Ukrainians should just be given a three year stay in UK, no visa needed.

[Kendodd]

And they should be allowed to work, but not claim asylum.
And before people start jumping up and down 'they're not coming here, we're full up' minimal state support should be given to appease you lot. A network should be set up tso people with space, spare rooms etc can offer accommodation. Some of the people coming will be teachers, they can be supported in setting up informal or online schools for the children.
This is temporary, we are better than this. I know the Tories don't want it but they don't have to get over involved, individual people will step up and take people in. I know it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.

Yabu - No
Yanbu Let them come

[quote RedWingBoots]@Daddydog people do go back. It is said about every single accession state to the EU that they will come in and won't ever leave but most do.[/quote]
But isn't is war not a peaceful country joining the EU? Life, families, homes and jobs will be lost. It's like being burgled, you never feel safe in your own home again. I'm all for helping people and honestly think we don't do nearly enough and can do a lot more if we have a plan - but just surprised with how some people see Ukraines plight as different from other conflicts?

I think that those of us who live in the larger towns and cities to which the immigrants gravitate have a different understanding to somebody pontificating while living in an all white-British rural idyll.

Anybody volunteering rooms out in the sticks should know that the vast majority of immigrants will turn them down without a second thought and it's not mainly to do with employment opportunities either as care sector and service industry shortages are present almost everywhere. Unless you live in a large town/city and rely on the private sector for your schooling, housing and medical care (which I'm sure applies to some people on this forum), then you will be intimately acquainted with the additional pressures created and how longstanding citizens often lose out in the long term.

Another thing is that immigrants often come with ingrained xenophobic attitudes against other immigrant groups and/or against British people. It is actually insulting to them to collectively group them together like a gaggle of cute teddy bears. We need to acknowledge our differences and start talking about them and even celebrate them rather than becoming the gullible victims of deterministic thinking churned out by flawed national, educational policies over a few generations

@Daddydog former Yugoslavia. People did go back.

That was also the first time I can remember that people were saying we didn't have room for refugees.

Though I know from the people who I went to school and college with plus who was our local MP at one point, people in the UK were saying that long before that.

@lonelyapple

The Tories have refused to build any new housing because they want to keep house prices high and only affordable for the rich/people able to get massive mortgages, so I doubt they'll suddenly start building millions of houses in which case, where will millions of refugee families be housed when there is already a million strong waiting list for housing for people living here? There are only so many people willing to give up spare rooms etc.

"There were 166,860 estimated new build dwellings starts in the year to June 2021, a 32 per cent increase compared to the year to June 2020. An estimated 183,450 new build dwellings were completed in the year to June 2021, an increase of 26 per cent compared to the year to June 2020."

Out of interest, just how many new builds do you want and more importantly, where exactly would you be putting them?

@Soffit

I think that those of us who live in the larger towns and cities to which the immigrants gravitate have a different understanding to somebody pontificating while living in an all white-British rural idyll.

Anybody volunteering rooms out in the sticks should know that the vast majority of immigrants will turn them down without a second thought and it's not mainly to do with employment opportunities either as care sector and service industry shortages are present almost everywhere. Unless you live in a large town/city and rely on the private sector for your schooling, housing and medical care (which I'm sure applies to some people on this forum), then you will be intimately acquainted with the additional pressures created and how longstanding citizens often lose out in the long term.

Another thing is that immigrants often come with ingrained xenophobic attitudes against other immigrant groups and/or against British people. It is actually insulting to them to collectively group them together like a gaggle of cute teddy bears. We need to acknowledge our differences and start talking about them and even celebrate them rather than becoming the gullible victims of deterministic thinking churned out by flawed national, educational policies over a few generations

Very true it's all very well sitting in your detached four bedroom house thinking of course we have as many Ukrainian,s as possible ,knowing full well its never going to impact you personally , Rather different when you live in a low income area with long housing lists ,too few jobs ,over crowded schools .

I think refugees should be allowed to go somewhere where they can rebuild their lives and access things they need. A sleeping bag in a sports hall in the UK is a low bar. The UK cannot even take care of the people already here.

It’s not because I “don’t want refugees”. I actually want better for those refugees and I think that we are not well placed to provide that. With the exception of people who would house displaced relatives etc.

@Pazuzu in my wider area of London flats and houses are going up all the time on brown field sites. Unfortunately the prices of some of them, their precise locations and how they are designed means that for some properties they take ages to get buyers.

Some of the developers are wise and give us locals a say in the type of dwellings so they get planning permission quickly, others are happy to fight it out.

We have huge amounts of homelessness. We couldn't possibly nearly double our population. Then kick everyone out again in three years? There isn't enough jobs. Or homes. Or food. We'd descend into chaos. And be ripe for invasion ourselves. And your plan seems to include giving Ukraine to Russia? So where do we send the Ukrainians to in 3 years?

And schooling?! My god where are all these kids going to get their rightful education?

I don't have an objection in principle to taking a refugee into my home. I've had a lodger before.

However, I wouldn't take a man or a teenage boy I didn't know, irrespective of nationality, especially as I have teen daughters and their personal safety is my priority. I also have a teen son, this makes me sad to think of him being rejected in a similar situation, but my primary loyalty is to my own children.

I am also realistic to the fact that I live in a rural area with very limited public transport. It could prove a very isolating experience for a refugee and not at all what they need.

Good intentions are not sufficient. This needs practical help, not sentimentality.

I work with unaccompanied asylum seeking young people - yes I would have a refugee in my spare room if I had one - you will find 18-60 year old men in short supply though since they are not able to leave and are expected to fight

@Almostwelsh

I don't have an objection in principle to taking a refugee into my home. I've had a lodger before.

