This government and their direction of travel, frightens me.

[Kendodd]

Teressa May (last government, but same party) with her 'go home immigrants' vans and hostle environment.
Immigration and Borders act.
Transportation to Rwanda.
Bringing laws in trying to limit our right to protest.
Lying to the queen to prorogue parliament.
Lying in the house of commons.
Trying to change the law to get one of your MPs off.
Pretty much ripping up the ministerial code.
Windrush.
Admitting that they're just going to break international law.

I bet they will come after the human rights act and try to get us out of ECHR.

Worse, I think a great many of the public love the fact they've done all the above and would cheer loudly at the ripping up of the human rights act and ECHR membership (wtaf?)

How did we get to this?

Nor do we house them in luxury hotels,

So the people being turned away from various hotels near LEGOLAND etc as they were housing immigrants are lying then ??

Indeed, and while we're doing that we could also remind ourselves that the right to seek asylum is enshrined in international law by the Geneva Convention. An asylum seeker is therefore not an illegal immigrant, merely someone who is awaiting an asylum decision.

If/when asylum is granted, they become a refugee, if not, they can still be granted leave to remain. It is only at the point where they are not permitted to remain here that they become illegal.

"so the young people i know are working hard in the NHS, law, construction, advertising, the military, science... yes as always there are lazy ones but ime the minority."

Agree. Most who are currently in employment work hard. I should have been clearer. I should have stated the future generation, the younger ones now. I'm a university lecturer and I witness poor work ethic of the younger generation on a daily basis. Unsurprisingly, it's immigrants' children and international students who work hard and do well compared to native white students.

@Redwinemaestro 'native white students' the reverse racism is breathtaking.

No such thing unless youre overly invested in right wing propaganda

What’s proximity to legoland got to do with it other than to incite outrage? The hotel in question was a holiday inn, hardly luxurious. It wasn’t as if the legoland hotels were handed over for use was it? I suppose if they were given rooms where they docked we’d be frothing about their ‘beach views’. 🙄

@Cornettoninja spas and swimming pools not luxurious? Ok then. People turning up there were told the hotel had been block booked by the home office no prizes for guessing who for.

Putting your own opinions of immigration aside for just one moment - if you think that people are unreasonable for being concerned about the situation in the channel, then you are part of the problem. To come out with soundbites like ‘daily fail’ and implying that people are stupid for being concerned typifies the attitude which brought down the red wall. To tell people there is no problem with illegal migration is nothing short of gaslighting. Keep going, you are only doing damage to your own cause

People aren't concerned about the situation in the channel or the safety of migrants, what they want is it to stop and the people sent to camps in Africa, what happens to them after that? Who cares!

Which is why its a "one way ticket" with zero chance of coming to the UK, regardless of family ties and/or skill set.

So the government is wasting money yet again by not providing more suitable accommodation and not speeding up the ayslum process

You don't seem quite so outraged at the up to 5m HK invited here? and no, until the law was changed, they had no right to come to the UK, different colour i guess.

Not particularly. If you look a teeny bit further into it, the hotel is clearly aimed at the conference market and the rooms are basic. Extra facilities on site are neither here nor there really.

And I still don’t see the relevance of its proximity to ‘LEGOLAND’. Were they given free passes or something?

So the government is wasting money yet again by not providing more suitable accommodation and not speeding up the ayslum process

Well quite.

the home office block books a hotel that isn’t a complete dive and is awful but let’s entrust them with a deal with Rwanda?

Please express your views about what I feel is a government led (or misled) by the worst Prime Minister in history in the ballot box on 5 May if you have elections.

As to how we got here, people not voting on 23 June 2016 expecting the result to be a forgone conclusion are part of the reason.

It's racism for you, it's data speaking for me. Education performance of various ethnicities are published by organisations like the Higher Education Statistics Agency, gov.uk, etc and available in the public domain. I wish ignorant people check data and facts before posting ignorant comments.

