To think it’s easier to want open boarders if you’re privileged?

[Theselfishsister]

Having an ongoing conflict with my sister regarding refugees, she’s very ‘let everyone in’ I would say I’m somewhere in the middle.

She’s given up spare bedrooms to refugees, spends weekends in Calais helping them and is posting everywhere on SM about letting them all in. As well as attending protests regularly for the last 4 years or so.

What strikes me is that her and her other friends going to all of the events are white, MC (although she is by marriage, we grew up very WC) and live incredibly comfortably. She’s a SAHM and her husband owns his own company, they have never needed benefits or social housing and her children are privately educated with all of them receiving private medical care.

A massive increase in people here are unlikely to ever have much affect on her life, she won’t have to fight for jobs or wait for a house or deal with benefit cuts when too much is paid out, as well as the increase in waits for Medical care and school admissions. Whereas for someone like me, this is obviously a more worrying factor and the thought of just opening our borders to everyone does scare me. As much as I would love to be able to take every person fleeing a great life, it just causes me worry and I don’t think I could support completely open boarders.

She obviously just thinks I’m a selfish heartless bitch for not protesting to remove our borders or similar. When I asked why she let refugees sleep in her spare rooms but never the homeless man on the road behind her (who’s been in the same spot since she moved there 5 years ago!) she called me a racist!

So AIBU to think it’s easier to want open boarders if you’re privileged or am I just a selfish cow?

We should help refugees because it is the humanitarian think to do, not out of some kind of ill-conceived desire to atone for the past signs of our nation.

But that needs to me done in a sensible and pragmatic way. A lot of "open borders" types seem to want to welcome in anyone who manages to rock up at Calais, which does to seem to be at all sensible and may even be actively harmful to genuine refugees.

BoneyBack you are entirely correct it is the fault of the government. I was responding to a specific posts asking me a specific question.

The government does indeed dump large numbers of people in areas not suited or equipped to deal with the issue. And then they don't finance it appropriately.

Have you ever visited one of these areas and been called a foreigner, had people laugh at your accent and claim they can't understand what your are saying. Have you been made to feel unwelcome because you don't fit in

Obviously didn’t read my earlier post.

My family are one of those that couldn’t speak English, so we learned but my accent even though I spoke English was heavily accented so yes I was told to go home.

Now I speak English like a native and still can’t make myself understood because whilst I haven’t moved the area has changed and I am once again the foreigner with people saying they don’t speak English. I have given up on my usual coffee at Starbucks or Costa because I am not welcome.
I gave up on my local supermarket because unless I just went in and shopped without trying to ask a question it was ok but if they had moved anything I couldn’t find then I would have to travel out of town to buy it so in the end it wasn’t worth my while to go to the local supermarket I just went out of town to do everything.

So the locals were horrible to you and told you to go home. Other people have moved in as a group and are being horrible to locals. Locals who we can presume were horrible to the new arrivals.

Altogether, sounds like a very toxic area.

Couldn't you all just try and get on? We mange it in other areas of the U.K. it's not perfect but we rub along nicely.

OP why do you assume that everyone against you must be rich? I've been poor most of my life. I've lived in a hospital before. I still had the rational thought to realise that there are people in a more dire situation than I am.

Victimhood is an essential part of the Brexit narrative.

My mother arrived here as a refugee. In general she was very much welcomed. She had learned some English before arriving and also learned very quickly on arrival. But an early memory of hers involves being mocked by a shopkeeper because she asked for 'cor-ned beef' (two syllables) rather than 'cornd beef' (one syllable) because she was using the sort of pronunciation rules that would apply in her native tongue.

Couldn't you all just try and get on? We mange it in other areas of the U.K. it's not perfect but we rub along nicely

Why do you immediately presume it was the locals in this area who have been horrible.

The locals here are very welcoming but in the past 10 years the influx of a certain nationality who have taken over everything and are racist towards anyone not of their nationality is blatant.

How do you get along with someone who doesn’t speak the language and doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.

This is their town now “f**k off English”

Where did I assume everyone against me was rich? This is my words:

Maybe from a big house with enough money in the bank to not worry about how you’re going To pay the electric this month, it’s easy to make general sweeping statements like ‘the UK is rich’ or ‘there’s enough money if only we shared it’
We don’t. People are struggling.

I don’t know anyone who lives in poverty who would happily say how rich the UK is or think that everyone sharing their money with the poor would ever happen.

And I voted remain. Doesn’t mean I’m not worried about what would happen to the poor in this country if we let everyone in.

I live in an area where 150 different languages are identified and we don't seem to have the same issues that your area does.

It seems 'unusual' that this one particular area has faced such a depth of hostility when most places in the U.K. experience some issues but not to the vitriolic degree encountered in Lincolnshire.

