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.

How can you have numbers capped? we don't know what will happen in the future and which crisis will occur e.g Ukraine and Afghanistan.

The answer is having the ability to send back, either to France and/or country of origin, economic migrants.

For this to happen claims have to turned around quickly and fairly - Evette Cooper said this that 12000 Afghans, who fled in July/August 2021 are still in camps, hotels and BnB's still awaiting decisions.

We discussed on another thread but i wonder if joining SM would make this return to France easier?

Yep this

Have you seen some 16 year olds lately?!
A lot of them are 6 ft tall with deep voices, facial hair etc and look like grown adults!

My 16 year old is 6' 2" with a deeper voice than my husband. He plays rugby and is chunky. He easily passes for 18 plus.

From a different perspective, my neighbours (Muslim professionals) used to visit Hastings every year with their children and all of their extended family. This year, they did not go. When I asked them why, they said that they were subjected to racist abuse on so many occasions last time that they now see it as a menacing place rather than their happy place. They view the whole of Kent as somewhere that Muslims should avoid because of the hatred whipped up in certain tabloids. Despite being decent, law abiding, taxpayers, they were treated as if they had just stepped off a dinghy throughout the visit and the woman in the fish & chip kiosk would not even serve them.

That’s very sad.

hastings Is in Sussex and has the highest homelessness figures in the SE. We are talking of millions of pounds overspend on the council budget. No excuse for racism or being rude to individuals but there are serious issues in Hastings.

This is an interesting thread. For anyone wanting to know specifics of immigration law, I've started an AMA www.mumsnet.com/talk/AMA/4666822-im-an-immigration-lawyer-ama

Not RTFT but I think the following:

Set up lawful ways for people to apply to come to the UK from outside the UK. Currently they don't exist, which doesn't exactly help. If someone has skills we need, and wants to join their uncle in Manchester or whatever, they should be able to apply and have their application assessed in a reasonable period of time.

Anyone from Albania gets sent back to Albania, it's not a war zone and they are not refugees. Ditto other countries not in war zones. Unless they apply by the above mechanism. Not sure if this is actually lawful under refugee conventions though.

Everyone else who may be a genuine refugee - instead of having them locked up in detention centres we pay for: offer English lessons, find out what skills they have, what their aspirations are and get them working in roles we need filling, rather than sitting around in concentration camps. Ok, that may encourage more to come but it's a much more positive approach and minimises the chances of them getting into organised crime. Busy people have less time to get involved in crime.

Quite. Millions would qualify for asylum under the current rules so do we really want to make it easier for them to be able to do so? And also presumably fund or help to fund their journey here?

It would be lovely if we could help everyone who needed it, but that isn't the world we live in and it's demonstrably getting worse. Opening our doors even wider to the world is all very noble, but it would be a total disaster for those of us already living here and the same applies to Europe as a whole.

Oh lol...I did wonder 😊

I don’t understand why we don’t just do it the same way Aus and NZ do.

The legal route there is you apply for refugee status from the UN, then you can apply for a humanitarian visa. Then you can travel (safely) to Aus/NZ. Anyone not following this process is promptly shipped back to wherever they came from on quite literally the next plane back. They also process claims far far faster than we do - but then I’m sure they find and invest in their border forces more than we do. (Do we fund/invest in our at all??!)

According to the UK gov website, you do not have to be IN the UK to claim asylum in the UK - you just have to not be in your home country.

“You should apply when you arrive in the UK or as soon as you think it would be unsafe for you to return to your own country.”

www.gov.uk/claim-asylum

So there is a legal way to claim without crossing the channel in a dingy??

France does not take many more asylum seekers than we do. I agree we need to work with France, but France is not a role model.

France 2021: 89,354 asylum seekers
U.K. May 21-Jun 22: 75,181 asylum seekers
www.worlddata.info/europe/france/asylum.php
www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/information/refugee-asylum-facts/top-10-facts-about-refugees-and-people-seeking-asylum/

We also need to exercise critical thinking when comparing countries because capacity for more people depends on the size of each country. France is 2.3 times larger than we are. So you’d expect them to take more than double the asylum seekers we do to be equivalent.

The U.K. has one of the highest population densities in Europe at 275 people per km2, compared to France with a population density of only 122 people per km2. France could quite literally take in 68 million asylum seekers and still would be less crowded than the U.K. is today.
www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-by-population-density.html

If they want to come for other reasons, to work, study or join family, they can apply for one of the many visas to allow them to come legally. Again - there is no need to cross the channel in a dingy.

www.gov.uk/apply-to-come-to-the-uk

Ok so there are legal routes already in place. but clearly not working or being followed.

why is this?

They do not want to stay in France and claim asylum there. They don't like it at all. France is avoidant in terms of cooperation because there is nothing in it for them especially and no incentive will seem like anything less that bribery. They are not motivated to agree to targets or payback conditions for non performance. They generally laugh it off.

I live in Kent, the people on the "front line" may have a different perspective to those living elsewhere and not affected by the thousands coming over.
Its time the Government got a grip and deported those who have no right to asylum, i.,e. the Albanians, and worried about the challenges from various organisations afterwards. Where are we going to house all these migrants when there is such a dire shortage of housing, Housing is being built all over Kent and elsewhere but mostly it seems 3 and 4 bed executive housing not starter homes.Are there any security investigations into the migrants ,we dont know who we are letting into the country. In Kent it feels like an invasion to many residents. I fear there may be more attacks on processing centres and more unrest in them as migrants begin to understand that things arent as they were told by the traffickers.

@Rinoachicken "promptly ship back on the next plane to wherever they came from"

Shows a complete lack of understanding of the problem.

