To ask where I can send my 57p?

[drspouse]

According to the Mirror if all the asylum seekers currently in Calais came into the UK and (highly unlikely) never paid any tax, it would cost each of us 57p.
To save a group of people from some of the most unimaginable horrors in their home countries, I'm more than happy to pay that.
So, where do I sign to pay up (and make it clear I'm happy for them to officially seek asylum and have their claims verified)?

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/not-migrant-hordes--people-6165167

Isitme yes I can completely understand what your saying, however, and this is where I said I was probably being naive, I can only comment on what I am seeing/have read about over recent days between France and UK, what goes on in other European countries does not get reported on here (i wish it did for context). I just fear for these families that have already been through so much that they would further risk their lives/families lives by doing things like running through the tunnel/hiding in lorries. I think we are very lucky to live where we do and can/are able to offer (and have done many times in the past) people a reasonable quality of life without them living in constant fear, however, we do not have the infrastructure in place currently, if we all gave 57p to nhs/social housing/job creation/school places then we would be better placed to step up and be able to offer more than we can at present, we are overstretched in so many areas. Whilst people are generally sympathetic and happy to help (as we should be) I wonder how people would feel when it directly has an effect on where they are living (ie. Can't get a school place, nhs waiting lists get longer) this makes me sound like a hard nose cow and I'm really not but just trying to see the bigger picture. I don't know what the answer is to get the best outcome for all concerned.

I just cannot understand why it is considered reasonable for refugees to travel from France to England. Both countries are similar in terms of standard of living and indeed the population sizes are equal. But France is twice the size.

I understand that most people would give 57p to alleviate human suffering. Indeed I would. BUT you are completely missing the point. Would you like to also give your child's place in the A&E queue if they are desperately ill? This is how overpopulation manifests itself. I've sat in an A&E with a seriously ill child (so much so we had a bed!) but sick babies were being treated in the arms of a person in the corridor. There were no beds. People were being treated (or not) in the waiting room. No more sheets for the existing beds. Nobody understands the extent to which our essential services are already stretched. Personally, I'd rather my 57p went to the NHS.
I took a relative to a massive regional hospital for an appointment yesterday. He was prescribed something needed urgently. When I went to the hospital pharmacy they said they could give him enough pills for a few days but they had no more. What about the next person needing those pills?

I hope this hasn't come across as UKIP ish. Our essential services need help desperately. Giving them more customers stretches them further. It is so idealistic and unrealistic to think we can look after more people when we can't look after the people already here.

I don't think it matters how many empty houses we have or how much land could be built on seeing as there are no plans to put the space into immediate use.

We already have just shy of 200,000 people sleeping rough, sofa surfing or in temporary accomodation.

There is a housing crisis in the UK, and 57 pence will not solve it for either current UK residents or a new intake of asylum seekers.

Garlick the current government doesn't want integration - not integration of those on work visas (who they send away after 6years if earning less than 35k), not integration of asylum seekers, this would undermine their policy against people being allowed to settle just because they've been here for a number of years evem but aren't rich.

Allowing integration would undermine having immigrants as handy scapegoats for everything. Meanwhile, while we focus on Calais they charter flights to return people to countries the foreign office advises against travelling to.

It's pretty ugly, but I guess history keeps repeating itself. Tabloid propaganda against the Calais (and any other) migrants reads very much the same like the tabloid propaganda against people fleeing from Nazi Germany.

I'm aware that the official camp at Sangatte closed down. I'm also aware when that happened Britain took most of the asylum seekers living there. I'm also aware that it didn't solve the problem and people kept on coming to Calais.

Which is the point really, we've already tried just letting them in and it just meant more came and we've ended up back in exactly the same situation again.

Am I advocating mass immigration? No, but I do care what happens to those in Calais. It might be time to open an office on the French side, ask the migrants to form an orderly queue and ask them to submit a claim for asylum in the UK. In return, they will be required to stop attempting to get in illegally. Any attempt at illegal entry would then mean an automatic rejection of the claim and an involuntary return to country of origin.

