To not have realised that the government is NOT planning offshore refugee processing

[PurpleParrotfish]

They want to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, full stop.
Probably my fault for not paying careful enough attention to the news, but a lot of the discussion about this has been based on this misunderstanding.
If anyone makes it to the UK to claim asylum, risking their life to do so in a small boat, the UK will immediately deport them to Rwanda, a country we accept refugees FROM (it can be very dangerous for gay men and lesbians).
Those found to have a genuine refugee claim, maybe who even have family in the UK still won’t be allowed back here.

@Guineapigssweak

Message deleted by MNHQ.

@Guineapigssweak and your source for this complete load of old tosh is?

Bet you voted Farage!

@XingMing I think your take on the English civil war is far too simplistic. There had long been an English political class and I would argue that Charles 1 was unusual in being so unbending in his interpretation of the monarchy - hence his unprecedented trail and execution. There were also two well resourced armies involved which isn’t the case in a localised uprising.

I’m not exactly on the pulse of the academic literature but I do remember the general idea that revolutions require a strong middle class - ie. The French Revolution was not a peasant uprising, serf reforms had support form the intelligentsia… I can’t think of any examples of totally disenfranchised people staging successful coup d’etats. There might well be some in areas I don’t know about but I don’t think the English civil war and the situation as described in Eritrea are comparable. In more recent history there’s often interference form abroad ie. The Iranian Revolution. I also don’t think we can really say - oh just fight it out lads - when in modern warfare the weaponry available to the state is very unlikely to lead to a fair fight between dissidents and the army. There’s plenty enough examples in Europe over the last 100 years where citizens simply cannot stage an uprising against oppressive armies - it seems a bit grim and distasteful to list occasions where people have been powerless against state persecution/ occupying forces but they’re not hard to think of.

Refugees do not have the luxury of making online visa applications and then booking themselves a flight when their paperwork comes through. If you are fleeing somewhere where you could be arrested and tortured for being gay or opposing a dictator, it is not possible to request a visa politely and wait. This policy is basically saying we do not want any refugees and do not want to expend any energy sensitively investigating any claims for asylum. It is vile.

The economic migrants should be sent back to their own countries . Clearly different from people escaping persecution and war .
Fit healthy young men depriving their own countries of youth - is it moral we keep them here ?

When they arrive they need housing, financial support, education and the NHS to name but a few requirements.

Fit healthy young men depriving their own countries of youth - is it moral we keep them here ? When they arrive they need housing, financial support, education and the NHS to name but a few requirements

Make up your mind - they can’t be fit and healthy and need the NHS.

My great, great grandparents were economic migrants. They worked their arses off, why can’t their contemporary counterparts do the same?

Fit healthy young men depriving their own countries of youth - is it moral we keep them here

If a 'fit. young healthy man' flees a country because of war, persecution, fear of conscription, who should take responsibility for protecting them?

Can a fit, young healthy man be a refugee?

I concede my posts yesterday referencing the English Civil War may have been OTT, but I stand by my view that people get the society that they do (or don't) work for, and that if you can't be arsed to get off yours to make your world better, then parachuting yourself into another preferred country simply (and expecting to be accepted) because you like the look of life there better shouldn't be an option. Acquiring citizenship or a right to live in a country you were not born in is not like deciding on a two week holiday.

I'd quite like to live in New Zealand, but it's not an option because I wasn't born there, we can't make the property qualification and I am 66... and I am not fleeing an abusive situation.

I can only think it is a position to detract, single males wishing to enter the UK. I don’t agree with the position for genuine asylum seekers.

There needs to be an updated definition of refugee. If someone is paying £000 to be transported on an inflatable boat to the UK because there's no ID Card and it's easy to vanish into a black economy and work for cash. That is economic migration. If you are a woman with small children from Ukraine seeking a place of safety, you are a refugee.

