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.

True the number is going up - what’s going on? Is it the outcome of an increasingly unstable global situation

Going up ? its increased from 300 to 40,000 in less than 4 years !

Increasingly unstable global situation ? Not sure as I thought they were all Albanian young men ?

@Museya15 I absolutely believe you & would be interested in hearing more that you have to say.
Otherwise it's just hearing emotive type stuff from one 'side' or the other.

@mamabear715 Hmm. I mean this genuinely and kindly. It’s interesting that “I work in immigration and they’re all economic migrants” gets an instant “I believe you”, but people on the other side of the argument have given facts and numbers, often with sources linked, but that’s not good enough? Do you know what I mean? Govt sources show that 75%+ of asylum cases are genuine. That’s not emotive. That’s a sourced fact. Is it not believable? Is there some other problem? I’m not asking because I want to shut down @Museya15 ’s points (we’ve clearly had very different experiences and that’s fair enough) but I’m wondering why the argument from the other side isn’t getting through.

@BewareTheLibrarians Thank you for your kindness!
I do of course believe that there are geniune migrants, & I feel for them, as anyone would. However I do also notice that a lot are young men, as PP's have mentioned.
I note that we are paying France a bloody fortune to stop migrants setting off from France's shores - is this working or is it just shoring up France's economy? I thought that @Museya15 would be able to tell us what it was like on the ground, so to speak.
Obviously too, we need more workers in the UK, but tbh GP's would be better than people with no skills - I'm sure posters will accuse me of all sorts of things for that comment, but it's true - look how hard it is to get into other countries to settle. My friend (widowed) has been quoted half a million to be allowed into Australia to be near her sons.. We donate money to poorer countries too, so why do we have to accept waifs & strays?
Please don't pounce on me, I live in a multi cultural area, & my neighbours agree!

Mine were figures for the past year consistent with the present tense of “France takes in far more than we do”

Your figures are grand totals of some sort, but the site doesn’t say how many years they cover nor where they got their figures from. Its also not clear how they have one total for “total refugees harboured” and a lower one for “international refugees” which begs the question as to how can you be a refugee within your own country when that country is France? I can comprehend refugees in their own country if the country is at war or had a natural disaster….but France? The last time that happened was WWII.

Not true.
”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. Your application is more likely to be denied if you wait.

When you apply you’ll have a meeting with an immigration officer (known as a ‘screening’).”. (There are no immigration officers outside the U.K.).

Oh you’ve lost me now isn’t that going up.. or is it too mild language. Exponential or something

Albania - yes I think so. A quick Google doesn’t show much that supports why.. some economic reasons, we are giving some aid to help with building infrastructure etc

A mention of drugs criminality but need more info

@mamabear715 I’m not going to pounce, I promise! 😊 To address a couple of points, the reason it’s mostly young men is becomes the journey to Europe to get to the coast, and the journey in the boat is very physically dangerous and unsafe (trafficking gangs and risk of sexual exploitation for women and sadly children too).

France offered to run a processing centre for asylum seekers, so they would be processed on French soil before coming to the UK. The UK govt refused this. I don’t know why. It would have benefited the UK, but made the situation worse in France (asylum seekers may travel to France more to use this processing centre) so it was incredibly good of them to offer!

It’s a good pony about skilled workers, and that really does depend on the country. Refugees from Eritrea for eg may not have worked (forced conscription into the military when you leave school) so would be unskilled. But Iran & Syria for eg has well functioning economies with doctors,
nurses, engineers, scientists etc. So the skills you’d see are to some extent dependent on where people are coming from.

Half a million for Australia is crazy, especially under those sad circumstances. Dh isn’t British and I thought the amount we had to pay to come here was insane, but at least it wasn’t that much!

I hope some of that has helped a bit.

@Rinoachicken
This is not a asylum issue - it’s a human trafficking issue. These people are making extortionate amounts of money off people who are not aware of the other safer and legal routes to claim asylum - and these people are certainly not going to tell them - so they tell them that the channel crossing and then claiming asylum is the only way - when for many of them there is most likely a cinch safer legal way of them gaining entry into the UK.

Exactly, and so part of the solution must be information campaigns to get the message out to asylum seekers on how to get here safely. We cannot depend on them having internet access and the ability to navigate the poorly written and confusing Home Office webpages (we have an immigration solicitor for this exact reason for my DH and we are native English speakers and I’m British but I can’t make heads or tails of some of the rules. Worse, if you make a mistake on an application and then correct it, even if you catch it yourself the Home Office attitude is “were you lying on your application then, or are you lying on it now?” There is no allowance for human error).

So we need the government to fund all those charities and organisations like the Red Cross to have immigration advisors that can counsel asylum seekers face to face on how to get her safely and not end up in the clutches of human traffickers who rob them of all their life savings and then dump them in the ocean in an overloaded rubber dinghy with only enough fuel to get halfway to our coast.

Sorry @mamabear715

*becomes = because
*pony = point
Bad thumbs!

Perhaps those shoebox houses with postage stamp gardens are being built to accommodate the white flight to rural areas? it is well known that immigrants all gravitate towards large towns and cities where there is work and they feel safe. There are many people with their knickers in a twist who will probably only ever see an immigrant once a year.

wtf

This is not a asylum issue - it’s a human trafficking issue.