If a claim is rejected then the migrant should be helped to return to their home country. It’s cheaper than leaving them to live in squalor while we build more elaborate fences around motorways and railway lines.

That makes very good sense. The trouble is, I think you'd find a fairly large percentage of the people at Calais now refusing to comply and still attempting to storm the border because they already know they can't cobble together a believable claim for asylum in the first place. And even if they do, they will possibly be placed in a holding centre, denied free movement and the ability to obtain work on the black market or using false documents while their claim is being processed. This is why many young men pretend to be unaccompanied minors - they hope to be directly placed into foster care instead.

The simple fact is that we cannot just be seen to 'open the door' to take pressure off the immediate crisis. Because as sure as night follows day there will be a few thousand more to fill their place next week if we do. The proper processes need to be in place and need to be seen to be in place.

drspouse have donated and explained why on the part of the form where it asks why you are donating. Thanks for this thread and your humanity.

time4chocolate conflating stock shortages and bad management of resources (and costs will only rise when thanks to pointless tough immigration policy experienced well trained permanent staff will be forced to leave and be replaced with expensive agency staff) to blame too many service users for the way the service is run is a bit pointless. I have not heard of any medication currently being rationed - if that was the case your relative wouldn't have got the prescription. This has nothing to do with immigration whatsoever

I'll repeat what lots of others have asked, why do they want to come to the UK, risking their lives in the process?

Why don't they want to stay in France or any of the other European countries they've passed through?

IsItMe - your posts are everything I really want to say but am, in my decrepitude(!), not quite eloquent enough to do so

thank you Far.

Bakeoff I'll repeat what I said further up thread:

Family here, friends here, speak English, other personal relationship with UK.

Because they want to. Does it matter? W

swallowed It does matter if you expect me to pay for it, as well as paying for EU farming subsidies and import duties which cause the problems in the first place.

Swallowed Because they want to. Does it matter?

IMO it does matter. I'd rather it didn't and we could have a whole world without borders and everyone being lovely to each other but unfortunately it's not like that. And it's never likely to be because those in power/with money don't want to address the real issues, which is that they have all the power/money!

I don't want to welcome rich tossers who buy up property in London, forcing house prices up and locals out, for example. Or those who see the UK as an opportunity to make money whilst paying to local population a pittance to work for you. In fact generally, someone who comes here because they want to make money when they're already comfortably off is a bit dubious - are people who place making more money above everything else (friends, family, decent weather ) really the sort of people who make a nice society/community? I must stress I'm talking about people who already have a decent lifestyle, and am specifically responding to the question "Does it matter why they want to come here?" so rather removed from the OP.

Also, and this is really sad, at least some people have very unrealistic expectations of living/working in the UK. And when they realise, their families back home are still piling the pressure on. A bit like the old cliche of going to be a star in Hollywood and ending up waiting tables/worse.

I only started realising this when I spent time abroad, and working here with immigrant colleagues. In particular, one country I travelled in people seemed bemused that I wasn't completely loaded. Eg. it might start with a question of why I was staying in and lead to a long discussion about the fact that I'd been waiting tables at home, slowly saved up (no car or motorbike - shock! Living in a rented room not a luxury apartment - shock!) and in order to have time to see lots of the country I had to stretch out the money. Also the difference between living costs... explaining UK prices in local currency (eg. for a can of coke). (And yes I know I'm still in a massively priveledged position but not to the extent imagined.)

And there were people I worked with back home who had left their children behind, to work as nurses in the UK, with the plan of bringing their family here later... but they expressed shock at UK prices and the hours needed to work to pay for a flatshare... all the while the family back home have pinned so much on them, how could they return even if they wanted to? Weirdly, a Filipino nuse who'd been here years (older, children grown) was explainign to me in hushed tones the living conditions of these nurses - "They don't even have a drier! Really, I've been to the flat and the clothes are hanging up inside to dry!" She seemed surprised to learn I did not have a dryer, my own flat, etc. (I was on a lower wage as a carer) - as if by virtue of being British I was somehow magically loaded.

