Flight to Rwanda

[lbab1702]

I’d love to get a flight to Rwanda. Beautiful country and people ( I’ve been there before) but I don’t understand why refugees to the U.K. should go there.

We left the EU and the Dublin Regulation.

Yes. So the provision that makes allowances for family ties in an asylum application doesn't exist anymore.

Why do they all need support? The vast majority of standard visas are for things like holidays, study and work. Asylum seekers can work to support themselves also once their claim is approved. Illegal immigrants don't get support.

As for "millions every single year", on those figures we aren't even taking one million permanent residents per year.

My apologies. I had misread your intentions as your post came in the middle of a discussion about refugee asylum seekers vs economic immigrants. Lots of fruitless guesses as to how many channel crossers are bona fide asylum seekers and how many are economic migrants who should have gone through the legal immigration channels as an economic migrant is simply a regular type of immigrant (and still most welcome).

Your post was most informative but I felt it necessary to balance out the information with the support that economic migrants who go through the legal channels get. It was in the same spirit as myth busting because I often do experience comments/opinions from people indicating they think all immigrants get x, y, z. As I am sure you have faced as well. Sitting in A&E and overhearing others who are waiting making comments about my DH using “their NHS for free” (obviously zero idea he pays a surcharge plus the NIC and taxes everyone else pays). We are also being no fault evicted and my care coordinator was shocked to learn as a disabled, vulnerable adult that I could not approach the council for housing as that would mean deportation for my DH. Conversations with various neighbours/friends who assumed that anyone married to a British citizen could automatically come and live here with no visa and get a British passport straight away. Etc.

So I wasn’t meaning to correct or argue with you, just add to the information you had provided about refugees so that readers can have an idea that not all immigrants get the same rights and support.

The problem is that the Rwanda policy won't achieve this - if anything, the reverse, given the number of Rwandans it requires us to admit. And Patel claims that isn't the purpose of it anyway, she comes up instead with the fiction about deterring traffickers.

And of course the real purpose is to save Johnson's neck.

Bottom line is....

It will not be a deterrent
It is costing a massive amount of money to move each asylum seeker let's not forget the £120M already paid to Rwanda and the £500K wasted last night.
It won't reduce numbers because we are opening our doors to vulnerable Rwandans to come back to the UK as an exchange. As I understand it, they have severe difficulties and are expected to need medical and mental health services. They Congolese and have been living for years in makeshift camps in Rwanda. So this defeats the 'we are full and our NHS is stretched' narrative.

It is purely dead cat stuff to divert from the fact this Government can't govern and it appeases the 'we don't want nasty brown people' voters in Wakefield and Devon.

You could have linked to the government's Nationality and Borders Bill then as there is clause in there that removes the family reunion rights for some refugees.

But it is still in U.K. Regulations as we do still offer the family reunion visa so that immediate family of asylum seekers can apply from abroad for free to come here.

It’s only the approved asylum seekers that get State support. Illegal immigrants hiding out undocumented live in the shadows working cash in hand, they cannot access support. All the 1m+ regular immigrants on visas (work, study, family of British) have to be self-supporting.

The ECHR was drafted as a set of high level rights. In the decades since that time the content of those rights have been developed by the court in all sorts of ways that people in signatory states have never had an opportunity to vote on. There is clearly a problem of legitimacy here - that’s being made explicit in much of the current criticism. I repeat, you can’t scold people out of their unhappiness at this situation. Contentious political problems need to be resolved by democratic, political processes, not judicial decision.

This, with all due respect, is gibberish in constitutional terms, @TullyApplebottom. All our laws are being developed by the courts all the time, we don't expressly take them back to be ratified by the electorate at every election. Yet no-one would claim that, for instance, that means we can ignore the Theft Act.

The reality is that the electorates in signatory states get to vote at every election. If they or the candidates think that some aspect of the way the Human Rights Court is carrying out its duties, or the way the Theft Act is being applied, is wrong, they then can draw it to the attention of the electorate, put it into a manifesto, and invite them to take it into account when voting. If they don't, the perfectly sensible assumption is that the electorate is happy with it.

No, it isn't. There's no need to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda, the government has a perfect - and much more straightforward - right to send them back to their country of origin.

New polling shows 45% of voters are opposed to the Rwanda plan, with 35% in favour: institute.global/policy/new-polling-shows-public-want-workable-plan-asylum

It was Boris who said that, not the person you are responding to. But yes, it is yet another example of his utter incompetence and lack of basic morals, just like the Rwanda policy.

I hope you're right that it hasn't been persuasive, but there's an awful lot of horrible racist stuff on Twitter and BTL in the Mail and Express which suggests otherwise.

Funny how only Russia (and Greece for a short time during a military coup) felt the need to leave the ECHR

@Discovereads Ah that makes sense. Thank you for that and sorry to have doubted. I was seeing it from a bit of a blinkered counter to “refugees get all the benefits and houses” rather than the wider picture but you’re absolutely right that seeing the wider picture is important. It is really frustrating when people (not you!) define illegal immigrant and economic migrant as the same thing, and economic migrant as a negative. By definition coming for money = working = paying taxes (but getting no benefits) = good for the UK!

I’m so sorry to hear about your eviction and the difficulties around that, that must be so stressful. I hope you’re getting lots of support and looking after yourself as much as possible (not always easy but essential!)

Because the stats show historical approval rates around 81%? It's not a guarantee but it certainly meets the "very likely" to succeed criterion.

That's not what the government says. And if they find illegal immigrants, it would be pointless trying to send them to Rwanda when they could much more easily return them to their own countries.

And, of course, you know by now that there is absolutely no requirement for asylum seekers to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. Why should the UK have automatic exemption from taking any refugee? Given that we are an island, by definition we will never be the first safe country.

Exactly. Majority of legal migrants are economic migrants as they do come for the job opportunities and they are a net benefit to the country. Too often people do think economic migrant= illegal immigrant and all legal immigrants= claiming benefits. It’s just plain wrong.

Yes, successful asylum seekers do get parity. That means, amongst other matters, that if they have money they aren't entitled to benefits. They are also entitled and indeed expected to work to support themselves, in the same way that British citizens are. A hell of a lot of them end up contributing to public funds by paying tax.

Legal immigrants don't get parity because they aren't British citizens and they are on visas which carry conditions. A hefty element of that is because they can and will return to their own countries. Guess what, refugees can't.

I'm baffled that you seem to think successful asylum seekers are on a par with non-refugee immigrants who are refused a visa. Can you not see the somewhat glaring difference?

Do you? How often do you watch immigrants arriving around the shores of the UK?

The simple fact is that, if they can't prove they are asylum seekers, then what is needed is an efficient process for dealing with their asylum claim before deporting them. But past statistics suggest that 4 out of 5 are entitled to asylum.

You can choose where you apply to. As you well know, the "first safe country" stuff is a total myth.

Who on this thread has called for open borders?

Where else would we find people that are calling for MORE immigration

And, again, who on this thread is calling for more immigration, @Freerangechildren? I know it's much easier for you to respond to arguments you've made up, but do try to keep to the point.

If anything, the Rwanda policy will lead to more immigration, so perhaps you should direct this one to Patel and Johnson.

And yet on here we are being told we need more, we should have no border or controls....jesus wept.

By whom, @Freerangechildren ?