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?

My husband works in a warehouse a lot of his colleagues are from eastern European countries , I don't blame anyone for moving to Britain as they have a better quality of life ,my Grandparents did the same in the 1950,s they moved from Ireland to Manchester, however if people think that this doesn't have an affect on local ,schools etc than maybe they should moved to my deprived areas .

What always annoys/shocks me is the amount of people who don't understand the difference between an immigrant and a refugee.

On a point of pedantry, that may be because of the current fad fro redefining words to mean what you want them to mean. People who come here to live are immigrants, some of them are refugees. Perhaps if we stopped trying to define people using a single word it might help.

LevelUp, I understand that argument but it always represents a sneaky shift in conversation ie

They're fleeing for their lives, have compassion!

But they're not threatened in France?

They want to choose where to live, have compassion!

It's just a different tone altogether and it makes the whole thing look suspect. As does 'omg they are children!' which turns out to mean they are seventeen year old boys but wouldn't you want a better life if you were 17?

Its the emotional blackmail aspect of it I think can be seen as disingenuous.

Are many people campaigning for completely open borders?

So once they've fled their country they should just have no agency over where they live?

Also thats a very convenient position to take if your country is on the North West corner of Europe and surrounded by sea.

"We stand by to take refugees from Ireland or the Faroes! - oh sorry there are none? Well never mind, no refugees or us then!"

45% of people used to live in social housing, what happened?

Housing Act 1980. Brought in Right to Buy, stopped councils from using that money to build/buy new houses with the money gained. Number of social housing properties plummeted.

We are the 7th richest country in the world - if our priorities were different, then we could easily help both

And yet I’m constantly reading on here about families visiting food banks, children living in poverty, the disabled having their benefits cut, austerity and how we are being squeezed so much people are buying basics on credit. So are we a rich nation or a poor one?

badlydrawn, there have been lots of stories in the paper recently about an area of Sheffield, Page Hall, and what a mess it is. Human waste and garbage rotting in the streets because residents just throw it out of the window, rats overrunning the place, men having sex with prostitutes openly and feral children running wild 24/7 having to steal food.

Not a single one of the stories mentioned that area is largely populated by Roma.

I feel really sorry for them, because they are so excluded in their home countries, they and their children have not been able to access healthcare and education there. They live in abject poverty in Eastern Europe, they can’t get jobs there. It really is a bit of a revelation to them being able to get jobs, get their kids in school and have healthcare. They do value it. They’re not used to having running water, bin collections and properly organised sanitation. They are often very exploited, again organised criminals target them.

I don’t think they’re fundamentally bad. I just think they need to be treated the same way as British and told - no that’s not how we do things, please stop, it would make the area nice for everyone. I know if I started disposing of my rubbish and excrement by throwing it out of the window and started soliciting outside my house police, social services and the council round pronto.

But they won’t coz ‘racism’. But then it’s the Roma who suffer most because all their neighbours hate them and they don’t know why.

And the utterly ludicrous argument that stress makes people look older. Yes, this does absolutely apply to adults. Stress does not make children grow taller and more muscular.

So once they've fled their country they should just have no agency over where they live?

I didn’t say that, I asked if they’re a refugee or not as they’re now safe?

Do we have a disproportionate amount of refugees? I honestly don't know. Let's face it though, we're not the first safe country for anyone, although we should certainly take our fair share of refugees.

@Outpinked You can be privileged, have a heart, and still recognise practical issues regarding refugees and immigrants. Also 'we'? Sins of the fathers, I take it?

OED - Immigrant - A person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.

SO that INCLUDES refugees - they aren't mutually exclusive.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/november2018

It is not just the number of immigrants who are allowed in now but the future population growth. Most will go on to have children, their children will have children.
The above link makes very interesting reading

I do find it a bit odd that the vast majority of the refugees seem to be fit, agile young men. Where are all the women and little children, and the older generation? Surely if they were families of refugees fleeing persecution and not just migrants there would be a much wider age/sex range. And what is so wrong with France as a refuge? They travel through umpteen other safe countries to get here. Why?

