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.

It has really cheap housing though... ;)

No. That they voice concern and upset.

I don't live in these areas, but I can acknowledge they want to at least feel listened to.

Bed blocking is more important. People who are well enough to leave hospital but have nobody to care for them. That should be more of a priority.

Cut waiting lists would be my priority of the five listed.

I live in a small town and my mate lives in a small village. There are more immigrants in a large hotel near her than people in her village and my town of about 30,000 now has about 600 asylum seekers.

It’s just too many people overall. You don’t have to be a maths whizz to work out that housing demand is horrific at the moment and they have to be housed somewhere. So it is in my top 5 and it’s it’s purely economic for me. I’m actually the child of a commonwealth immigrant who arrived with a passport when there was a recruitment drive as the UK had a labour shortage.

A points system that allows applicants in depending on if that skill or profession is needed is acceptable. With those professions changing depending on need. They really don’t need to cross the channel as they are no longer in a war zone. Personally I blame white guilt for a lot of the hand wringing about immigrants.

I haven't seen this before and am fascinated and depressed that it's in the top 5 priorities for those voting hete

It's in my top 5 priorities. Migrants who enter via unofficial routes have much poorer health outcomes than those who are able to claim asylum before entering the UK. I would like to see more official safe routes of entry to the UK for those who wish to claim asylum here.

Goodness me @noblegiraffe . How very entitled you are to not see the issue. It's worth remembering that many on this forum are high earners and living in wealthy areas. Therefore immune from the effects of immigration.

Yeah that's it let's blame it on people fleeing from other countries. Often the men come alone first so they can sort a safer alternative route for they're wives and children. Notice there's rarely any elderly immigrants. Because they won't survive the journey and choose to remain in they're home country.

Oh, come on.

Don’t insult our intelligence. If their home country is so dangerous they must flee for their lives, then how is it safe enough for their wives and kids to languish in for many months or even years, waiting for a ‘safe route’ which according to this thread doesn’t even exist?

Are you saying that Stop the Boats is actually about stopping immigration?

300,000 people expected to come from Hong Kong legally, and it has certainly had an impact on my area but I don’t think they’ve been mentioned.

It's disingenuous to say that all men coming over here have good intentions. They are not all our future doctors, lawyers and teachers. People are allowed to be concerned without being yelled at that they were a raging bigot.

It doesn't come anywhere close to my top 5 priorities - and I live in the SE not far from the coast.

I also struggle to understand the animosity towards people that for whatever reason choose to make the treacherous journey in inappropriate vessels. Illegally immigrants are illegal..... this means they are not legally able to work, obtain benefits or housing.

Claims they are stealing our jobs and living the life of riley in 5 star hotels subsequently have no basis - anyone who can enlighten me as to how this is possible as an "illegal" please do, I am more than happy to be corrected.

Assuming they cannot do any of the above legally, I can only assume they disappear and are most likely exploited by people who are willing to risk being prosecuted in return for some gain.

And to follow that up, especially when they can take their family to mainland Europe and not have to cross the channel at all.

This faux naivety is astonishing.

@justteanbiscuits

How are schools affected if it's mainly men? ....

We have many hundreds in the hotels, just because it's mainly men doesn't mean there aren't any kids. Our local primary schools are already over subscribed and the nearest to me (single form entry) has found 12-16 extra places (the numbers fluctuate). These poor kids are often traumatised, don't speak English, have been uprooted from their home countries and find themselves in a completely different culture. Do you not think that shoehorning them into an already overstretched school has no impact on them and the kids around them? Our local school already has a very high proportion of English as a 2nd language, and SEN.

You only need to consider what they have seen/experienced to imagine possible trauma. This isn't like moving little Jonny from a school in Derby to a school in Cheshire. All part of the reason we need to process the applications quicker.

Do you see my point?

It's definitely in my top 5. Many of my friends were born abroad and came here legally. My church is multicultural. I have a lot of sympathy for economic migrants and it would be wonderful to accept all who want to come. We have given people from Hong Kong and Ukraine homes here.
But - we have a housing crisis, an overwhelmed NHS (staffed by many people from overseas, but most of the boat people are unlikely to be qualified health professionals) some of my grandchildren are in large primary school classes where nearly all the pupils don't have English as their 1st language and that has a knock on effect on their schooling. We need to deal with housing, health and education shortfalls before accepting any more boat people and spending £6.8 million a day just housing them in hotels. I'd prefer to give that money towards helping migrants' own countries if it was possible to do that.

My top priorities are

1. Get the Tories out

2, 3, 4 & 5. The same as 1.

I absolutely don't believe immigration is the cause of the problems in this country. I think years of austerity, huge cuts to health, education and policing, Tory profiteering, tax avoidance of the ultra rich, and a total lack of foresight about the economy or job creation. All of that is about poor leadership not migration. I would say migration isn't even on my list. That's not to say that migration might not be causing issues in places but again that is just due to incompetent management and planning.

I think Stop the Boats is about immigration, with a focus on a specific type of immigration. I don't think many doctors, nurses or teachers come over on boats. I assume they're mostly people who suspect their asylum application might fail, or who don't want to wait for the process, and feel young/strong enough to risk it, with little to lose. That isn't the profile of someone we need in this country. Why can't we be selective like eg Australia? That's what Stop the Boats is about.

I know teachers in the whole area, both primary and secondary. Neither feel there is a massive problem. And yes, I do know the support they need to receive. As I said, I know the NHS services there very well.

I remember Vietnamese asylum seekers joining my school when I was in infants.

As I have said before, if it was such a huge problem in these areas, surely they would have voted Tory rather than Labour last week?

Yes I think a lot of them have crap lives here, and regret coming. Better to have been stopped before they got this far surely.

Stopping the Boats is in my top 5 because people are needlessly drowning in the Channel. I agree though that to the Tories “stopping the boats” isn’t about stopping them, but intercepting them and then deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.

To me, stopping the boats is stopping the boats. I don’t see why we cannot work with the French to allow asylum seekers to apply for a U.K. refugee visa from the safety of France and then they can simply be given a ferry or aeroplane ticket to travel here in safety. It would surely be cheaper to pay France to house and feed asylum seekers in France than all this faffing around after boats are sinking or running out of fuel and drifting in the Channel.

i really would like to understand why so many want to risk leaving mainland Europe. The answers often given are family connections with the U.k and/or speaking the language. From those interviewed, many speak little or no English and if they have family to help, surely they don’t need to be in asylum reception centres for very long.

Because a lot of the time they're qualifications aren't recognised here. There was a Syrian doctor absolute desperate to use his skills at the peak of the pandemic. He spoke fluent English but because he had to pass an English exam costing thousands of pounds. Money which he didn't have.

Why can't we be selective like eg Australia?

Do people that say this know that Australia has way more migrants per thousand population than the UK?

Australia is 30% foreign born, do you honestly think they're all doctors or tradeys?

It’s definitely an issue for people in the area that I live in. That’s because there is a local hotel and a former air force base that are housing asylum seekers. This is a very rural area with no facilities near the hotel or base and people feel that they are completely unsuitable locations for asylum seekers to be living in. A number of people have put their houses up for sale. So, I think it very much depends whether it impacts you personally as to whether it is a concern or not.