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 think it depends where you live . I find a lot of people I know who are very vocal about how much they “support” immigration and they raise money and they argue on social media and they wave banners and put up posters and they feel they are doing a wonderful thing. However they do not live in the areas that they are placing these people and sadly all I see is stealing vandalism abuse people being threatened there are people living in tents in parks and defecating in gardens and sadly no it’s not an exaggeration it’s everyday. I do not live directly in these areas but I have family who do and there is genuine fear to walk down the street now . I have noticed of all the people who champion giving them refuge and themselves have homes they rent out some several homes not one of them have opened there doors to give that kind of help. The truth is they do enough to appease their guilt but not enough that they have to live with it on their doorstep.
Before anyone gets upset this is purely what is happening where I live and I am neither for or against . I believe everyone deserves a good life. 🙏🏻

Do you all actually do that though?

None of the left wing I know do. They’re actually all ‘careful’ with their money while insisting everything should be funded by billionaires.

The difference with all the analogies people are coming up with is that most are in agreement that those are good things for a society to have and we all (bar a few) want them. Education, the NHS, bin collections etc etc

If the polls are to be believed, the same is not true of asylum seekers / economic migrants crossing the channel.

They’ll read what you wrote and not care. Simply, they won’t care until it’s their town or village or their daughter raped. They lack any form of self awareness whatsoever.

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?"

Most people know asylum seekers aren’t allowed to work (legally), and there is a big cost in supporting them - £4.7 billion a year in 23/24 and rising due to more use of hotels. Similar to the house building and affordable homes budget of that year which is a big issue in this country seeing as many young people and families can’t afford homes of their own or are stuck in substandard accommodation so it’s a valid point. Together with NHS resources which are stretched to breaking point for UK citizens and I have first hand experience in a previous job of health professionals running clinics especially for asylum seekers taking resources from elsewhere in the NHS.

The comment about ‘how many fighting age men do you have living with you?’ is more of a challenge of are you OK with large groups of young men who are undocumented, with no knowledge of previous convictions or if they were fighters in a war somewhere, or had previous involvement in terrorism, their background etc arriving in this country with different cultures and values that they will want to keep. All of which we would have a general record of to assess any safety concerns of UK citizens, and legal migrants with background checks.

It’s another valid concern seeing as if you read the news there has been violence, murder and sexual assaults perpetrated by asylum seekers who already had convictions on their own countries or had no right to be here in the first place. My own town centre and library is full of groups of young men (something you wouldn’t have seen 5 years ago) and it can be intimidating especially to young women.

I know in the role I was in a few years ago, it became increasingly common to claim persecution for homosexuality and or transgenderism from a particular country which was not at war, with no little evidence and that was family non acceptance so nothing official! It started as a trickle and then it became a tsunami as word obviously spread that it was a good ruse. They were not asylum seekers but economic migrants who immediately started working cash in hand jobs and were over here to send money home.

We absolutely shouldn’t be paying taxes to support these people to build a better life for themselves in their own country while being financially supported here,

We are also an island at the end of the day, and anyone coming here has not desperately fled war torn countries to get here as they will have passed numerous safe countries on their way and made a purposeful effort to get here. I don’t buy the ‘they want to speak English or they have family here’. If you’re expecting someone else’s county to support you, you don’t get to chose and you should be grateful you are safe.

A quota of asylum seekers to share them out with other countries in proportion to population, land area and economy is fair enough, but having thousands just turning up because they don’t fancy staying in France is an utter pisstake.

The European mainland decided to open up their borders to Schengen so asylum seekers could travel freely from Italy/Spain/Greece up to France which was just an incentive, so they should take the brunt anyway IMO.

It's not a mic drop.
If someone is trying to talk about the grooming gangs, or Catholic sex abuse, or any specific issue and someone interrupts with "other groups of men also do bad things" it's whataboutery. It's trying to divert attention from talking about a bad thing that's serious enough to deserve it's own conversation regardless of all the other bad things.

But if people want to use the bad thing to argue "this proves men from X group are more likely to commit crimes" then all of the bad things done by other bad men becomes relevant. It's why people trying to twist scandals to suite their own narratives are so harmful. You are actually forcing other people to talk about other issues.

To use a less emotive subject, let's say you were allergic to mushrooms. If you tried to tell me this and I interrupted with "other people are allergic to different things. It's wrong of you to single out mushrooms" that's an inappropriate response. If you tried to argue that mushrooms were uniquely dangerous allergens and should be banned, then talking about all the other allergens that exist would be relevant.

I'm not anti asylum seeker but I don't like unfairness.
If they need support they should get it - even if it means asylum seekers get less.

More deserving causes than the millionaires creaming it off, I absolutely agree.

Asylum seekers who we are obliged to help and who are fleeing persecution, I feel is deserving enough. If we get into the race to the bottom about who are our most deserving causes in the U.K. you will never get agreement on who to help. Is a single parent more deserving than a drug addict? Some would say so. Is someone who became addicted to pain medication due to poor treatment after an accident more deserving than a single mother who continues to have children despite having no long term partner and is simply not having protective sex? That’s a rather more difficult choice for some to make.

