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.

There is a legal route to claim asylum without actually arriving in the country - the UNHCR offices across the world manage and facilitate this process. The difficulty is that "migrant" and "asylum seeker" are used interchangeably by the media, when they are two very different things. See extract below:

"What is the difference between a refugee and a migrant?
Migrants choose to move not because of a direct threat of persecution or serious human rights violations, but for a range of other reasons. This can include seeking to improve their lives by finding work, or in some cases for education, family reunion, or other reasons. Unlike refugees who cannot safely return home, migrants face no such impediment to return. If they choose to return home, they will continue to receive the protection of their government.
Refugees are persons fleeing the risk of persecution or serious harm, including human rights violations, armed conflict or persecution. In the absence of protection in their countries of origin, which the State is unwilling or unable to provide, they are forced to cross an international border and seek safety in other countries. They thus fall within the internationally recognized definition of “refugees” with access to assistance from States, UNHCR, and other organizations. They are so recognized precisely because it is too dangerous for them to return home, and they need international protection elsewhere."

The vast majority of the young men arriving on small boats are economic migrants, not asylum seekers, and thus their asylum applications are often (quite correctly) rejected, as they don't meet the asylum criteria, and then they tie up the system for years and years with tax payer funded appeals and the need for tax payer funded accommodation etc.

@Jellycatspyjamas - apologies; I posted my reply to you above without reading the whole thread (schoolgirl error!), and now see that the difference between asylum and migrants has already been covered.

A housing association did exactly that a few years ago. They got shpping containers, stacked them up and converted them into flats.

Yard container flats www.qedproperty.com/qed-projects/richardsons-yard

No one on here has said they are in favour of open borders, god knows who that comment was aimed at.

What’s that? Knife crime isn’t in your top 5? Oh, so you’re happy for people to go round stabbing other people?

Lack of logical thinking.

The current plans are to follow Germany's abhorrent practices and cram asylum seekers into tiny temporary containers as initial accommodation. If people in the UK are comfortable with that happening then they should also be fine with these containers being used to reduce social housing waiting lists.

But surely the social housing issue is being exacerbated by our government spending millions of taxpayers money housing migrants in hotels. How many million are we spending on this every day? I've lost track.

Asylum seekers aren't eligible for social housing until they've been granted refugee status.

While it's awful that a family with a child can't get a decent home, it's not as bad as having to flee your home country because of war or persecution, which is the test for refugee status.

There is a legal route to claim asylum without actually arriving in the country

Is there? Because Suella Braverman has been forced to admit that there isn’t for some countries https://news.sky.com/story/amp/suella-braverman-fails-to-explain-how-asylum-seekers-can-get-to-uk-safely-and-legally-12753780

The vast majority of the young men arriving on small boats are economic migrants

The figures I’ve seen suggest over 70% of people on boats would have asylum claims accepted, so can you provide a link to your data please?

Housing is one of the things that definitely would be in my top 5 priorities.

We need to allocate money to building homes for social housing, relax planning laws to make building homes easier, and make it a condition of every plannng consent for homes for sale includes a requirement that at least 10% of the homes built are for social housing. And that they're not inferior homes stuck in a dingy gloomy corner of a new build estate that's prone to flooding, as happened on a development.

For smaller developments, a levy equivalent to 10% of the total sale price of the homes should be enforced, to stop developers just building 9 homes at a time to avoid giving one away.

I actually wrote a really long post lots of pages back describing how this is a very normal experience for those made homeless in the UK now. I was told this isn't the case.
When my mum was in one of these places with my 8 year old disabled sister, she wasn't allowed to stay the night anywhere else too. Everything was communal aside from your bed if you were a family. You shared everything with families and single men. No washing machines. No where to store belongings from previous home.

You gave to sign in a d out everyday. Once my mum took my sister to A&E and they didn't sign in at night, the next day they were told by the council they didn't need accomodation as they weren't home and obviously found suitable accommodation, and tried to take them off the list. Unless you are admitted, you don't get anything as proof you went to A&E. We had to beg our GP to get us something in writing.
Another child there missed her Y6 residential as she had to be there each night to sign in and each morning to sign out.

