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)

Surely their point is that they're not keen?

This is like when I was a vegetarian and people made smart alec comments about "aren't you worried about all the bugs killed to grow your food"?
Apparently I got up their noses because maybe they felt I was judging them/acting holier than thou even though I never brought up being veggie unless it was in the context of eating.

It's massively projecting onto another person's thought processes, feeling insulted by said projection,.and then making up smart "gotcha" questions that only work on the cartoony do gooders in their head. It's not a real argument or way to engage with someone else's thought processes.

Unless the OP is demanding people put asylum seekers up in their own house and calling the. Bad People for not doing so, it's a stupid question.

Concerns about an influx of young, single and completely unchecked men without any proof of identity (let alone persecution) cannot be glibly dismissed as "divisive nonesense". It is an inescapable reality that most of the men in question come from countries where women are lucky if they're only treated as second class citizens. In many of their countries rape (for example) is almost impossible to prove and so male weighted that the woman is highly likely to be imprisoned for fornication or adultery. That's if she isn't murdered first. It's inconceivable that such a cultural background would be erased merely by landing in the UK. I must say that you seem to have a lot more faith in men than I do.

Ask the hospices, only partially funded by Government if £56 million per week would be any use to them, or mental health services , veteran’s charities etc . I don’t think they would regard the sum as chicken feed!

The weird thing about this retort is it sort of implies that people routinely 'take in' people who are homeless who are not refugees. The vast majority of people do not open their homes to people beyond their family or possibly to someone paying rent; why would they do it for refugees just because they feel a certain way about how they should be treated?

Ask them if they support any causes/charities, then ask how many sick children/donkeys/circus animals/whales/army veterans/recycling or sewage treatment plants they have in their houses.

That's a dangerous question; are you suggesting that none of us have fathers / grandfathers / brothers who have committed rape?

I'd rather have an asylum seeker living with me than my father. Only one of those is definitely a safety risk, and it isn't the asylum seeker.

The poster I quoted was indeed spouting divisive nonsense.

Rape might as well be legal in this country - conviction is almost unheard of.
These men are leaving the countries with the rules/ideologies that create violence because they are in danger in them. They are running from the kind of violent misogynists you fear. Yes, some of them will also be misogynistic, but it’s not something you can assume. Islam is not in itself misogynistic (or at least not any more so than Christianity or Judaism).

This is best so far
We can support a cause without having to actually work in the cause. We can contribute or support in other ways

I'm sympathetic to asylum seekers. Particularly those - say, from Hong Kong and Ukraine - where we have a shared history/similar cultures. If large numbers of people come to the UK from these countries and don't go back, we are likely to be able to all integrate reasonably happily. The UK's values, including equality for all, one law for all, and separation of church and state, will not need to change for this to occur.

What many people, probably the majority of the UK population, are concerned about are the large numbers of people coming from incompatible patriarchal, sexist and homophobic cultures. Where women are discouraged from working and must cover up, where cousin marriage is the norm, and being gay/lesbian is a serious crime.

Most mumsnetters have an average or higher household income. Many of us own our own homes and/or we have (some) savings, so we have choices. We can afford to move if we truly feel unsafe. We aren't penniless and trapped on a rundown estate in the cheapest part of a struggling town.

I care about the British people - men, women and children - that are the ones most negatively impacted by recent large scale immigration. Who can't afford to move if the very cheap hotel on their road takes in large numbers of unvetted asylum seekers who arrived on a boat from the famously unsafe country of France

That awkward question you mention, is trying to encourage you to worry about those people too. Would you be happy to buy a (large, very attractive and well-priced) house next-door to a hotel accommodating dozens of young, male asylum seekers? If not, why not?

It’s from the foreign aid budget. It would go overseas if it wasn’t spent here. It’s a red herring anyway, because it’s only happening due to the last government allowing a backlog to build up. Once we’ve caught up, it won’t be spent on that. Then it’ll go overseas, to help prevent situations people might need to run from.

How do you know the asylum seeker won't be a rapist too?

Good for you but I never said I didn’t believe the right for people to seek asylum but if someone thinks they have the right to keep banging on about it to me I also have the right to shut them down if I don’t want to listen
I also know that this is governed by international treaties so don’t need you to give me a lesson on human rights

How do you know that about anyone? Most rapes are carried out by people the victim knows/trusts.
A very insensitive question though, given what @YesSirICanNameChange posted.

It’s £4 million per day, apparently.

0.12% of the £3.37 billion the UK spends daily.

It equates to 12p per day each taxpayer pays. If we didn’t spend it on Asylum Seekers, we’d have an extra 6p per day per person to spend.

The real question people should be asking is, given the quality (or lack thereof) of food and accommodation, who is pocketing the bulk of the 125 quid per night we’re paying for the service? Asylum seekers are not “living in 4 star hotels” They are living in ex-hotels which have been turned into hostels. But, for the price we are paying, they could be. The hotel in our area which is housing asylum seekers was a 4* hotel where you could get DBB for £75 per night. You could put every asylum seeker currently in hotel accommodation, in this kind of place, operating properly as a hotel and feeding people properly, and you’d still be doing it cheaper.

New time you hear politicians talking about this cost, ask yourself why they aren’t addressing that issue. Someone somewhere is making money off the taxpayers, and top level politicians don’t want you to ask why.

How many British army veterans do you have living with you?

Wow - that is so not a normal person answer. That’s a hyperbolic answer. Most people don’t have lodgers (male, female, asylum seekers or UK nationals) because they don’t have a spare room and/or like privacy within their home.

I don't have room to move anyone in as I have a young family.

Surely this is the answer,then?

Thanks @BoredZelda - I wanted to do a calculation but my maths isn’t up to it (dyscalculic). It’s peanuts. And as I said, won’t be used for this once the backlog is dealt with. As you say, it’s unfeasibly high too - it would really be interesting to know who holds the contracts, who gave them the contracts (and whether those 2 groups of people were connected in any way) and how the level of payment was initially worked out.

You have a point about who is creaming off money, and I bet that will arise in the future but I would rather that £4 million a day goes to more deserving causes!

Yep they’re more likely asking someone who sounds keener.

And our culture is so respectful of women and girls, that must be why pretty much every woman has an experience of sexual assault, fewer than 3 of all reported rapes end in a charge being brought let alone a conviction (and it has the lowest conviction rate of any crime), and every year there’s a new revelation of horrific misogyny inside the police

I lived very near to a hotel complex housing asylum seekers (first families then adult males) for a few years without even realising it. That's not to dismiss the experience of people who had very negative outcomes of living near those places. I think a lot must depend on how proactive the police are. But based on the fact I walked past every day with no negative experiences whatsoever yes, I would probably be happy to buy a nice house near one of those places. The main thing putting me of would be the likelihood of protests outside it because no one needs that. Especially not if there's a risk of idiots setting stuff on fire.

We used to foster children and still have one who has disabilities (now an adult & an informal arrangement between us & his parents) who stays with us for respite when his parents need a break - about one weekend every 6 weeks & a couple of 1 or 2 week holidays a year.

We've recently started having an elderly person for Sunday lunch & to spend the afternoon with us once a month to give their carer a break.

I wouldn't house a random homeless person or an asylum seeker as I wouldn't know anything about them & we often have GC visiting.