The People demand that the Boats are Stopped.

[noblegiraffe]

I keep reading about the Tory government working hard to deliver the people's priorities:

"Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Government are focused on five immediate priorities. We will halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, cut NHS waiting lists and stop the boats."

Halve inflation (will happen anyway), grow the economy (vague), reduce debt (vague), cut NHS waiting lists (maybe by paying nurses and doctors more?), stop the boats (what?).

Maybe it's just where I live, but I'm not seeing this immediate urgent need to "stop the boats". It's certainly nowhere near my top 5 priorities for the government to be immediately tackling. If it was, I'd probably look at creating legal routes for genuine asylum seekers as a first step rather than shipping them to Rwanda.

Is it in your top 5 urgent government priorities? Are they speaking to the people and I've just completely missed it?

YABU: Stopping the boats is in my top 5 government priorities.
YANBU: I'm more concerned about something else and would bump Stop the Boats down the list.

Is it in your top 5 priorities, Nightlystroll?

Show me where in my reading I will find something saying they are there to stop refugees getting here.

I'm asking this genuinely. What does the question in the OP have to do with the armed forces? As far as I know it's RNLI that conducts most of the saving on the water.

If we process asylum cases quickly so that genuine asylum seekers can get work and non-genuine ones can be sent back, that will both save money and help to revive the economy. That's just common sense. By contrast, it is the right who are throwing money at the issue - have you any idea how many millions they have wasted on the Rwanda farce? And how much money they waste by having an unbelievably inefficient asylum claim processing system?

I refer you back to have this discussion with the posters who are telling us how incompetent our public service sector is. Red tape is the complaint mostly. And boy do the human rights lawyers love a bit of red tape around their briefs.

I assume you have many thousands of highly paid trained people ready to deliver this fantasy of a service? I don't think many people will agree with you. They are all explaining how every service is creaking at the seams.

So when exactly does this miracle happen?

Why do countries have armed forces?

I haven't read the full thread sorry so I don't know if this has been asked or answered... but I see a few people (including op) suggesting that the best way to fix the boat problem is by providing legal ways to apply for asylum from overseas. Could someone please explain how they see this working? It already takes months or even years to process the claims we get now, and the only claims we get now are people with the money, determination and physical ability to get here. Would not opening the ability to claim to everybody mean that millions or even billions of people would apply? After all, they may as well if there's no cost or hardship to themselves... who's going to pay for the massive increase in workers to process it all? And more importantly, who's going to decide who gets awarded asylum? Our current criteria would offer it to many, many of those millions people - pretty much anyone from a significantly poorer nation, most all gay people, most all women, a huge proportion of criminals and anyone at all likely to be forced into military service or of course at war. Someone earlier mentioned Sudan, under current guidelines the entire population of Sudan (45.66 million people apparently) would be eligible to move here. Presumably people agree that that wouldn't work, so would the idea be to change the guidelines (which I believe are set by the UN?) or to limit the number of people who can claim? How could that work - and who would stop those people who aren't eligible to claim from hopping in a boat? Sorry if this is derailing the thread, I see the proposal mentioned from time to time but I've never heard anyone explain the details!

My question was genuine. If you're going to ask me patronising questions as a reply, than I guess we're done discussing this.

But why do countries have armed forces? Don't you know or aren't you curious?

My friend just reminded me of a boat reported landing on one of our local beaches. According to the paper they were clearly migrants and were immediately loaded into a van. Local paper said they had not been found. Must have been last year some time, so I don't know what happened. I think we would all need to know the scale of this, as it doesn't sound great to have undocumented people being loaded into waiting vans. I suppose they are also boat people?

@ohnonowwhat Good questions, although I don't have the answers. Sorry, hopefully someone else does.

Under accepted international norms, a country can use its foreign aid budget to pay for refugees/asylum seekers who reach that country for up to 12 months after their arrival. For the UK, the amount spent on people in the UK has gone from 3.2% (£410m) of the foreign aid budget in 2016 to 28.9% (£3,686m) in 2022. This means that people arriving by boats are not only costing the UK taxpayer, they are also costing poor countries desperately needed UK aid.

I feel that "stopping the boats" is important, but it is definitely not in my top 5 priorities for the government.

I think it is far more important to process arrivals much more quickly. One thing that would force the government to act on this, is to put a limit on the time to process asylum applications. For example, if an application is not refused within 12 months of arrival then the person gets indefinite leave to remain. I bet we would soon see the processing time drop to below 12 months.

It's not up to me to sort out how to set up an efficient service. We have a government that has had 13 years to do it, including training people up. I do know that the immigration tribunal has highly trained judges twiddling their fingers because the government doesn't seem to want appeals to be processed quickly so that non-genuine appeals can be chucked out and the appellants deported. Perhaps, too, they could have put some investment into this instead of wasting billions on steering fat government contracts to their pals.

Why are you so resistant to the concept of an efficient asylum processing system being put in place?

We all just watched the King take over his new position as commander in chief of the nations armed forces. His mother bequeathed the job to him.

Princess Anne rode behind her brother as a symbolic leader of those forces.

Do you think this was just entertainment?

Do you think people sign up to defend their country on the basis of open borders?

France would like the UK to set up a processing centre in Calais. But Italy would probably like France to do the same on their borders as would the rest of the southern European countries that are also facing significant numbers of arrivals. Why doesn't France do that I wonder?

I've previously worked for the immigration service and probably have more experience of asylum seekers than most. I can tell you they don't want to stay in France mainly because of the way they are treated. The French police are pretty brutal and they're not welcomed by the majority of the population either.

I'm not commenting on my political priorities as I'm open on here about the fact I'm a civil servant and the political neutrality is important.

steering fat government contracts to their pals.

Well there you go. Like I say, lefty people are fond of a Tory boogyman.

With every respect, I would hesitate before accepting a local newspaper report as cast iron evidence. Local papers tend to be staffed by one reporter covering an unfeasibly large area plus a load of students on work experience. If they can't get stories, they make up them up out of nothing. For all we know, this was a family or a stag do going home after a day out on the beach.

Do you think people sign up to defend their country on the basis of open borders?

No one is arguing for open borders 🤷‍♀️

Yes of course cabinet Sauvignon, nothing a non approved left wing person observers is ever true!

@CabernetSauvignon They did include a crimestoppers number in the express article, just had a look. But I can't find a follow up article, so maybe it was as you say.

Are you seriously denying that that happened? If so, you really are living in a fantasy. Whenever I wonder how on earth idiots like Truss get voted in, this sort of post reminds me.

Really? Is it honestly a mystery to you.... FFFFFFFS. How depressing.

@Anklespraying I'm afraid you still haven't answered my question so I'm not sure what you want me to reply.

Hey cabernet, your lefty friends on this thread think that the majority of public sector workers are incapable of providing useful public services unless a politician holds their hand so I will take your opinions in that context.

And, once again, you kindly demonstrate to us all your inability to engage with actual facts or to put forward evidenced arguments. Thanks so much, though I don't think the right wing would feel similarly grateful to you.

@CabernetSauvignon This happens, I don't know if this story is made up or not but generally speaking if they make it to the other side, there's normally transport waiting. This is very often the pipeline of modern slaves. The traffickers rarely stop at transport. Very often they're taken in and become slaves until they can pay back the ticket cost, which is normally never. Understandably they're wary of the authorities so don't get help. It's really very depressing.