So yes the reasons someone is coming here do matter, to prevent bad decisions all round. Unfortunately most discussions/plans to reduce immigration seem to revolve around letting the more well off and professionals in (and no plans to actualy train out own for those jobs...) taking what we want from those countries and leaving those in genuine need.

Binit

I’m sorry you’re child was sick, I hope he/she’s better now. If your local NHS can’t cope with the demand, how is that the immigrants fault? Cost of foreign nationals to the NHS has lots of figures but it’s usually claimed to be somewhere between £1-£2billion. That sounds like a lot but even with the worst case scenario that’s only just over 1%. I do realise that there may be local issues where A&E is too busy because of high immigration but I live in a semi rural town where there are very few asylum seekers, what’s my local hospitals excuse for being in special measures?? The reality is that the reason the NHS is in trouble is not because some dusky chap turns up demanding an unnecessary heart transplant it’s that our population is ageing and the NHS isn’t adequately funded. I’m not blaming the tories for this, I blame labour(I don’t vote for either of them by the way). Tony Blair introduced competition in to the NHS and it’s stealth privatisation. Privatisation means that someone has to generate profit and generating profit means less money towards patient care. Maybe at Calais we should shout “Hands up all the qualified nurses who would be willing to work like a dog for minimum wage?”

Element, firstly I would like to clarify that my "does it matter" doesn't refer to the reasons why the person migrated in the first place (which I think do matter) but the reasons the migrant chooses the UK over (eg) France or Germany. I would simply presume that the fact that the migrant wants or prefers the UK over France or Germany is reason enough.

Secondly, you seem to be conflating lots of different types of migration in your post.

1. "Rich tosses who buy up property". By this I presume you mean the sorts of people who buy a £20 million mansion in Knightsbridge and never even see it, never mind move into it. I agree that artificially inflating house prices (even further) is bad for the economy as a whole using houses as investments and not homes is unfortunate. The exact same principle, in my mind, applies to those UK citizens buying second and third homes in the UK, thus pushing up prices in places such as Wales and Cornwall, and pushing locals out.

This is a problem, but it is not a migration problem.

1. "Those who see the UK as an opportunity to make money whilst paying the local population a pittance to work for you". I'm not sure what you mean. By this. Legal immigrants with skills are needed in many sectors of the UK, for example nursing. They are and have always been a vital part of the economy and they pay more in taxes, generally, than they take in benefits. More than can be said of many UK citizens.

I'm not sure who these local workers paid a pittance are? Those working in near-slavery conditions in the UK (and unfortunately they are a sizeable minority) tend not to be British.

Again, the living wage or minimum wage not being met is a problem, but it is not a migration problem (except that it affects migrants disproportionately as they are more likely to end up with jobs which don't pay living wage).

1. "Those who have legally migrated here from poverty stricken places, who send money home". I understand that it is difficult to comprehend UK citizens struggling for money if you are an afghan family scratching a living from the land, or if you are living in a soviet tower block in Moldova. However, in terms of relative poverty, the vast majority of "the poor" in the UK have considerably more than the equivalent stratum of society in most other countries in the world. You might have to save up for your drier, but it is not an impossible dream for most in the UK to save up for a buy a drier. Your "watching your pennies" does not even nearly equate to the poverty which most economic migrants have experienced. Nothing like. So you can try to explain to the Syrian refugee that you really don't have a pound to spare, and they will look at your lifestyle and be incredulous. I don't blame them.

I think that will do for now.

Love some of the comments on this thread! They show how much empathy we are capable of in this country :) I am a bit worried about some of the angry posters on here though. They seem genuinely worried that the people in Calais are a dangerous bunch. But don't worry angry people! I've donated several 57ps on your behalf so you don't have to do a thing.
You're welcome!

Maybe a MNer could set up a fundraiser for Refugee Council asking everyone to donate a minimum of 57 p, and explaining why? It is the kind of thing that could be publicised on twitter.

jellie

Relative poverty doesn't even have to mean comparing a British care worker's life to a literally starving family with preventable diseases. In some ways, that's too hard to comprehend.

