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.

Thats not true & not an argument Tory ministers have yet to come out with.... but in any case, many wont return, once visas expire... we have no way of enforcing visas.

Are the Government still counting UK citizens returning to the UK as immigrants? Surely part of the issue with all this is that nobody, least of all the Government, actually knows what they are talking about in any event, because they don’t have the data to make anything like a sensible analysis of what is really going on? If there are many different types of “immigrant” then we need to know what the proportions are of each type, why different groups are coming here (they will all have different reasons), whether anyone has a clue how many people might be here illegally, how long different groups tend to stay, how old they are and what their needs are (education, medical attention, employment, encouragement to set up their own businesses), etc, etc? I’m fed up with inane soundbites, which the Tories excel at, yet everything they talk about they make worse.

Alexandra2001
IF Ukraine joined the EU, it would be many years before FOM to all EU countries became available and we aren't in the EU, so could fashion FOM to suit...

Switzerland (also not in the EU) have twice been blocked from participating in Horizon (2014 - 2016 and currently) because they want to 'fashion FOM to suit' and the EU don't like it.

Plus, Ukraine will be getting trillions in aid from around the world, Ukrainians will want to stay and rebuild the country they have fought so hard to keep sovereign.

Most will, but not all;
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said there many of the Ukrainian refugees who have come to Ireland will probably stay and plans have to be made for long-term accommodation.

Tbh your post smacks of the sort of guff we heard during 2016 "Millions of Turks heading to the UK..."

Ukraine's population is more than twice the size of Romania - so yes, I would expect several million Ukrainians coming to the UK.

EU migration was mainly white european and most assimilated into the UK easily

Obviously not assimilated into some communities, which partly led to Brexit.

@Clavinova Why would several million Ukrainians come to the UK, when there will be so much work for them all in Ukraine? who will be doing all the rebuilding that country will require if they are all here as care workers and fruit pickers?

You are also making the assumption Russia will lose and lose peacefully, even if driven from Ukraine (a huge ask) they can bomb and attack from afar.... Ukraine is many many years away from EU membership.

Not sure the realities of EU FOM was responsible for Brexit, my part of the world, Cornwall/Devon voted for Brexit, pretty much zero EU migration.... scare mongering, false patriotism, a poor remain campaign and pure n simple racism...... remember the guy on TV who said he didn't want any more brown people in the UK?

We are not Switzerland, not in SM or CU, any deal on FOM, if indeed there is one, will be bespoke.

Plus Sunak doesn't want the UK in Horizon.

You are also assuming Labour win at the next GE, this is not a done deal.

The more Turks the merrier if they bring their food with them.... (this is a joke people)

Alexandra2001
Why would several million Ukrainians come to the UK, when there will be so much work for them all in Ukraine? who will be doing all the rebuilding that country will require if they are all here as care workers and fruit pickers?

How many care workers mix concrete as a second job?
20,000 Ukrainian fruit pickers came to the UK on a seasonal work visa in 2021 - Ukraine was the poorest country in Europe before the war started.

We are not Switzerland, not in SM or CU, any deal on FOM [with the EU] if indeed there is one, will be bespoke

To whose advantage?

remember the guy on TV who said he didn't want any more brown people in the UK?

No I don't, but you have basically said that in your previous post above - and you voted remain.

You’re not wrong though. (Also a joke)

EU migration was mainly white european and most assimilated into the UK easily

Obviously not assimilated into some communities, which partly led to Brexit.

Where I live this definitely seems to be the case, sadly. And I’m saying it as an EU citizen and somebody who was strongly against Brexit.

The Universities need foreign students to keep afloat these days.

There are links between the state of the economy, immigration, housing, the environment and levelling up, but no sign that the Tories have any ability or desire to join the dots. It is hardly, therefore, surprising that they are failing on all counts.

Who is against removing actual illegal immigrants? What we're against is regarding all asylum seekers as automatically illegal; and removing safe ways for people to apply for asylum.

The government process asylum applications v e r y slowly to maximise the profits of the Tory donors who have the government contract to house the asylum seekers.

The longer the Tories take to get round to doing it, the more money SERCO or similar make.

None of us should be paying for that.

I would imagine that it’s more to do with trying to confirm the identity of people who often arrive having disposed of their passports before claiming asylum?

Other countries appear to be capable of confirming identities considerably faster than the UK. Anyone would think it’s linked to how efficient your systems are and how much you are willing to spend establishing said systems and employing enough people to do the checks. The Tories specialise in making the most skilled and experienced people redundant and then blaming those left for not knowing what they are doing.

Or outsourcing to companies that want to make profit, not provide a good service to the taxpayer.

The U.K. was much faster at processing applications until a few years ago. The government fucked the system up somehow. I’m assuming by cutting the budget and firing a load of civil servants for some reason.

I don’t think the number of people claiming asylum has changed much it’s the speed that the claims are now being processed at that’s causing the unprecedented backlog.

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/asylum-backlog

Here we go. I was wrong. The number of asylum claims has increased slightly but the increase in backlog is massively out of proportion to that increase. The biggest driver for that is a decrease in the speed that claims are being processed.

which may or may not be to do with the government downgrading the job role and presumably paying claim assessors less and huge staff turnover.

I suppose we also have to factor in the Covid chaos and the fact that some civil service people are still not back in the office..... and then the extra work involved with deciding how to help Ukraine. I'm not standing up for the Conservative party here - and I'm not joining the 'every Tory mp is useless or bent' club either. But it's easy to discount the really unusual few years they've been faced with.

And if the French government got their act together and stopped the migrants as they crossed into France and before they got to Calais it would be very helpful....

Why the fuck are some civil service people not in the office? Most people have been back at work for about 2 years at this point.

My friend who is a civil servant says the office was downsized to save money, so they cant all go in at the same time. This may just be their department.
But i dont really get why working from home would slow things down.

The Tory policy of forcing asylum seekers to come here to apply funnels them first into the clutches of the people traffickers profiting for Tory policy with their dinghies

And then into the clutches of the Tory donors who profit from housing the asylum seekers who were forced to come here in order to apply to live here.

Whereupon the Tories seem to go on some kind of deliberate "go slow" mission so that the asylum bill rockets and the Tory donor with the contract makes a packet.

Change these two policies and neither the people trafficking criminal gangs nor the companies we know donate to the Tories would make so much money

And the cost to the taxpayer would
be like it is in other countries with less corrupt political parties in power.

On what grounds?

Except every country in the world faced covid chaos. The UK just excelled at the chaos - not surprising, given Tory politicians’ toxic attitude towards the civil service after having done a massive hatchet job on it.

I'm not really sure giu can say it's unusual when every other government faced the same things.