France wont allow this and many countries won't accept back failed asylum seekers, especially as many wont have passports etc or come from countries with no direct flights/war zones.

Australia gets around this by shipping them to South Pacific Islands where they live in camps, some in terrible conditions, there is abuse, MH issues and even people setting fire to themselves in protest.

Maybe we could use some uninhabited islands off Scotland?

The asylum seekers would still need housing and we would have to pay for it in the location outside the U.K. The local governments aren’t going to give asylum seekers that have rejected their country free housing, healthcare, education and a living allowance.

This would cost more to the U.K. than it costs to house them here and the money would not be funding hotels/housing companies in the U.K., but in a foreign country. Unless the remote processing centre is in a country like Rwanda. Which was the original intent of the Rwanda program…fly new arrivals there and pay to house them there while their applications are being processed for approval to come here. But the public felt strongly that if someone has made it here, they should be processed here.

It would be much safer, and preferred way to do things, but I think it’s the being committed to an uncontrolled steam of money going to foreign countries that the U.K. government is adverse to.

Even if safe routes were set up for asylum seekers to enter the UK, the boats would still keep coming.

Albanians for example can get a tourist visa to the UK, and a flight that is probably cheaper than what they are paying the people smugglers.
They could fly over legally and then claim asylum quite legitimately. So why don’t they? There was a discussion on the radio about how those Albanians crossing the channel wouldn’t qualify for the tourist visa due to their criminal backgrounds.

I don’t have hate towards anyone. My husband is Polish. Half of my own family are East Asian. And more of my family are beautiful hybrids of a number of ethnicities, only possible because of immigration.
But, I am concerned that:

1. With limited resources, we should be helping some people more than others e.g. the people from Afghanistan who are stuck in hotels. I wouldn’t want to cram my family into a hotel for years, even a nice hotel, those people deserve better
2. we are clearly running out of housing, that’s why some good Brits have Ukrainian families in their spare rooms, which is unsustainable
3. we have no money, which is why we are currently in a cost of living crisis that is effecting everyone except the very wealthy, a huge percentage of the populations quality of life is changing and reducing, with less money left for the luxuries we used to be able to afford and actually less left for the basics we need, eg paying our mortgages

and so uncontrolled, illegal immigration of people who include people coming to the UK from countries like Albania, is simply not sustainable. Will we find a way to deal with it? Probably not. And it will depend on where you currently live in the UK as to how badly you are feeling the strain of illegal immigration.

I refer to someone who says scrap international law and use the Navy to sink ships as thick as pigshit, BECASUE THEY ARE.

I'm sick to death of making allowances for thick people, it allows politicians to lead them by the nose with soundbites , devoid of anything to do with reality. It allows newspapers to print lies and people to believe it spoonfed without an ounce of thinking critically.

No.

Far Right wing scumbags was used in reference to the far right, what the fuck are they? Level headed people who think your skin colour dictates how you should be treated for fucks sake?

I have to appease people like that to stop Brexit? Appeasment gets you extremists in power because no one stands up to injustice and allows the rule of the mob or what's trending on Twitter....

Unfortunately, I agree that there may be more attacks (including more fatal ones). However, catching and deporting is nearly impossible in meaningful numbers due to understaffing and the fact that a number of these young, fit men will make a run for it and disappear into the black economy early on in the process if they sense impending difficulties. They may not have genuine family in the UK but the individual communities rally around their aliens.

I can't work out how the hell they can decide who is legitimate. They arrive with no papers having spent £000 to get here on a boat. Does everyone honestly think they are going to be honest about their situation? The Home Office are not going to be able to find out anything about them. Many of them can't speak English (if they all can as it claimed , why are councils spending thousands on teaching English?)

So what would happen if we just let them all stay? Seems like hardly any get sent back anyway. Then they can experience life as it is for many uk residents and wait in line.

According to there threads they would all be queuing up for the thousands of jobs that are currently available. So why not?

Currently, many of the aliens with rejected applications are working underground so not paying taxes or contributing to the economy as they should. The dirty money is then laundered and funneled into criminal activities including funding immigration rings.

I agree that there is clearly something wrong with people who wish harm upon others saying things like ‘sink the boats’, but surely they are in the vast minority?

I’ve not met anyone in real life who thinks that way, although I have spoken to others who have legitimate concerns about immigration and the cost; the space; the language and cultural barriers that cause some issues.

These aren’t bigoted racist people, but they are living with huge change to their home towns, schools, and even their feelings of safety due to uncontrolled immigration.

The problem is that some people on the left of the political spectrum, just bundle their concerns in with the ‘sink the boats’ far right and that isn’t fair.

How can you have numbers capped?

Not picking on anyone, because this question has been asked a few times by different posters.

The answer is numbers would be capped by our capacity. We cannot predict what wars or genocides will cause more asylum seekers. We do know that demand could quite easily outstrip our capacity to take on more than a certain number of asylum seekers every year. Some would say we have already passed capacity given the overcrowding of our processing centres and the commandeering of hotels plus the often crowded and squalid conditions we are housing asylum seekers in. The extremely low living allowance. The fact we can’t process the applications in a timely fashion but have a backlog that is growing by hundreds per day. Our capacity isn’t meeting current demand.

We could invest money to increase our capacity, but there is a limit because again, we have one of the highest population densities in Europe. France could take in 68 million asylum seekers and still be less crowded than we are. There is also a fiscal limit because our economy is on the rocks and so we don’t have extra billions of £ to fund much of an increase in capacity especially when so many public services are underfunded and at breaking point. These are not things that can be fixed quickly either.