And what is so wrong with France as a refuge? They travel through umpteen other safe countries to get here. Why?

It's very difficult to get work in France as a refugee - there's so much bureaucracy involved before they even get the right to work.

Plus, if they don't speak French, then who's going to employ them? The French government aren't providing language lessons - it's only charities/volunteers so I doubt these are very systematic.

Maybe they learnt English at school.

"Let's face it though, we're not the first safe country for anyone"

The first safe country is often Italy or Greece and they can't cope.

I thought no both sides of the debate tend to take a very simplistic approach.

"Immigration benefits the economy"
"Immigrants are a burden and take money that could be spent on xyz"

I think we need to stop thinking of these people as a homogeneous group that are either a net benefit or a drain and accept that some people benefit from immigration and others don't.

Personally I think compassion without sense does more harm than good.

We are the 7th richest country in the world - if our priorities were different, then we could easily help both

A country can be the x richest in the world, but if only a small proportion of its population hold wealth, its meaningless.

How do you intend to build enough houses to fill the backlog of shortage whilst also building extra for all the extra people you want to bring? We just can’t build that fast.

We are a gountry of 66 million. The world has a population of 7.7 billion. How do you plan to stretch the resources of those 66 million to care for the billions who would come if all they have to do is say the magic word?

What will happen is we will become as poor and have as low standard of living as the countries they’re fleeing. So more money can go to the rich.

Eventually the working classes will have no more than they can take away. They have no defence now, the left wing which used to represent the working classes and advocate for low migration have been hijacked and turned into a middle class pro migration student politics forum for people who like to posture. When that happens, and no more can be taken from the poor - then they’ll start taking stuff off the middle classes. Then they’ll get it. They won’t empathise with the working classes now, but they will when it’s their stuff disappearing in front of their eyes. It’ll be too late then though.

@merrymouse Which is why I said we should take our fair share of those allocated to us.

I think it's also fair to point out there while we may be a rich country we aren't a big one.

What @Bejamnostalgia said by 1000. Everyone who pontificates on asylum and immigration should be forced to read that until they understand it. Then I will listen to them.

Women and children first.

They travel through umpteen other safe countries to get here.

So because we're the furthest away we have the least responsibility to help?

Let's just imagine that there was a civil war in Ireland and 3 million Irish refugees started turning up on the West coast of Britain in tiny boats.

Do you think the British people would be happy to take on all 3 million because we were the first safe country they reached?

Or would we be wanting countries in continental Europe to share the burden?

So once they've fled their country they should just have no agency over where they live?

How much agency do you have over where you live? I can’t rock up in the US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, NZ, SA the UAE, KSA, China, the Maldives, Japan, Indonesia (maybe Europe after Brexit) and say ‘Oh well I quite like it here, I’m going to stay.’ The overwhelming majority of the world’s population are constrained as to where they live by law, age, economics, language and the need to support themselves.

It’s not equality, it’s special privileges given before eligibility is even checked.

I'm minded of a quote: "Generosity at the expense of others, financial or moral, is not generosity, it is moral exhibitionism."

Your sister isn't altruistic as she's driven by the endorphin rush she gets from her activism. She is focused on her own needs to feel virtuous and the short term pleasures of thinking you've helped some needy individuals (though not, of course, the homeless man behind her house - perhaps he doesn't rank as high in her esteem as someone from the Middle East or Africa).

Those of us who are far-sighted can see that open borders to the world will have disastrous consequences for our societies. Anyone who cannot grasp the numbers problem should watch the famous gumball video on youtube...

How much agency do you have over where you live?

It's not exactly comparable. I live in my home country, where my native language is the spoken language.

What about refugees who learnt English at school? (world language and all that - a situation we ironically created through forcefully emigrating to other people's countries ourselves...) Should they be forced to live in Bulgaria or France where they don't speak the language, the government refuses to provide language lessons, and they're never going to be able to do anything other than the most menial labour?

Or should they be able to go to a country where they skills and language abilities are most suited?

You are mixing up immigrants with refugees. Refugees are in crisis and whatever possible can be done to help should be done.