To think this Facebook post re: immigrants is nonsense?

[Readytomakechanges]

A relative has shared a post that basically says: immigrants get £26 per day in Tesco vouchers which is more than our hard working British elderly, that have paid into the system all of their lives, are entitled to. Apparently these vouchers are in addition to housing benefit etc. and they have been seen spending said vouchers on booze.
The post seems like nonsense, and I'd like to challenge it, but would like to have some facts to back up my points and am afraid I don't know any figures on what benefits 'immigrants' are entitled to. Does anyone know this data so I can back up my challenge with facts? And AIBU to think it's nonsense?

Looks like they get an azure card which is limited to certain supermarkets.
www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/Advocacy/Refugees/Azure-payment-card

Toughas They only get that if they meet the conditions. Otherwise they get nothing.

If you do get accommodation as a single asylum seeker, it is likely to be in a hostel so you share a stark dormitory with a load of strangers. That's the reality of the supposedly luxurious lifestyle which the likes of the Mail encourage people to think asylum seekers get automatically.

So if you are granted asylum you get cash payments and if you are refused you get a payment card that you don't get change from and is limited in where you can spend it (I think!)

Toughas, if they're refused asylum they can only get food vouchers if there's a good reason why they can't go home. Eg, their home country won't accept them. If they can't go home because, say, their famy has threatened to kill them because they're gay, they get nothing.

I used to do some work with a specialist nhs team for asylum seekers and have been to lots of places that they are accommodated. Yes single.applicants are generally housed in hostels. I've seen families living in shared houses with only 1 room of their own. None of the places I would even remotely conailer taking my own family to, they are really not pleasant. I don't deny that the daily fail occasion ally find the exception who live in a 3 bed semi and live it up but the reality is that life as an asylum seeker is grim and hard work and I dread to see what their alternative is if life here in those conditions is preferable le to being at home.

I am glad I amuse you banning. I know these facts are right re this person. I know she does not wantvto work as I have helped her do her CV in the past and she has never pushed herself She even admitted when drunk once that got pregnant with youngest to get DWP off back. So I do know circumstances before I post. I was just saying its hard for people who struggle and work. Sorry I know perhaps I shld have done a diff thread and not hijacking this one.

treacle your friend isn't an asylum seeker.

No she isn't sorry for confusion. Think I just carry on reading threads and not posting!

I'm laughing a little bit at the idea that immigrants get their TV licenses paid for. Just utter shite.

Do they also get a free goat? 😂

Utter, utter nonsense. Asylum seekers receive very minimal support, far lower than JSA. They are usually housed in hostels or shared housing. The most heart-breaking thing is the teenagers sent here by desperate parents. If they are 18 they are classed as adults even though in terms of life skills they aren't. I taught one lovely lad who was in a shared house with adult males who drank, smoked and were noisy. They shared a microwave and hob only in the house kitchen and this boy had no cooking or shopping skills (I tried to help cover this as a class outing under the guise of embedding numeracy). I saw him get thinner, paler and become withdrawn. He had a support worker who was clearly over-worked and rarely saw him. Other settled immigrants from his country helped him to a degree, but they have to be very careful or they may be judged to be his "sponsor" resulting in the little financial support he receives being stopped.
Because of safe-guarding, I don't know what happened to him after his course finished.
I teach many immigrants, the majority now are refugees, they are so rewarding to teach; motivated, polite and warm and so grateful for the security offered by "the British Government" (as they usually say) It is easy to forget the trauma they have come through but we get occasional sharp reminders, - when someone misses a class and their friend informs us it is because the bodies of his two brothers missing in Syria were dumped on the doorstep on his mother's house the night before (father was shot before he fled to England). Some of our learners from Sudan and Somalia have strange scars on their temples. I don't know how they cope in the way they do.

cardibach: Regarding the weekly cash payment, you can check out www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/16/asylum-seekers-with-children-to-see-support-payments-cut
This is in the public domain.
As regards monthly payments, esp. gas & electricity, this is not in the public domain. A British OAP couple receive £300 a year to offset heating, recognised asylum seekers' heating is taken care of in full all year round.
The tenancy agreement devised by Home office for private landlords are signed under the OS Act. Some councillors know of it, but most studiously avoid seeing it so that they can honestly say they do not know.
Section 1 ((b) of the Letting Provisions sets out the fact that the Tenant Company (funded by the taxpayer) agrees to pick up the phone bill for every single property provided by the Landlord in question to asylum seekers.
Don't forget that "asylum seeker" is a defined Home Office term and is not applied to all immigrants.