While I agree that the UK has sexual assault and rapes at alarmingly high rates that must be addressed you can't compare that to the way that women are treated in some countries.
In Afghanistan women are not allowed to walk out without a man, not allowed to work outside of the home, not allowed an education or health treatment, not allowed to speak in public as well as the the normalisation of gender-based violence, including gender-related killings, forced and child marriage.

Generally men from that region have much less respect for women, I have worked in this sector in the UK.

Taliban gender apartheid

I'm not sure that's the question you need an answer to.

A more realitic - and possibly more difficult - question might be: "Would you be happy to be living next door to a hotel or other HMO fully occupied by asylum seekers?"

That shouldn't pose you any difficulty in giving an answer...

Whereas you don't seem to care if other people's daughter are raped UNLESS it suites your agenda.
Or have you been in many threads on here discussing violence against women when it hasn't involved asylum seekers?
Or is it not fair for me to extrapolate the amount you care about SA based on you having different opinions to me?

I think most of given the choice would stay here based on the comparative reality for women and girls.

Or, to actually make it relevant, it’s like saying you’re allergic to mushrooms, and you’re told that’s ok, we’ve made sure we’re not adding 2% more mushrooms to the ones you are allergic to, but aren’t actually doing anything to protect you from the 98% of the other mushrooms you are allergic to. It’s the 2% of mushrooms that are really the problem, so we’re making a whole lot,of noise about those mushrooms, even though it goes nowhere to solve your problem.

Absolutely. And the Catholic Church has been addressed. I don’t think there was a single response of ‘but all men are like that..’ on here in reference to paedophile priests from the ones trying it now about asylum seekers. Why not?

I'm very far from "pretending" that women and girls are respected in the UK or that there isn't any rape, sexual harrassment or misogyny. You, on the other hand, seem to be trying to convince yourself that the treatment of women, the levels of misogyny, the legal definitions of rape and women's rights across the board are no worse in the majority of Islamic countries. Which at best is misguided and at worse a blatant lie. You also seem to be trying to convince yourself that thousands of young men are fleeing because of misogyny. I highly doubt that many (if any) of them are leaving their countries because of the treatment of women. Your comment is actually quite contradictory. If you believe that women are not respected in the UK, then why do you believe that any man so concerned about women's rights would flee Iran (for example) to come and live here.

How about we look after homeless people AND asylum seekers and nobody who is desperate gets less.

Because we can’t afford it. I can’t believe I’m having to say this to an adult who presumably pays bills and is responsible for children.

In this country.

The problem is that these people are entering the country illegally, it's happening and whether your for or against this, the fact remains they are here; so we give them a bed, feed them and give them a few pounds for living expenses. Not sure what else we are supposed to do, we can't leave them on the beaches, because that's a sure way to encourage crime.
I believe as a nation we need to be doing more to catch the people smugglers.

Yes no one is ‘pretending’ that. You are right on the rest.

That actually sounds like a very convincing argument for not letting more young men of unknown background and provenance into the country.

I'm neither left or right and no I don't.
I'd just like a competent government who can process the arrivals - get rid of the liars and criminals and let the genuine move towards a normal life in the UK, working and respecting the values of how we treat women, girls, young boys and the lgbt community.
I'll let you know when the flying pig passes me...

I do agree we do need to do something with the asylum system, people need to be documented, and of course some of them are bad.

What makes me angry is some people blame asylum seekers for all the problems in this country and use it to be openly racist. I don’t think all muslims should be accused of being rapists or that all Israeli’s are bad because of whats happening in Gaza. Why is it now acceptable to be so racist? People can of course have opinions about immigration but it doesn’t have to be so hateful.

The country is in divide and it’s awful. I wish we would all band together and protest about rising food and energy costs when energy companies and supermarkets are making record profits, why MH services are abysmal, why people wait hours for an ambulance, our government (all parties) are a joke, the only people who prosper are the rich friends of our “leaders”, it suits them just fine for people to be blaming asylum seekers.

There was a huge increase in homelessness in the past 20 years. But also a huge increase in homeless people with complex issues.
Basically, these were people who had complex reasons for becoming homeless that basically fell through the gaps as different support schemes disappeared post Brexit. So someone with a MH crisis or addiction issues was less likely to get help and more likely to escalate to the point they lost their jobs/family support/home.
It's not as simple as "give these people a hotel room" though yes we do need more housing.

The amount spent on asylum while high, wouldn't make much difference to the budget overall if you removed it. And the same people advocating for removing support from asylum seekers, are usually the same people arguing people on PiP need "tough love" and who would be just as outraged at a drug addiction outpatients clinic opening near them as a refugee HMO. I have 0 faith that if we pulled all the funding from asylum seekers tomorrow those same people would want it spent on other vulnerable groups.

I do think there are savings to be made (some hotel owners are raking it in). And I don't think long term just putting people in hotels is sustainable. But the fake "we need to look after our own homeless" coming from some politicians is so hypocritical.

"More than you have brain cells but less dick than your Mom sucks over an average weekend?"