However, I wouldn't take a man or a teenage boy I didn't know, irrespective of nationality, especially as I have teen daughters and their personal safety is my priority. I also have a teen son, this makes me sad to think of him being rejected in a similar situation, but my primary loyalty is to my own children.

I am also realistic to the fact that I live in a rural area with very limited public transport. It could prove a very isolating experience for a refugee and not at all what they need.

Good intentions are not sufficient. This needs practical help, not sentimentality.

This is very true ,but young single men ,elderly people etc will all need housing too I can't see to many mumsnetters ,throwing the doors of their spare rooms open to just anyone .

There's £15b worth if empty property sitting vacant in London. I imagine a chunk of that is dirty money! Considering how much KYC and AML Brits now have to go through to prove our funds are taxed, not laundered or proceeds of crime - maybe the should ask foreign owners (who caused the extra checks now on buying houses for honest people) to provide the sources of wealth or find their house repatriated to the refugee effort in the short term. If the situation was reversed and there was a MoscowShire somewhere in Russia, the authorities take possession no questions even asked!

Yabu

@x2boys of course most mumsnetters aren't going to house whoever turns up, it's just virtue signaling for the majority. From what I see on the news not many of the Ukrainian refugees are men, but there are large numbers of male asylum seekers as well as families from other countries and I don't see people rushing to give them the spare room. And there are many practical reasons why this wouldn't be a good idea in any case.

@Daddydog

There's £15b worth if empty property sitting vacant in London. I imagine a chunk of that is dirty money! Considering how much KYC and AML Brits now have to go through to prove our funds are taxed, not laundered or proceeds of crime - maybe the should ask foreign owners (who caused the extra checks now on buying houses for honest people) to provide the sources of wealth or find their house repatriated to the refugee effort in the short term. If the situation was reversed and there was a MoscowShire somewhere in Russia, the authorities take possession no questions even asked!

Be great if we could take in the Ukranian refugees and legally squat them in Russian owned empty homes (aka investment), one of those really nice luxury ones.

Ah virtue signalling. The current insult for someone with a different point of view, be it mask wearing or refugees.

Really lazy posting.

minimal state support should be given to appease you lot

Minimum means just that. Minimum. People in the UK struggle to scrape by on the state-decided minimum. What does minimum mean to you? Come to the UK and be allowed to access food banks but not housing? No jobseeker allowance? How do they pay rent?

I dont thinking you know what you mean by "minimum" and you cant make rules off the top of your head. Like why should they get less? Because people on benefits already get too much? Arent benefits the minimum?

Even if someone spent 10 billion on housing the houses or downsizing or whatever wont happen fast enough to be workable. Where do they fall on the lost for housing? Same as other refugees? Do you want them placed above or below? What about a refugee camp?

I get you feel powerless and want to help but throwing out ideals doesnt answer the questions you need to answer to make it workable.

@ilovesooty

Ah virtue signalling. The current insult for someone with a different point of view, be it mask wearing or refugees.

Really lazy posting.

I think it is the current insult for anyone with half a heart.

I agree with pp - we have no housing, or certainly not enough to house refugees as well as people already on housing waiting lists. There are hardly any rentals on the market as no-one wants to be a landlord these days. The legal system has tipped so much towards tenants, that you’d have to be mad to even think about buying to rent. Our NHS is struggling massively, with years of waiting lists already. I can see it would totally collapse with further pressure. Our schools are over subscribed; where would w3 have room to squeeze in another few thousand children from Ukraine, whose first language isn’t English, bringing more pressure on teachers? . We’ve a large debt to pay from Covid. The people who are virtue signalling are the middle classes who have their DCs in private education, have private healthcare and a large house in the country away from the problems of overcrowded cities. They bleat about giving up your spare rooms for a refugee, when the reality is they probably look the other way as they step over the thousands of homeless people who have been on the streets for years. Total hypocrisy.

I am fortunate enough to live in a fashionable part of London full of Corbyn worshipping liberals who have had a lot of help from family to buy multi million pound homes. They are the first to virtue signal and hashtag about each refugee crisis BUT
They completely ignore all the refugees/asylum seekers/regular immigrants on the school runs and always have as far back as I remember (in each year group, there is usually one gregarious exception, that's all).

I find myself questioning: If you are genuinely fond of refugees IRL then why don't you at least say hello when you pass them in the street? Or invite them to birthday parties/park dates? Occasionally, they will tolerate a single one of those demographics (chosen by their child) and casually make sure that everyone knows about it but they will barely acknowledge the parents once the occasion is over.

It seems like a multicultural area on the face of it but it is more of a leftie apartheid state in reality.

I think that virtue signaling online merely reflects the virtue signaling IRL which is ancient in comparison!

There's no shortage of refugees/asylum seekers needing housing in the UK. If all these people with big hearts and spare rooms want to help, there are more details here:

www.paih.org/get-involved/host-a-refugee-in-your-home

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/02/28/europe/students-allege-racism-ukraine-cmd-intl/index.html

If you think the U.K. is bad. See what people at the polish/Ukraine borders are behaving like!!

I once witnessed the oddest exchange which made me choke on my latte. It was a PTA meeting taking place in a cafe. All the representatives were white, middle class, yummy mummy types. One proposed a wine evening to raise funds and the others were immediately enthused by the suggestion. Then they had an afterthought that many of the school parents were muslim so would be unlikely to participate. After a couple of agonizing seconds, it was decided that even though it would be pointless for the muslim parents to attend, they would enjoy themselves and be raising money to benefit everyone in the process so it was justified and approved. In other words, they were happy to anti-integrate and feel good about providing the muslim parents with the benefits at arm's length because it felt good overall.