I am not saying the way we treat asylum seekers in the UK is acceptable. But all of these people who are saying they've seen people run into vans from the beach, they were housed in worse accomodation than asylum seekers, found bins with passports, are instantly shot down as liars. This couldn't possibly happen. Well yes it could, and it does. It is possible to both be disgusted at what's happening to asylum seekers, and also have the same level of sympathy at what people already in the UK are dealing with and having to live in. This sick competition that's impossible to win unless you were on a dinghy. Oh yes I feel bad for your family but at least they didn't have to flee war.

This is not aimed at the person I'm quoting, but it is absurd to me to suggest that unless someone is an asylum seeker, they cannot have experienced something equally as awful as fleeing war. Do people not realise how ignorant they sound?

If people in the UK are comfortable with that happening then they should also be fine with these containers being used to reduce social housing waiting lists.

They already are used to reduce the social housing waiting list. Theres some clusters of them near to where I live.

@Dodgeitornot Absolutely. The situation with your mum and sister sounds awful. It's hard to compare traumatic situations, but I expect the levels of poverty and homelessness in this country affect some people as deeply as war. It must be a terrible thing to not be able to feed your children enough, and I think that is now happening in this country.

@Brittl
The question is , is there anything wrong with the Polish people wanting to maintain a monocultural identity? Japan and South Korea do this and no one bats an eyelid.

I do. As we speak I am batting an eyelid.

And yes there is.

https://isospaces.com/case_study/marston-court/

I feel like part of the difficulty is reconciling the issues faced by long term UK residents vs people who don't currently reside here but are facing a much worse outlook.

I get the point when people say we don't really have any claim to the land we inhabit, but I still feel it's a neverending issue as there will always be people worse off who would rather be here. We'll always be able to say that people in some African countries have it much worse than we do, but we can't feasibly invite the majority of Africa to live in the UK.

What's wrong with it? Do you think Japan and South Korea are wrong to want to maintain their identity and culture?

I used to work in homelessness prevention and resettlement, so have visited a lot of places used as temp accommodation for the homeless. I was shocked when I found out that they weren't allowed to stay out overnight, and had a proper Guardianista rant about it.

It turned out that it's because councils won't pay the owners of the B&B/hostel/whatever unless there is proof that the people were there, because of the risk of fraud, and that housing benefit rules will only cover the cost of nights actually spent there, so unless the resident is self-funding, they stand to lose a lot of money.

While it seems like utter shit (and is utter shit) I can kind of understand why.

I think that the moment the determination to adhere to an identity and culture makes it difficult for you to extend help to people of another identity and culture, then you've pretty much lost any moral right to be proud of it.

Why does extending help mean we should have porous borders? There's other ways to extend help. No?

Possibly. What are the Poles, the Japanese and the Koreans proposing as an alternative to letting people settle within the embrace of their identity and culture?

It's not flying them to Africa, by any chance?

That's a massive stretch. UK citizens have many, many rights and privileges. Sharing a few of those with asylum seekers isn't a big ask.

I completely understand the reasoning behind the rules. I'm just pissed off at people not believing that someone could be in an equally crappy position as an asylum seeker.
Interestingly the person that originally said we should do the same to those on social housing lists, has disappeared when she found out we already do. It's interesting they were in disgust when it was potentially going to happen to asylum seekers, but disappeared when faced with the prospect that it already does happen, to those that already live here.

I will always disagree with the idea that sympathy and empathy is given out only if you've reached the peak of a possible awful situation.

Many UK citizens live in absolute poverty and appalling living conditions. They wouldn't be described as privileged by any stretch of the imagination. Far from it.

Why don't you go and research it and share what you've found. :-)

It's absolutely not one of my 5 top priorities. I think there are far more serious internal issues and I think this is a shabby attempt at a crude deflection.

I don't think they are proud of it , I think they have a unique cultural identity which the population wants to maintain.
The Japanese decided to close themselves off for 250 years after contact with the west. They didn't appreciate the west trying to convert them to Christianity or change their culture. They remained isolated to trade until 1834 which is really late when you think about it. I think they knew they would be colonised if they didn't take the steps they did.