@XingMing

There needs to be an updated definition of refugee. If someone is paying £000 to be transported on an inflatable boat to the UK because there's no ID Card and it's easy to vanish into a black economy and work for cash. That is economic migration. If you are a woman with small children from Ukraine seeking a place of safety, you are a refugee.

Why?

You do realise that people who come on the boats are mostly picked up and are then processed by the Home Office and claim asylum.

They may pay money - because they have the resources to get across Europe whereas other people with limited resources have to stay in refugee camps nearer the country where they are fleeing from

Imagine if people had to leave this country? People with resources could get out - if they had cash, they could pay people to take them to Europe.

I'd quite like to live in New Zealand, but it's not an option because I wasn't born there, we can't make the property qualification and I am 66... and I am not fleeing an abusive situation

But if you were younger and had skills they require, you could. Which makes this a bit of a nonsense: if you can't be arsed to get off yours to make your world better, then parachuting yourself into another preferred country simply (and expecting to be accepted) because you like the look of life there better shouldn't be an option

@Blossomtoes, I/we did have the skills required at the time, and the money too but we also had three elderly parents in the UK at the time the choice had to be made, and time has moved on; the NZ financial thresholds have soared too, so it's no longer an option. Their rules are stricter, and the financial threshold has been raised much higher, to deter economic migration except by the very well-to-do who will never be an economic burden/need support. It really isn't just the UK that is quibbling about accepting migration.

And NZ is a thinly populated country. It's almost as big geographically as the UK, and has a population of 5 million. It works because almost everyone, except children and elderly senior citizens, work for their livelihood. I am sure there are disabled people too.

@XingMing

I concede my posts yesterday referencing the English Civil War may have been OTT, but I stand by my view that people get the society that they do (or don't) work for, and that if you can't be arsed to get off yours to make your world better, then parachuting yourself into another preferred country simply (and expecting to be accepted) because you like the look of life there better shouldn't be an option. Acquiring citizenship or a right to live in a country you were not born in is not like deciding on a two week holiday.

I'd quite like to live in New Zealand, but it's not an option because I wasn't born there, we can't make the property qualification and I am 66... and I am not fleeing an abusive situation.

Don't you think that oppressive regimes, dictators, harsh punishments, secret police etc can make life a bit difficult for people and especially those who want to change the way a country is run for the better?

Saying that people get the society they work for seems a bit naive.

People who campaign for change can find themselves disappeared.

So they keep quiet.

Or they flee the country?

That's why I admire Alexei Nalvalny who has challenged Putin's regime and is imprisoned as a result. He is a man of principle, and very courageous.

To those who think this horrible idea won't actually come to fruition - what will then happen to the £120b that our government have said this will cost? Just absorbed/distributed amongst the wealthy via private contracts etc.?

@XingMing

That's why I admire Alexei Nalvalny who has challenged Putin's regime and is imprisoned as a result. He is a man of principle, and very courageous.

Lets look around the world where people have stood up to heavily armed dictators... even the Arab Spring, probably the most successful in recent times, achieved nothing, these countries went back to dictatorship. Myanmar, Syria, Belarus and Eretria... all murder their way to stay in power :( Nalvalny, as brave as he is, probably was unwise to go back to Russia, he probably never be released. The Russian protestors against the Ukraine war were arrested and many jailed, families blackmailed.

One reason why its young men who come first is that they less likely to be sold into sex slavery and children handed to paedophiles or sold to childless families.

Its v easy to sit at home, in a comfy armchair and send other young people to their deaths.

@XingMing the result of being a dissident against these regimes isn’t just imprisonment is it though!?

Remember Salisbury?

Or what happened to Jamal Khashoggi
news.sky.com/story/jamal-khashoggi-how-journalist-met-his-death-11522641

And those are examples of the regime still persecuting you when you HAVE managed to leave. If you remained in the country in those circumstances you wouldn’t stand a chance.

It’s not a matter of people using their voices in a democratic country. The people that I felt most sorry for in Afghanistan when the Taliban came back into power were those left there. Those girls now denied an education. I don’t blame anyone trying to get away from a regime like that.