I remember a young woman I worked with in a BRICS country - a 'second world' economy. She was well educated and had a decent office job that pays £18k - £30k here. Her best friend had achieved the popular goal of marrying a European or American man; she was living in Germany, working in a factory. Awestruck, my colleague told me her friend always had food in the fridge and so many clothes that she wore a different outfit every day of the week!

Now, if a hard-working young person with everything going for her can't aspire to five different outfits and something in the fridge, I understand why she'd be willing to sacrifice lovely weather and her social network, to do a worse job somewhere else.

Swallowed By "Those who see the UK as an opportunity to make money whilst paying the local population a pittance to work for you" I meant... well, what it says. It was an example of a reason to come to the UK that I think is invalid, to show that the reasons do matter. If someone who already has financial backing comes to the UK purely to make money I don't think it's ok. I've worked for some of these people. Whether they are exploiting UK citizens or fellow (but poorer) immigrants it doesn't matter - point is people who value money above all else don't make for a nice society.

And sorry but we don't need nurses. Do you have any idea how oversubscribed nursing courses are? We could easily train enough of our own, but don't. Not that I have anything against any particular nurse who wants to live in the UK, but to claim we 'need' them (and the countries that trained them don't?) is simpy not true. And I mentioned this specifically in reference to the sort of controls on immigration that get proposed, which seem to all be about letting in professionals rather than those in dire circumstances. To spell it out, IMO if we are going to put controls on immigration surely the most needy to be at the front of the queue?

"Those who have legally migrated here from poverty stricken places, who send money home" is not something I wrote, so not sure where that's come from.

As for "You might have to save up for your drier, but it is not an impossible dream for most in the UK to save up for a buy a drier" you misunderstand me. The nurse was referring to the other immigrant nurses living in the UK. Nurses that I worked alongside as a carer. She didn't seem to understand that being on a lower wage would mean I'd be living in the same (if not worse) conditions, plus the nurses really weren't living in abject poverty. These nurses too, made comments at various points that showed their idea of what the UK was like for ordinary people had been somewhat misguided. It was actually really sad that they'd had such false hope, and their families still expected them to be making a mint and living in luxury.

"So you can try to explain to the Syrian refugee that you really don't have a pound to spare, and they will look at your lifestyle and be incredulous. I don't blame them." Not sure where the Syrian refugee came from? Well, Syria I suppose but these sort of comments were being made in a conversational fashion, not someone asking me for money. And they were being made by people with a higher socioeconomic status in their country than I had in the UK.

element, we DO need nurses. In their hundreds.

Stupid post OP.

element I think your point about the qualified person who moves to another country "purely to make money" is misguided.

Where they want to take their qualification is their prerogative. People who legally migrate here and are employed in full time work are paying more in tax than they cost in benefits in the UK so what is the problem? As far as being "that" kind of person, who prioritises money before family and friends.... well I'm a bit speechless at that - it's ridiculous.

I'm a qualified teacher. I migrated from the UK to take a job as a teacher in another European country. Are my friends and family in the UK? Yes. Does the UK need teachers? Yes. Am I taking a job from a home country teacher? Well no, actually I don't think I am but as to whether I prioritise making money over seeing my friends and family.... well errr yes I do! I need a job, I need to pay my bills like anyone else! Would I be comfortably off in the UK? Yes, in fact I am very comfortably off in the UK thanks and maintain a healthy bank account in the UK as well as owning property in the uk.

Am I some kind of money prioritising sociopath who isn't the "right sort of person" for my host country? Hahahahaha.

Sorry, on this point you are being ridiculous.

if they are that desperate why have they travelled through so many other safe counties to try to get into UK. Dons tin hat.

I wonder if any of the kind deluded people on here have considered the fact that some of these people trying to reach the UK are the very ones that some of the others are trying to flee from or do they think these migrants are all one big happy family united in their aim?