crowded housing in a neighborhood scares people. That isn’t surprising.

The better response is to try to find ways to house people that do not feel so imposing. I don’t have a solution for that. It’s a horrible situation.

When they lash out with this response, that is what they are trying to say. To them, it feels like it is their home because it is a part of their home. So listen.

Depends if your banging on about how everyone should be as supportive as you
then you’re going to get up people’s noses

A good answer would be “I’ve contacted the LA and local charities and offered accommodation in my home to any asylum seeker, young or old, male or female, who needs it.” Assuming you have.

What do you mean banging on about? I believe in people’s rights to seek asylum and this is all governed by international treaties.

Or you could say” I’ve contacted the LA and given them your name and address, as you’re so keen!”

Out of the foreign aid budget. It wouldn’t be spent here if it wasn’t being spent on this. And actually, that is a pretty tiny number when we look at the whole budget.