To think that something has to be done about the immigration crisis?

[JudesBiggestFan]

But I don't know what? More than 900 people landed in Dover today, as I discovered when reading about the terrible petrol bomb attack on a detention centre. Detention centres overcrowded, more than 7 million pounds a day being spent on hotel rooms for illegal immigrants, horrendously slow processing of applications...people drowning in the channel and local people feeling angry and frustrated because of the strain on services. Not to mention the mental health toll on people living their lives in limbo! So what is the answer? Because I just don't know anymore but it feels like the system has completely broken down.

Nothing will happen op.
We will simply at some point, run out of hotel rooms and willing people to take in an immigrant.
And there will be more homeless, more crime, more desperation.

Agreed- New Zealand 🇳🇿 and Australia 🇦🇺 are really tough on Immigration- and who they want to accept.
Rightly so.

I’m American.

A Mexican man doesn’t scare me. A Muslim man doesn’t scare me. A Black man doesn’t scare me. But a white man in a red MAGA cap toting an AK-47 in the market…
HE SCARES ME.

@BelleMarionette Please read the thread where I’ve already explained why France isn’t automatically a safe option. Safe for “normal” people, yes. Safe for an asylum seeker, not so much. France’s asylum system is also overloaded, so many don’t have access to housing, work or money and end up living in tents in camps. Those camps are regularly destroyed by French police. If you then have people telling you that if you can get to the UK you can get housed, you’d be an idiot not to. Unfortunately it’s more like if you come to the UK you’ll get diphtheria.

Oh, @StoneofDestiny never came back to explain why they didn’t mentioned the asylum seeker in that story was only 16. On mumsnet of all places, where some people still pick their 16/17 yr olds up in the evening so they don’t have to walk home in the dark. Guess if they’re brown and foreign they have to be a bit more self sufficient. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Exactly, I've a 16 year old DS, he's still a child. No way can I even begin to be OK with him traveling to a different country/across continents walking /small boats by himself!

So on the one hand, we are missing out on a huge resource of eager skilled workers who would be able to fill current vacancies, but who cannot manage to access basic facts about the UK system of immigration and reception ( in spite of apparently all clutching their i phones).

bit of a contradiction there.

And this is the real world effect of anti-asylum seeker rhetoric, from the government and media and spread on social media. This processing centre held women and children too. No one is going to admit to thinking this is acceptable. But if you’ve been spreading badly informed hate, this is what you’ve done.

“BREAKING: Kent Police have confirmed that several petrol bombs have been thrown at a migrant processing centre in Dover.”

mobile.twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1586727328775905282

There is no such thing as an illegal immigrant. This drives me absolutely mad. It’s a term invented by the media and used by people who don’t really understand the immigration process. It’s not a term used by the Home Office. It’s meaningless. There are legal terms to describe the status of every non British citizen in the UK and illegal immigrant doesn’t relate to any of them.

@UrricanesArdlyHeverAppen
As a Brit married a legal immigrant, there is such a thing as an illegal immigrant. It is not a term “invented by the media”.

Risks of illegal migration to the UK uses the term “illegal migrants” and “illegal journeys to the UK”
www.gov.uk/guidance/risks-of-illegal-migration-to-the-uk

Various Immigration Solicitors use the term…you’d think they wouldn’t use it if it were not a “legal term”…
“New Immigration Rules for Illegal Immigrants UK 2022
Are you an illegal immigrant in the UK? If so, you need to know about the new rules that are in effect in 2022. Read this article to gain insights on the current rules and do not hesitate to contact us to speak with a full qualified immigration expert after doing so.”
www.gulbenkian.co.uk/new-immigration-rules-uk-2021-for-illegal-immigrants/

God, that's awful 😥
I've been saying and thinking for ages that enabling the far right/spreading hate and fear/misinformation is encouraging and whipping up hatred/panic.
You see it getting bolder in certain media outlets, and social media platforms.
It's fucking scary.

Also a Brit married to a legal immigrant, but confused as to why you chose not to define the term?

”Asylum seeker” and “illegal immigrant” are not interchangeable, and asylum seekers are not illegal immigrants just because they are different to legal immigrants.

An illegal immigrant is one who arrives at the UK through irregular means and fails to present themselves to authorities OR one who arrives legally but overstays a visa OR one who enters the country with a fake visa. Not asylum seekers. Very important to keep those differences clear.

More here:

“The idea of the ‘illegal’ asylum seeker is a falsehood that has been actively peddled by the Home Office and the Home Secretary in recent years. When people talk about asylum seekers coming to the UK ‘illegally’, what they really mean is asylum seekers arriving via informal and unofficial routes, such as crossing the Channel via small boat. However, asylum seekers are legally allowed to come to the UK even when making an ‘illegal entry’. As, although it would be illegal for migrants who are not seeking asylum to enter by such means, asylum seekers are entitled to come to the UK via whatever means possible, provided they inform the authorities of their presence upon their arrival and have good reason for seeking asylum. Asylum seekers cannot therefore come to the UK ‘illegally’; illegality may only ever occur if they do not report their presence to the authorities and remain in the UK as undocumented migrants.”
www.lancaster.ac.uk/law/blog/the-myth-of-the-illegal-asylum-seeker

That was to @Discovereads , sorry.