Hi @Redwinemaestro also an academic and I concur. Though "natives" don't like hearing this so best to let the data speak for itself 😄

Reminds me really when polish builders moved in and raised standards with their building work. So instead of learning from them our British builder community couldn't vote fast enough to get rid of the people who can stick to deadlines and do a decent bit of work...

I agree.

But I would add why wait till May 5th? Email your MP whenever you like and express your views.

There are strong views on this issue on both sides. I wonder how many more people those who want open borders would be happy to have live here? Surely there needs to be some limit?

I do not agree the hotels are "basic" where many of them are placed. They are often hotels many ordinary people in the UK would never be able to afford in a month of Sundays. Hotels alone are costing us about £5m a day and others we house elsewhere which also costs tax payers. It is one reason they prefer to come here because they get all this kind of thing.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/home-office-asylum-seekers-hotels-b2006885.html

@Xenia Since you are clearly very concerned about the cost to taxpayers of housing asylum seekers whilst their cases are dealt with, would you agree with me that it would be in everyone interests for the government to speed up the process?

I did not and still don't have a problem with Polish builders or Lithuanian delivery drivers. I do struggle with the idea of 30,000 young men delivered by rubber dinghy annually, all of whom appear to have burned their identity documents, and refused to register for asylum in any of the countries they have crossed on their way to the Channel. FFS, please could we have a robust identity card system. I was a migrant to the USA in 1979, by marriage, and the bureaucracy managed to process a social security number and a green card in ten weeks, so I could take work offered, and open a bank account, and rent an apartment, and pay my tax the following April 6th. But I had to prove my legitimate right to be in the US, and that is all I want the UK to require of migrants. Prove your identity and bona fides, work and pay your taxes. I didn't have any entitlement to healthcare then but I was only 25 and a GP consultation for the pill was $25, which even I could manage despite having landed with the grand total of £600 in savings.

And even with inflation, paying £7k to cross the Channel in an under-inflated rubber boat now is fairly similar to flying the Atlantic then. The US authorities were no keener to accept me as a expense to the public purse than a checkout operator in Wigan.

I do not agree the hotels are "basic" where many of them are placed

I can well imagine the kind of ‘basic’ you would find acceptable.

Frankly I don't see why we house them at all, couldn't we just send them to another country instead?

When I landed in the USA, in a blizzard, on 24 December 1979, and waited four hours to be met by my husband as the airport was closing down, I was shit-scared. My unknown parents-in-law feared I was taking advantage of their DS, and were worried I was some kind of grabby opportunist. I phoned my family at 5.30 am on Christmas morning to say I had arrived and heard my grandma had been taken to hospital and was not expected to live.

There are strong views on this issue on both sides. I wonder how many more people those who want open borders would be happy to have live here? Surely there needs to be some limit?

No one has said Lets have Open Borders!

We don't have that now and never have BUT the way around the migrant crisis in the channel is to co op with Europe, BJ shouldn't be going to Putins ally (India) and seeking to increase visa;s, he should be trying for better relations with the EU inc on crime and at the same time opening up more legal routes to the UK, as he has done with other countries..... how come these limits don't seem to apply to other migrants.....
Increasing economic aid to countries where migrants are coming from, cruel that aid to Afghanistan has been removed, why aren't we trying to open up routes where monies sent are used for their original purpose?

In answer to the question above I would like it speeded up. I don't see why an initial check could not be done in Calais for example with a 7 day waiting period only for rejection or acceptance and only a right of appeal from abroad, not the UK.
I do not agree with more foreign aid however . We already give about £300m a year just to Pakistan. The Uk is a very big foreign aid donor.

"Pakistan has been DFID’s largest country programme for the last five years, and was expected to amount to £302 million in 2019/20" committees.parliament.uk/committee/98/international-development-committee/news/139163/committee-to-scrutinise-uk-aid-programme-in-pakistan/