AIBU to be worried about the next Refugee crisis

[Gin96]

The numbers are starting to accelerate again, the poor people stuck in Greece camps but people from the EU have lost interest, I wonder how this is going to end? Will the EU open the borders again?

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jan/16/catastrophic-conditions-greet-refugees-arriving-on-lesbos

I have no idea what you are talking about. Refugees aren’t looking to recreate their homelands in yours, they’re looking for shelter. We can fit far more people here and those people will work and contribute in many ways.

It’s no good just repeating mantras and assertions! I can give you facts and figures about food production and population in the UK and some guesses about England alone. There is no more room here. We are overpopulated. Have you any answers to my questions?

And speak to the working class girls of Rotherham and Telford about how well integrated some ethnic groups are.

If it’s plain shelter they want, temporary camps, some solution might be found, but we cannot just integrate millions.

You’re living, however well intentioned, in fantasy land. Where are the practicalities of how this would actually work??

ExEuCitizen
Britain imports food, has done for a long while.

You clearly don't care about the lessons of history which explain your current positions.

Facts don't matter too much either, although your posts stink of racism. How many refugees were involved in the Rotherham affair exactly?

Thats right, any opinion other than that of the over-sentimental oh-so-liberal middle classes must be racist.

You want an unspecified, but large number of unknown random refugees taken in. I point out we don’t have the food or resources. Your side of the argument replies talking of space, no mention of economies or food. I ask how many refugees you want and where they will be placed. You reply with more meaningless assertions that there is lots of room and these refugees will be subsumed and contribute. I point out many do not want to subsume and contribute, they want to keep their own identity and customs. These may well be in conflict with ours. Your side of argument replies again stating there is loads of space.

Where is the space? Where are these magical resources you insist that refugees generate?

I am asking for practicalities. Your side of the argument replies only with meaningless unfounded assertions, sentiment, and insults.

It is not racist to want UK immigration rules - something that Labour and the Tories and most people in the UK agree to have. It is common sense.

Of course it's not racist to want immigration rules (although those rules should be fair and respect international humanitarian law). Plus there should be solidarity shown with the large refugee hosting countries (how can we expect them to do what's right when we completely shake off any responsibility on ridiculous grounds of needing to import food or population density - like the numbers involved would make the slightest difference)

it is indeed racist to conflate refugees with paedophile rings solely on the basis of their race/religion.

Also slightly baffled by the imposing of a nation on a local population. WTAF are you on?

" I point out we don’t have the food or resources."

With no basis. You are wrong. There is PLENTY of food in the UK and there are PLENTY of resources. The UK is one of the richest countries in the world.

Here you go. Facts. UK has average daily dietary intake of 3450 calories. There is no shortage of food in the UK. Fact.
www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/documents/food_security_statistics/FoodConsumptionNutrients_en.xls#

Resouces. UK is the 24th wealthiest country in the world. Admittedly it'd be richer without Brexit but hey-ho, that's not the refugees' fault. Still rich though.
data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?view=chart

AND another fun fact. Refugees are actually NOT a burden in the long term. Research demonstrates this fact.
www.oecd.org/social/refugees-are-not-a-burden-but-an-opportunity.htm

There you go. Lots of figures and facts rather than islamophobia and prejudice.

And, final fact for the chronically prejudiced, the UK is number 49 in the world when it comes to population density.
Malta (which takes in far more refugees per capita than the UK) has 1397 people/km2
Bangladesh with over a million refugees has 1,116 people/km2
Lebanon with nearly a million Syrian refugees has 653 people/km2

The UK has only 279 people/km2 and, out of 66 million people, plus the slow down in immigration due to Brexit and far fewer people actually choosing to live in the UK plus a birth rate below replacement, can easily find room to take a few more refugees, certainly a few vulnerable children.

So 'no room at the inn' doesn't fly either.

data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST

By the way, most refugees want to GO HOME. They do not want to be refugees, they did not choose to be refugees. A refugee is someone who has been FORCED to flee.

Any suggestions on how the nhs and educational services would cope?

Im frontline nhs and assure you that we are not coping at all at present. My trust serves a densely populated northern town with a relatively high immigration population. School class sizes are large and nhs services are inadequate to the sheer volume of people.

Your “facts” on food are wrong. My dh grew up in food poverty, not eating for whole weekends quite regularly. My family barely had enough. Many are still in that situation. In fact things are getting worse, as shown by the growth of homelessness and food banks. There is no reason to believe things will improve with Brexit. Britain only feeds about 2/3 of its population currently, and if food imports were to stop we’d be in serious trouble. By some metrics Britain may rank as one of the single-digit richest countries. By other metrics it actually rates a lot lower, and it is certainly clear that certain groups of people have more wealth and more opportunities to take wealth - not make it - than others. This is real and it is no good simply dismissing it as irrelevant because it can be fixed. It never has.