I think you'll find homelessness is due to the cuts in local authority's budgets and the Tories treatmentof landlordsin the PRS, crime will always rise under the Tories due to disenfranchisement and the desperation, well that's down to having a government that gives the poor no hope of social mobility and social justice.

Very little to do with immigration.

Really? I remember Calais in the glorious days of Tony Bliar, the system was already broken, and nobody cared.

I genuinely don’t think adding tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands more poor people to the mix every year is going to help though is it?

Look where they are being housed now. Frankly, no one should be living in a hotel room. We have whole Ukrainian families living in hotel rooms in the city where I live. It’s disgusting.

And on top of that we seem to also have an increasingly unsympathetic population.

At some point it will come to a head. And I take absolutely no delight in saying that.

My friend spent nearly 3 years in an asylum seeker hostel before being granted temporary leave to remain for 5 years and was then permitted to work in them UK. Their passport expired during the time they were on "temporary leave", and when they tried to renew it via the embassy of their country of origin, the embassy denied all knowledge of their existence, so they were rendered stateless.

Refugee status was finally granted at the end of the period of temporary leave.

I thought Brexit was supposed to take care of all of this, it was one big reason many voted pro-Brexit.

Do what the Irish are doing 'sorry lads, no more room in the inn' and off they go sleeping homeless. No hotel rooms left, no social housing, no centres that are not at capacity.

@UrricanesArdlyHeverAppen of course there is such a thing as an illegal immigrant versus an asylum seeker.

@BewareTheLibrarians
Also a Brit married to a legal immigrant, but confused as to why you chose not to define the term?

Why should I? @UrricanesArdlyHeverAppen claimed There is no such thing as an illegal immigrant. So I limited my response to addressing the fact that yes, there is such a thing as an illegal immigrant.

My post was already long enough as is, why obfuscate by adding in a definition when there are literally thousands of ways in which a migrant can illegally enter, remain in or leave the U.K.

Your definition of an illegal immigrant is woefully inadequate and only scrapes the surface.

In this short video, Lord Kerr deconstructs the govt’s false narrative about refugees in the U.K. with 3 facts. V informative. There is no crisis.

@Discovereads

As a Brit married a legal immigrant, there is such a thing as an illegal immigrant. It is not a term “invented by the media” It’s irrelevant who you’re married to; you’re wrong. It is indeed utterly meaningless. If someone arrives in the UK illegally (for instance, on a small boat, in the rear of a lorry, on a false document or having used deception to obtain a visa) they are an illegal entrant and have broken a specific law relating to entry to the UK. The UK doesn’t penalise asylum seekers for entering this way because it is recognised that their options are limited. If they claim asylum, they become an asylum seeker. If they are granted, they become a refugee and if they are refused they become a failed asylum seeker. If someone comes in and remains after their leave and/or visa has expired, they become an overstayer. Asylum seekers can be illegal entrants, overstayers or have valid leave to remain (for instance, someone who has come to study and the situation in their home country changes while they’re away, meaning they can’t return). An illegal immigrant is a vague term which doesn’t actually mean anything.

Risks of illegal migration to the UK uses the term “illegal migrants” and “illegal journeys to the UK”
www.gov.uk/guidance/risks-of-illegal-migration-to-the-ukVarious Immigration Solicitors use the term…you’d think they wouldn’t use it if it were not a “legal term”…. Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? Unfortunately it seems to have seeped into British consciousness so much that it is understood by the audience of such documents to mean anyone who doesn’t have lawful leave. It’s made to be understood. It doesn’t mean that it’s accurate.

Even for the legitimate asylum seekers, how are their own countries ever going to get better if their young men are fleeing abroad instead of staying and working and fighting to make things better?

of course there is such a thing as an illegal immigrant versus an asylum seeker

@cypresstree There really isn’t. A person enters the UK illegally, making them an illegal entrant. They then claim asylum, making them an asylum seeker. That doesn’t change the fact that their method of entry to the UK was illegal. As I said above, the UK doesn’t penalise asylum seekers for how they entered, but that doesn’t make their method of entry legal. It just means that they have a basis to remain in the UK while their asylum claim is being considered.

@Discovereads Woefully inadequate? Ok, you don’t want to obfuscate, but my posts must include all “thousands” of examples. 😂

@UrricanesArdlyHeverAppen
Sorry, but you’re dead wrong, there is such a thing as an illegal immigrant. It’s not a “meaningless term” because it affects real lives every day in profound ways. Illegal entry is one of many ways you can become an illegal immigrant.

And please stop wittering on about asylum seekers, they’ve got nothing to do with illegal immigrants.

The term illegal immigrants was being used in Parliamentary debates fifty years ago. This is not a new term invented by the media. It’s been around for donkeys years.

No, I said woefully inadequate to underline how it is impossible to include a short definition of an illegal immigrant…since you seemed so offended by the fact I didn’t include a definition in my post whose only object was to say yes illegal immigrants do exist.