The locals were lovely to this new group, warm and welcoming. This new group have taken over the area and been hostile and unwelcoming to the lovely, lovely locals.

Can you see how that seems a little strange?

Theselfishsister the poor in this country are being screwed by the rich in this country.

The poor in other countries are being screwed by the rich in this country and their country.

There is a pattern. The rich are screwing the poor.

Moussemoose I think you are talking about a different scenario.

You have like London a lot of different nationalities so no one predominance of people.

Imagine that all those that speak the 150 languages only speak one particular language. They have no need to learn English. They have their own community. They have no need to be friendly to anyone outside.

There are mono cultures in places like Bradford. A lot of the old mill towns faced an influx of Pakistani communities and it did cause tension. There are usually issues and differences that need to be worked though.

An influx of one community in a particular area is not different or unusual it has gone on in lots of places across the U.K. - for centuries. You are not facing any special problems others haven't had and overcome.

Although, personally i haven't come across the deeply ingrained fear and hated from both sides as I have when discussing the situation in Lincolnshire.

@Moussemoose

It seems 'unusual' that this one particular area has faced such a depth of hostility when most places in the U.K. experience some issues

Are you always so dismissive of other people’s experiences? You haven’t encountered these problems, so no, can’t be happening, they must be exaggerating

It absolutely is happening. I'm sure you're read the thread where I say I have visited this area and spoken to some of the locals. I'm not dismissing the issue and I have encountered it first hand.

The problems in this area are real and visceral.

My issue is why is it so extreme in this area? Posters have said it is because so many people from one outside community have arrived and I have said that this is not uncommon or unusual.

Many parts of the U.K. have encountered this issue and there have been problems that communities have had to work at resolving and are still working on.

Other areas don't seem to have reacted with quite the same levels of hatred on both sides - it therefore seems 'unusual'.

Of course it’s a common occurrence, I explained similar at my old estate.
No go zone for woman, can’t wear a skirt or you’ll be called a whore. Walk at night and get told to get into cars. ‘Gory whore’ shouted at white girls, no one speaks English. Come to think of it I think most of the lads only knew the words whore in English.
In London and other city’s its very diverse, it’s great and obviously no one nationality is ‘ruling’ it. It is completely different to smaller town where groups of migrants have been dumped.
Which takes me back to the... if you’re privileged you don’t realise it’s happening becuase its not on your doorstep

Have I mentioned I teach a class with 13 different nationalities in it? Does that class as my door step?

I have also said (repeatedly) lots of areas have problems and issues that are being worked on.

You can look for division or you can look for unity. Your choice.

Having a class with 13 different nationalities in is not the same as having a town with predominantly one nationality.

Do you come from the same area OP?

"I don’t know anyone who lives in poverty who would happily say how rich the UK is or think that everyone sharing their money with the poor would ever happen."

It could happen if the government made different decisions. Other countries manage it. The people who stand in the way to such a culture are the ones who make up the Tory party. The people who are seen as "speaking for the working classes" though they are clearly only into lining their own pockets are predominantly white, privileged and Oxbridge educated.

Same area as what? The one I’m talking about is in the South east.

My sister is also a teacher in a very deprived area the school she teaches in u see to have pupils from a predominantly Pakistani background but it now increasingly it's pupils are from other immigrant families and quite a few refugees she thinks s the country should have open boarders too interestingly her school was ent good enough for her own kid's and she doesn't live in the area and due to a large inheritance and good jobs lives very comfortable lifestyle in a large detached house ....

"What has been said on this thread already but you don't seem to understand OP is that the government is not suddenly going to start funding working class areas and improving your lives if refugees aren't let in. They aren't going to start taking homeless people off the streets if there aren't any more refugees. 25,000 people not being let in any more is going to have almost no effects on working class areas. As its been said before, housing shortages are not the fault of refugees. Underfunding is not the fault of refugees. The only thing that will stop working class areas from being deprived is investment from the government. They are not going to invest OP and you know it, but you don't want to face the fact that working class areas aren't going to improve no matter what so you're blaming less than 1% of the population."

Exactly @TacoLover And i have a sneaking suspicion that some on this thread who are saying we need to look after our own homeless and the working class who are living in social housing first. are only bothered when they can pit them against refugees. They arent too bothered the rest of the time.

x2boys
Are you seriously suggesting that your sister is some sort of hypocrite by suggesting the reason your sister isn't sending her (out of area) children to a school in a different area is because of the ethnic diversity in the school? If so that's a bizarre argument.

I'd send my kids to some schools I've worked in. I wouldn't to others. The ethnicity breakdown of the cohort doesn't come into it. If I worked at the catchment school and it was good then I would send my kids there. If I didn't believe (for whatever reason but usually SLT,behaviour and quality of teaching/results) that a school wasn't right for my kids then they wouldn't be getting sent there.