Yes there are other countries more densely populated than Britain. I’d forgotten Malta tbh. There are also many more countries that are less so, many more, and many more that do not have our issues with food security, being over producers.

I have said that we can take a few children, but many are talking about taking serious numbers, yet refuse to specify a population limit. I’m glad you acknowledge refugees want to go home too. Our efforts can be best targeted towards that end, rather than making up stories and insults while pretending we have infinite resources to indefinitely house millions from every failed state around the world.

My mentioning of borders was acknowledging that what these different peoples want is territories of their own, in which the writ of their own law and customs run. You claim they only want shelter, but you don’t actually want to provide them with just temporary shelter. You want them to integrate at the same time. It’s spmetimes a bit confusing trying to figure out what you do want through your contradictions.

Failing public services are a political issue and completely unrelated to refugees or the size of the population (big countries have good public services, densely populated countries have good public services - there is no relation). Germany took in a million or so refugees in a relatively short period and have better functioning hospitals and schools than in the UK.

I don't expect the UK to take in as many refugees as Sweden or Germany. But it's doing a piss poor job right now and could do a lot better.

Your husband being hungry as a child has absolutely nothing to do with refugees and everything to do with domestic policy.

And how much food a country produces is completely irrelevant to how much food is available to the population.

Singapore produces no food. Dubai produces no food.

Yet somehow their populations have more than enough food to eat

Everyone has very short memories as it’s within a living generation that Europeans were the economic migrants and displaced refugees to the rest world post WW1 and WW2 (around 60 million people because refugees and displaced persons with WW2)

The bigger the world's population gets, the more we fight and more people who get displaced. It's all part and parcel of a population explosion. One major flu outbreak etc and those poor kids wont stand a chance.

I fear it's just part of life. The world gets smaller via technology, more people survive via modern medicine but basically we cant live in harmony as a the human race. I dont know what the answer is.

Of course refugees do not wish to be refugees and would rather return home, but the problem is not a simplistic one.

The refugee crisis of 2015 has cost the German state 55 million euros in total, according to an article I read last week. Bearing in mind the uproar over Britain's contribution to the EU in recent years, I honestly can't believe that many of the UK electorate would go for that. . .

I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think that accepting people in huge numbers without the infrastructure to help them is a good idea.

We already do a lot - I thought no country in the EU gave as much aid to those abroad eg those in Syrian camps than the UK (far too much in my view when we could be spending it on people at home). We are absolutely superb internationally on this issue and should be lauded to the roof tops and patted on the back. If people don't appreciate what we do then why should we bother?

20 Iranian came in France by boat last night. They were not in danger on France and EU law requires they be hosted by France whilst their claims are brouught so I would like to see them back in France by tonight but instead presumably every one of them is now going to cost us an absolute fortune.

..came from France to the UK...

If people don't appreciate what we do then why should we bother? seriously?

Why do we not see refugees in boats trying to get to France from the UK? With Brexit round the corner and how terrible the UK is, how we are all going starve with not enough food, people on mumsnet have been stocking up there cupboards for months. We are all racist and awful to all migrants and refugees. Why do people still want to come here?

Not everyone is awful to migrants.

So in this thread there are people who:

• Think that refugees are responsible for terror attacks in the uk (overwhelmingly committed by British born men)

• Think that refugees are responsible for Rotherham (predominantly British Pakistani men who are not refugees, what with being British and all...)

• And that every refugee is going to cost us “an absolute fortune” (asylum seekers receive £37 a week and housing is often b&bs and hostels. Xenia could obviously live in absolute dignity on £37 a week.)

Successive governments have fucked housing to the point where there is not enough. Just down the road from me are 80 empty ex MOD houses. They stood empty for 5 years. People petitioned for some/all of them to be used for refugees, ex army and homeless people. The council? Well, they bought them up and sold them all to the highest bidder. £400k for a three bed semi. Developers allowed to build on the playing field. 3 houses out of 80 put aside for social housing. So I can understand people’s frustration that we can’t look after our own so why should we look after anyone else. But direct your anger at the government that created this system.

Oh, and once more for the hard of thinking: when you’re being smuggled/trafficked out of a country you get little to zero say in where you’d like to go. It’s not a sodding package holiday.

@5zeds in the media it’s constant comments about how racist the UK is, how awful UK will be with Brexit, yet refugees are risking their lives getting in boats to come across the channel in December, what does that say about Europe and France?