Presumably they are being sold an idea of wealth and possibly criminal activity to spend life savings on the passage. Maybe it is the case money is made here. Albania is not at war though so it’s worth looking at what’s going on.

Rude, sexist and racist. Again, people need to be able to ask questions and not be called names.

In my local town we are converting huge office buildings into flats. These are not being filled by whites moving out of cities. There are many non whites moving out of London.

Thanks for the woke labelling. Could you squeeze a few more descriptors in? I mean, it has got us so far after two decades. By the way I am a female of non British origin so your rules disallow it!
You confirm that like myself, you live in a town/city so it would be diverse and it proves rather than disproves my point.

The majority have been trafficked and owe money to Gang masters . They have been lured here with promises of a golden life and earning good money . The reality is very different. Often they end up in the back economy earning a pittance . The crossings have to stop. It's human misery and some people somewhere are making huge sums of money off mainly youngsters full of hope . As long as there is hope they will continue to come here . Time now to stop this at its source. That is the beaches of France . It's not fair on the emergency services , shipping in the channel, and the the tax payers here . It's not racist . This government can't even provide properly for the people here now . There are queues her now for rental housing and health services . Time now to stop this merry go round for everyone's sakes .

@MarshaBradyo re Albanians, from a specialist in international refugee law:

“Albanians are one of the highest risk groups for being trafficked and the Albanian government has close ties with the gangs, meaning they cannot get state protection, so they absolutely fall into the category of people who can receive asylum. The UK, for various reasons is their preferred centre to traffic people to.

Men/boys tend to be trafficked for labour, including things like being forced to work in cannabis factories, while women/girls are trafficked for sexual exploitation, both prevalent in the UK.

Statistically those trafficked for labour tend to be brought through "irregular routes", such as channel crossings, whereas those trafficked for sexual exploitation are brought through "official ports", i.e. airports hence why you see more young Albanian men than women on boats.

A confluence of circumstances, including global crisis, Covid etc, have led to increased destitution in Albania, making people easier targets for trafficking gangs to exploit, with complicity of the Albanian government, leading to an increase.

The actual gangs aren't traveling by small boat and risking their lives though. Why would they? It is their victims who end up in that position, exactly the people who if provided with safety could give information to shut the gangs down.”
mobile.twitter.com/stand_for_all/status/1586815896894541824?s=20&t=nPv8EOCdeJY6-hVLQQsvmw

And if you want a solution to this:

Reinstate an anti-slavery/modern slavery commissioner. The last one resigned and the position has been left unfilled.

Allocate policing budget (and travel back in time to not slash police numbers) to crack down on modern slavery in the community.

Housing reform to crack down on illegal landlords letting houses without vetting.

Decriminalising cannabis might also help, but I don’t think we’re ready for that one yet!

Open a reporting system whereby trafficked people can report they are being held in modern slavery, without being at risk of being deported themselves. This currently doesn’t exist as far as I’m aware.

It is interesting how it took so many months before the statistics were released about Albanians making up the majority of those arriving by boat. Brown muslim men received a loy of flack for a long time (and still do) because the news reports usually showed them coming off the boats.

You can be genuine for all kinds of reasons depending on the original country eg you are gay or converted to Christianity. There are so many legal reasons and so many people I fear we will need to change the law here to exclude people who would otherwise be covered as we cannot afford all this.

What is so appealing about the UK??! It’s certainly not the climate!!

It can only be that we are SO lax on trafficking and organised crime, sexual exploitation etc - the gangs making the money off this KNOW that for every 1 house that gets busted they can be running out of another 20 undetected.

They KNOW they can be underground undetected, collecting debt from the vulnerable people who survived the crossing and forcing them into the criminal underworld themselves in order to get money to pay that debt.

They know they can get away with it here. It’s big business. No one is checking, no one is asking, none is reporting, no one is following up. It’s almost ‘risk free’ from a ‘getting caught by the law’ point of view.

Meanwhile over on channel 5 Border Force Down-under or whatever, they have so little to do (seemingly) that they casually drive around checking the status of every cab driver and hot dog stand person and putting them on the next plane out if they don’t have the right to work or be there. Your chances of being caught are far higher and the penalty much greater.

@Rinoachicken, there is nothing that is "so appealing" about the UK. As noted upthread, we take a relatively low proportion of refugees compared with other countries.

This just in from the BBC on where the boats are coming from. Albania top.

Yet hundreds are risking their lives everyday to cross the channel? Why? What makes the UK such a better prospect than the country they’ve just pushed off from - enough to make it worth the considerable risk?

Croque I can't say I blame people for moving away from cities and towns considering what is happening to them.

A french politician said why, we don't have an ID card system, so its easy to disappear into the black economy/cash in hand Labour market & it's easy to be whoever you want to be so you can get healthcare as well.
Then the obvious - English language, friends/family here.

Oh and is it a "Considerable" risk? some of these people have crossed Africa/war zones inc Libya and then the Med, so 22 miles of flat water with plenty of rescue boats after 11 miles is no big deal.