To clarify. What I have posted (above) is for those whose asylum applications have been approved.
While applications are pending, asylum seekers usually stay in hostels.

Battersea What you are saying is simply not true.

Asylum seeker houses do not receive installed telephone lines. The conditions of the Compass contract (under which various providers supply properties for asylum seekers) ensure that the accommodation is bare-bones.

The government has put the Home Office under increasing pressure to reduce the overall bill for asylum support, especially over the last couple of years.

The Home Office only pays for the installation of telephone lines into accommodation if an asylum seeker (or failed asylum seeker) has been tagged for electronic monitoring (under a separate contract - that means that the line is only used to maintain the monitoring and is not set up to be used to place calls out of a property).

Furiosa. I did not say anything about installation of telephone lines. That is your tramline thinking. I spoke of phone bills being paid - as in cellphones. Accommodation for approved asylum seekers is not bare bones. As they have no money all necessaries for basic comfort are provided. The necessaries are carefully laid out in a document and have to be provided by the landlord, who is paid of course and in turn reimbursed by the public purse.

but you are still saying stuff that isn't true

Which £300 does an OAP couple receive to offset heating costs? We do get £200 Winter Fuel Allowance but I am sure there is nothing else extra to pension.
( We are in our 70s and don't need any extra but we have neighbours who struggle).

I think I know what Battersea 53 is referring to. This is the tenancy agreement between UK Visas & Immigration (the old Immigration & Nationality Directorate of the Home Office) and councils, housing associations and private landlords to house approved asylum seekers with children. Asylum Seekers “include all persons who are being or are to be supported by or through the UKVI“ (under Part VI I seem to remember). The provisions used to be very, very generous but I do not know if that is still so. Properties had to be fully furnished with CH, furniture, TV, kitchen apparatus, kettle, plates, cutlery, bed linen, highchairs, etc provided by the landlord and reimbursed from public funds including utilities and mobile phone, TV licence purchased annually. (Even the type of TV set is laid out in the contract, i.e. colour).

But, if you think about it, this is no more than an asylum seeker would be provided in a hostel - except this way they have private, unshared facilities. As no one in the family is working, all outgoings are taken care of. There's no way an asylum seeker could afford to pay for all the above as well as water rates, CTax, etc. Instead of paying a hostel to house a family, govt does it this way.

The COMPASS contract that Furiosa speaks of is less than 3 yrs old and may have taken the place of the previous arrangement; I no longer work in that field.

You can get up to £300 for the winter fuel payment. There is also a warm homes discount of £140 that you may qualify for

Perhaps I can speak of recent modern history and refugees and show how things have changed. Both my parents were stateless refugees, originally from Russia but they spent 6 yrs in German slave labour camps.

In 1947 they arrived in England (they had not yet met) and after processing were given a bed in a dormitory in a single-gender hostel, £5 in their hand and an appointment with The Labour Exchange. I think £5 in today's money might be worth approx £200, but from that they had to pay the hostel, buy food & clothing and bus fares.

They were issued with identity cards called "Certificate of Registration" Aliens Order 1920 which had to be carried at all times and produced when requested.

If the £5 ran out before you had found work you would not be given another £5 easily. When I came along in 1951 my parents were living in one rented room.

Although stateless, and families annhiliated by the Communists, nevertheless for security reasons for the next 20 years Govt demanded that they check in at the local police station - first weekly, then monthly, then annually and then only whenever they moved house. I remember going with my mother to Kensington Police Station for her check-in and that must have been 1963.

The amount of refugees who came to UK after WW2 was tiny (even by the standards of the day) and never posed any problem. How things and security have changed!

Hello LidiaW6. This is fascinating and it makes me recall a lovely elderly couple my mother was friendly with for years and I knew as a kid. He was Belorussian and she Ukrainian. After repatriation by the Allied Forces they came to York in England and then were dispersed to Yorkshire where the work was. Work was mines and mills. They worked very hard until retirement, had one child and their early history in UK is very similar to your parents. Yes, they too had to register at police stations for many years, they never claimed public assistance and cut their coat according to their cloth. They were humble people and always said how grateful they were for having been given sanctuary.

Battersea one minute you're talking about a lease under which the tenant pays the phone bill for every "property", then you're talking about mobile phone bills. No lease is going to have reference to mobile phone bills! It is standard practice though for leases to include provisions as to who pays what re utilities. I would expect to see a well drafted lease saying who is responsible for utilities, including phone, regardless of whether one is there at the time (since, in principle, one could be put in - either by tenants or as here, by the Home Office if as previous poster says is necessary). Doesn't mean there actually is one. We're banned from parking a caravan on our drive - doesn't mean we have one.