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

What is your suggestion saraclara?

It’s complicated. It’s likely that we (the west) would get accused of meddling if we did step in.

The options are create fortress Europe and leave the rest of the world to deal with its own problems. Already happening and going to get worse due to the increasing population and decreasing resources in the developing world.

Let everyone who wants to move to the west come here - electoral suicide. We have right wing governments popping up all over Europe as mass immigration hasn’t proved popular with the people. Which is why fortress Europe is now happening.

Or, we can create a new, neutral organisation to cope with the refugees. A system of safe zones and temporary asylum. It would need a United, coordinated, global front to do this though, which I don’t think is likely as everywhere seems to be retreating into Nationalism.

a lot of which goes on the NHS which I don't use, state schools which I don't use, state pension which I may not get as my family dies young

I find it difficult to believe you've never used the NHS. What about smear tests? Giving birth? Midwife care?

Your choice to send your offspring to private schools.

Pension - well that is a bit of a lottery. I often wonder myself whether I should spend it all but my family actually do all last a long time - all into their 80s.

@cologne4711

When the welfare state was set up, a central part of it was to ensure that everyone had a stake in it. That’s the only way it works - because you are essentially asking the rich to pay for the poor and it only works if the rich are getting something out of it.

The move to needs based, from contributions based in the 1980s broke this.

This is why I was against the removal of child benefit for all, because it was the one benefit that higher rate tax payers got. Look at social housing - it used to be available to everyone, now it’s just there for the poorest, so the majority of the population don’t care about it anymore. My fear is that the NHS will end up like this - a piss poor service that only the poor use because they have no choice. Everyone else has insurance.

If you alienate the net contributors, they will vote against the welfare state and it will cease to exist. This is what we are currently heading towards.

Your attitude is helping this along.

the reason we have refugees is not too many people, it's too many corrupt and dysfunctional governments

If necessary, a system of temporary asylum - set numbers per year, depending on what is going on in the world. Once their countries are safe, they can go back and help rebuild.
Isn’t this exactly what being a refugee means?

@Xenia if your child/ren are intending to go to university they will be state funded, and if they went to public school the tax breaks given for ridiculous “charitable status” of such schools are paid for by the rest of us too. You private Dr was probably trained at our expense and should you need more intensive care it will likely come from the nhs infrastructure (few people die in private hospitals). To suggest that being a higher rate tax player somehow means you are carrying the rest of us might make you feel good but is hardly reality. The poor of Sunderland are not drowning in the Mediterranean, nor are their children sleeping rough in their hundreds/thousands, stolen for organ donation or trafficked. Pretending that it’s not happening, that it’s not that bad, that it’s somehow their fault they are running from horror is evil.

Something for the mums here to think about:

If you were killed, your home destroyed and your child orphaned in a civil war, what would you want to happen to them?

Start from the point where they're in a camp in Lesbos, cold, hungry and scared, and at risk of abuse.
They can:
a) be taken to a random country they've never been to before, don't know the language of, and where they might well be left in an orphanage, or
b) they can be sent to relatives in the UK who will provide a family environment, love them, keep your memory alive, be able to communicate with them, and get them the support they need (in the language they know) to try to heal.

How many of you still think this country is wrong to accept these children?

I've been to non Western countries
I've seen hostels advertising B&B for 4 dollars a night (includes food)
No NHS
No free health care
No free education
Wealthy Westerners, not working 7 days a week to feed their families
Why wouldn't they try to come across 1000s of miles & 100 of countries for a better life
With access to the internet, our lifestyle is probably even more desirable

However, do they understand that the cost of living is high ?

@5zeds

Most asylum seekers stay permanently, once they get permanent residency.

Our cleaners at work are former refugees and they go back to their country of origin for holidays.

Neither of them are highly skilled, in fact they are net takers from the system.

If it is safe enough for them to visit their country of origin for a holiday, then it is safe enough for them to live there.

Once their country became safe, they stopped being refugees and became economic migrants.

Most asylum seekers stay permanently, once they get permanent residency. Well they wouldn’t apply for permanent residency if they wanted to go back would they?

Your comments at 19:58 and 20:46 contradict each other 5zeds.

Is asylum in this country to be temporary or is it a route to permanent residency?

You’ve scored a great own goal though. People like you are exactly why we now have Brexit and a hardline Tory government. Well done.

Not all refugees apply for permanent residency. Not all those that do get it. It can take years (many) get leave to remain. What is contradictory about that? It’s fact. [confuse].

People like you are exactly why we now have Brexit and a hardline Tory government. that would be the responsibility of people who voted for Brexit and Boris. Is that who you imagine you’re interacting with? how.....odd.

Some truly grim attitudes on this thread. I can see why Boris and his anti-immigrant rhetoric succeeded at the election, when so many people in the UK appear to have been brainwashed by the Daily Mail.

Hey, xenia, has the ex reimbursed you the school fees yet? 😉

Sorry, xen, maybe 'below the belt' 😂 but anyone who has been on MN for 10 years plus knows you're massively successful, hence the 'tax bill' you're moaning about, and that due to their massively privileged education, your DC will never know 'want'.

The also know how massively right wing and entitled you are.

thedancingbear You and those like you are the reason people in this country cant have a decent constuctive debate regarding immigration.

Xenia doesnt give a fuck about British born struggling people. It would be a mistake to expect her to give a fuck about foreign born struggling people. She is proof that money cant buy you intelligence or understanding.

Ah well we are leaving the EU so have no obligation to take any of these people, marvellous isn't it

I'm fairly sure that indigenous tribes of Mexico or North America, Africa, Australia, India etc didn't want fucking migrants either. Guess what, our forefathers forced it upon them. Europeans have colonised the world, draining resources from other countries, starting wars, destroying cultures, manufacturing new countries and changing borders. Migration is the story of the world and has been since the dawn of mankind. It's not going to stop now just because some people are too ignorant to correlate the past with the present. We have no more right to the worlds finite resources than any one of those people. Given the extensive role our country has played in these historical colonisations I'd say it's our moral obligation to help these refugees and any more that follow.

@SerendipityJane spot on

I think it's best we don't assume what I do think as no one knows except for me. I work extremely hard and pay an awful lot of tax and a lot of that goes on the less well off and then £300m a year of foreign aid to Pakistan. It wouldn't be very fair to say I don't do my bit, never mind anything charitable (which I don't write about)

People have indeed colonised the world but remember it was African who did that - not Europeans. We all started in Africa. I am 3% Neanderthal DNA and the homo sapiens who spread from Africa, Iraq round to Europe, across Doggerland when the UK was joined to France and into these islands bred with those and the Neanderthals died out other than to the extent there was that inter mingling - we don't know yet the circumstances. It is not quite fair to say europeans are the wicked ones and to say the West has to take on some kind of collective built because of what some (not all) of some of our ancestors might have done is wrong in my view.

As to who has a right to waht it depends what you mean by rights. Thyere are legal rights. Then there are subjective moral rights and people vary over those - some think the after life is our main life, others think every person on the planet has a right to everything, others think unborn babies should not be killed etc etc - loads of different moral rights around.

@5zeds

If you don’t grasp that the lies told by the left, about the volume and nature of immigration and the subsequent shutting down of any concerns raised with shouts of racist has got us into the situation we are in today, then there is no hope for you.

Sadly, this will be nothing in comparison to the displacement of people due to climate change.

@MaccaPacca81

Absolutely. Which is why we need a humane way of dealing with it.

Just “opening our borders to all refugees” is not sustainable and only treats the symptoms, not the cause. 5zeds is short sighted and narrow minded.