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.

The question I was answering was....is it wrong of the Polish people....?

I've answered it. The answer will remain the same in principle whatever the practice. If their culture is more important to them than the wellbeing of others, they're in the wrong.

It was you who suggested there might be other ways of helping. Fine, if there are, and they have the same effect, go for it.

I just thought that, as you'd suggested that course of action, you might know what they are. If you don't want to tell me, that's fine.

I do genuinely think people aren't aware of the living conditions a lot of people have in the UK. Some areas would be comparable to a third world country. I will probably get slated for saying this but it's true.
I am disgusted at the way asylum seekers are treated, and I'm disgusted that people are putting others lived experiences down, because they can't possibly imagine that life in the UK can be that bad for people.
The common reply to this seems to be, just leave if you don't like it here. People are dying for a chance to be here. Which again, just shows the utter ignorance people have when it comes to poverty and it's realities.

I would really back taking aslyum seekers at source and no boats being allowed entry. If you come by boat you aren't allowed. 70 percent of aslyum seekers are men a huge proportion of that are young men. I would much rather focus time and attention on the elderly , sick , women and DC who wouldn't be able to take the journey of course there would be quotas and strict criteria. Only the fittest can take the journey right now which isn't fair.

Well to be honest opening the borders hasn't worked for countries who have tried it, sexual assault went up .. I think a country has a responsibility of putting their own citizens welfare first. I think aid and diplomacy are better ways.

That's what most people want. There's currently no route that makes this possible and no plans to make one. The only time they did it was with Ukraine.

If they aren't actively persecuting anyone I think countries like Poland and Japan have a right to run their countries as they see fit. It's not like we are some experts on moral perfection and should tell them what to do.

The current system is not working, asylum seekers have endless opportunities to appeal and free legal aid, it can take years for anything to happen whilst they are stuck in B&Bs, costing the taxpayer £6m a day in the middle of a cost of living crisis. The problem is if they say they are being persecuted back home but have no paperwork how can you prove otherwise, you can't and they know that and work the system.

The same principles should apply to all countries to run them as they see fit. Including the UK.

Funnily enough a polish politician said basically said this. That the West, with its questionable morals and tendency to start wars where they see fit, are trying to tell us how to run our country.
I am massively paraphrasing all of this but they also told the EU if they can show crime rates going down, they may change their stance on accepting asylum seekers. However, they won't be building any mosques as their take on it is, if people are fleeing war caused by religion, they don't want that religion in their country. They also expect people to learn the language within a year, to a level where they can work. Polish is very very hard! Even now, they're refusing to make allowances for Ukrainian kids in their schools and are expecting them to pass like everyone else. (Poland has an extremely academic school system and if you fail, you get held back. Grade is determined by weekly pop quizzes, assignments and end of term tests. You get a score 1-5 on every test. An average of 1 in any subject means you get kept back a year. There's famous cases of nerdy guys being kept back for failing PE). The general understanding is, how will they manage in the year above, if they didn't manage this year.

Well that is problematic when people actively dispose of their ID, are prepped about what to say, their circumstances, where they are from,their age etc. And then we're stuck with the implications / cost of that until it's resolved. Or not. As the case may be.

@Jonei You've got me there. I haven't been delighted with any of the governments of the UK in my lifetime. So, I see lots of problems with how they have seen fit to run our country. But if there's a majority view or vote on something I've accepted it.

@Dodgeitornot Wow, that's bizarre about clever students being penalised for failing PE! I can see problems with having pretty much a monoculture, namely that it breeds ignorance and possibly intolerance of other cultures. At the same time I see it as quite colonial to assert moral superiority over other countries who have different priorities.

Yes. It's common to claim you're gay if you're coming from a country that's not war torn and that you'll be prosecuted for being gay.
The system needs an overhaul that's for sure. It is not remotely fair on those that are genuine refugees, of which there's many.

Agreed. All needs balance, of which there's little in the world. It seems if you're too kind, you get taken advantage of, and I'd you're not kind, you get completely authoritarian.
I can't remember if word for word, but there was a saying that went something like, the more laws a country needs, the more broken it is.
And I think think applies to the world as a whole currently. In the UK, the government keeps introducing laws that just plaster over problems, instead of dealing with the source of the issue. Laws to stop landlord evictions, instead of sorting out housing, laws to stop 'boat people' instead of sorting out immigration, laws to stop rights to strikes and protests, instead of actually addressing the issues people are striking about.
New laws seem to be the new solution for everything.

@Dodgeitornot Very true. Plenty of laws being made but no progress!

Well, it does. Exactly that applies.

No one's saying we shouldn't get to do things as we see fit.

We're just arguing about what we consider fit.

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.

Totally agree, @Dodgeitornot . If there was more empathy at an early stage of awfulness, there would be more pressure to change things before we reached the peak, and a lot of human misery would be saved.

Yeap.

If you had actually read the thread, you would know that people are not advocating mass uncontrolled immigration. But clearly you came onto it having made that assumption. But it is very telling that you are following the narrative of the right wing press which loves to try to deceive its readers into believing that allowing refugees shelter and mass uncontrolled immigration are the same thing.

So you're in favour of opening up safe and legal routes for asylum seekers?

And they will need housing, school places and health services. At my place of work, we recently advertised a low level, minimum wage clerical job and had a surprisingly large number of recent Hong Kong immigrants applying for it. These are not people who will be paying for private schools and private health care.

"But it is very telling that you are following the narrative of the right wing press which loves to try to deceive its readers into believing that allowing refugees shelter and mass uncontrolled immigration are the same thing."

The right wing press in this country - the Mail, The Sun, The Express and the Telegraph, have dragged us all down into the dirt on this issue.

Yes, the narrative seems to have changed from 'they won't need state school places' to 'it doesn't matter if they do'. I assume it doesn't matter that they need houses either.

"And they will need housing, school places and health services. At my place of work, we recently advertised a low level, minimum wage clerical job and had a surprisingly large number of recent Hong Kong immigrants applying for it. These are not people who will be paying for private schools and private health care."

We need more people working and paying taxes in this country, because we currently have low participation in the workplace, a birth rate that's below replacement rate, and a rapidly ageing population.. Thank god for hard working immigrants. My entire high street would be a row of boarded up shops if it wasn't for new immigrants having the courage and the drive to open up small businesses.

Thank god for hard working immigrants.

Well yes, but it seems astonishing to categorise one group as automatically hardworking and a different group as a drain on resources based entirely on how they got here.