No, I definitely don't blame people from attempting to leave if they are physically capable of making the journey either.

@GeidiPrimes

To those who think this horrible idea won't actually come to fruition - what will then happen to the £120b that our government have said this will cost? Just absorbed/distributed amongst the wealthy via private contracts etc.?

You’ve got it. Lots of money for lawyers too.

@XingMing

There needs to be an updated definition of refugee. If someone is paying £000 to be transported on an inflatable boat to the UK because there's no ID Card and it's easy to vanish into a black economy and work for cash. That is economic migration. If you are a woman with small children from Ukraine seeking a place of safety, you are a refugee.

The doctor who saw what has happening to people as they had to treat the results - spoke up and so was tortured. Fled to the U.K. simply because they had one contact there who helped

The journalist who criticised a regime was imprisoned, tortured, allowed out on the promise of writing propaganda but ran - got on a plane by bribing officials at the airport (with a lot of ££ as there was an alert out)

The (academic writer) who published work criticising leaders of a local region. Fled, paid traffickers who promised a trip to the U.K. ended up elsewhere in Europe, as a slave, as the traffickers took their passport. Fled across Europe to escape the traffickers - had to get to a safe place from them.

The family who ended up in the back of a lorry fleeing with no papers, initially at the hands of traffickers, then at the hands of another set trying to escape the first ones. Had sold everything they owned to raise money.

The woman who spoke up against her government and was warned the police were looking for her. Had to flee, not knowing how she'd get out of the country or where she'd end up. Left her children behind rather than risk them in the hands of traffickers. Loved ones scraped together money to help.

Having money doesn't make a person an economic migrant. Having money can make someone a skilled professional or business person who has crossed an oppressive regime and needs to get out fast via whatever means they can. Traffickers aren't always paid in money. They rape, enslave, etc too, as "payment".

All the stories above are slightly adjusted real ones (I've used "they" in most cases as part of that adjustment).

When you have worse than no knowledge about a subject and what your fellow human beings have to go through, please try to listen read and learn (a lot!).

This is a difficult thread because I find myself able to hold multiple views simultaneously, yet unable to reconcile them. Obviously, the human tragedy is overwhelming and desperately urgent. But without the wish of hard=pressed people to help out now, and probably only short term, then the onus falls back on states and governments, who can only fund the relief efforts to the ability and willingness of the taxable population to stump up. We can all put a one-off tenner in the hat, but actually what's needed is £100 pw from everyone, and not just those who have a comfortable surplus, every week. Which is a big ask when most people are tightening their belts to meet rising utility bills and higher grocery costs.

@bhooks, please don't lecture in sanctimonious mode. I'm not an aid worker, and don't have useful aiding skills. Like most who aren't, I want to be part of the solution and helpful. But there are hundreds of thousands of British people living bad lives here that MN tells me are inadequately fed, housed and educated. Personally, I can only pay taxes to help, and because I am boring and normal, I pay them all in full on the day I should.

[quote XingMing]@bhooks, please don't lecture in sanctimonious mode. I'm not an aid worker, and don't have useful aiding skills. Like most who aren't, I want to be part of the solution and helpful. But there are hundreds of thousands of British people living bad lives here that MN tells me are inadequately fed, housed and educated. Personally, I can only pay taxes to help, and because I am boring and normal, I pay them all in full on the day I should.[/quote]
Not one word of empathy for any one of those individuals, but instead a personal attack on me?

I had thought an idea of what real people really have to go through might help you understand points being made on this thread. I should have known better.

It's not me who's been sanctimonious!

I can gush sympathy and empathy, but won't. And if you view my previous comment as a personal attack, then I wonder if you read past sanctimonius... and yes, this is a personal response. My previous post wasn't personal. It was a general comment on a global tragedy, one which I feel unable to help much, beyond donations and paying my taxes. There are people better qualified than me to decide how to spend them.