To think people who want "safe routes to migration" into the UK are hopelessly naive

[ForestGoblin]

We could spend every penny of public money on bringing refugees to the UK in comfy and safe boats and planes. We could make it mandatory for every home to provide accommodation and food. We could ban healthcare for anyone except refugees.

And there would still be thousands and thousands of boat crossings every year and millions more people languishing in bad situations and trying to figure out how to get here or elsewhere in northern Europe.

It's a crap situation. Life is bad. I feel dreadful for them.

But "safe routes" is a load of glib nonsense that can't work.

Well a three year wait to process applications is ludicrous, but allowing 10's of thousands of people in to a country already buckling under the strain of looking after its own citizens is equally ludicrous. Nothing works in the UK anymore, and the argument that we need unskilled labour is bollocks. We already have a large pool of home grown unskilled labour.

In essenc we need to come up with workable and sensible long term solutions for this problem now, because its only going to get worse.

Public feeling is generally out of steps with facts and reasoning though.

Yanbu at all

People saying "why should France, Italy etc have to take them"...

...you are asking the right questions indeed. The same calculus applies to them. The problem is not with UK domestic policy, it is with the European/international framework of refugee policy which processes applications on the basis of need and not capacity to support.

@RafaistheKingofClay

What a ridiculous thing to say

Yes exactly. Also, UK has a lot of history with Russia so obviously jump against a well-known common enemy. And any country that’s nearer to you either geographically or historically will garner more “interest”, so to speak.

It’s literally like if there was an accident, you’d run to your friend first and check on them . Because you are connected with them. For UK, if there’s a shooting in the US we feel interested in it because we have close links with the US and just feel more connected to it. Just like how if there was a war in Australia we would feel more connected to it even though they’re geographically very distant. The UK also receives a lot of news coverage on India because of historical links so therefore people will often feel they know more about the culture and people and therefore feel more connected to them when things happen there.

History. Politics. Shared language. It all impacts.

I’d say now, after years of coverage on Syria, people here feel more understanding and have more “interest” in Syria. Because now we have a connection to the place and people through having received news coverage over the years.

Social media and advancing broadcast methods mean that countries are now so much more contactable/visible to each other - you can go on YouTube and learn about a tiny country on the other side of the world that you didn’t even know existed a decade ago. and people on that tiny island can go on YouTube and learn more about the UK than “they have Buckingham palace.”

the more we learn about each other, the more connected we feel.

Every country feels this way. Everything doesn’t need to be imagined as a racist evil on the part of “white brits”. Really gets old.

On MN we talk about doing the best for ourselves and our families, we should get qualifications, training, move around the country if necessary to where cheaper housing or more jobs are. We want NRP parents to work as much as possible to provide adequate maintenance to provide for their children as that is what a parent should do. I dislike the demonising of people who are trying to do exactly that..except their country of birth cannot offer opportunity, often at least partly due to historic actions on the part of the UK and other European nations. I don't disagree that we have significant issues with our existing infrastructure but again, those are so much due to political mishandling and poor choices, wasted vanity projects like HS2 and half baked schemes that go nowhere and waste funds. This is a massive problem and it needs massive, complex, long term, global solutions, not tinkering little schemes that fall at the first hurdle.

At the moment those breaking the law are being rewarded. They get thousands of pounds to put people on an overcrowded boat and point to the direction of the UK.

When the idea of going over on a boat stops being a good idea then that will stop but it isn’t going to happen any time soon.

I would love if a YaBu voter could map out what they think can help. Or are they just Being Kind?

Asylum seekers can't just buy a ticket. How ridiculous. People fleeing a dangerous situation might not have the resources to buy a ticket. Gaining entry to a country doesn't provide you with asylum anyway, you would still have to apply on arrival. The issue is completely around processing. The UK processing system is hopeless. How do the countries who take in many, many times more refugees than the UK manage? Perhaps we should take a leaf out of their book.

Safe routes requires setting up asylum processing centres around the world with the ability to process claims in 24 hours.

The vast majority of asylum applications made in the UK are accepted so most of those arriving are entitled to asylum. It just makes sense to get things done a lot more quickly. Although we still need decent processes for dealing with refugees.

There are two asylum hotels in my small town, one filled with children and families. Have never noticed any trouble but it must be depressing to live in one. The children play in the car park.

We could review applications properly and quickly?

If the application was on economic migration grounds, we could deny access and return to home country.

If its on the grounds of asylum, again reviewing that robustly quickly would help identify genuine cases.

We have to remember, in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, we played a role in that war. We went in, lots of civilians were killed, the country's infrastructure destroyed and then when the Taliban came back around, we left. With no support for those who had worked for us who were now at risk. Or for women who are now being fined and arrested for not wearing certain articles of clothing.

Wouldn't you try to get your family out of that?

The Tories have created a total mess.

We need to get back to being a normal, functional country.

It's a whole policy change that's needed.

We need to go back to working internationally, supporting countries better so people don't flee, supporting neighbouring countries, and also actually have a border force.

The Tory approach of just wringing their hands doing nothing and refusing to work with other countries is visibly failing.

Useless twats.

The problem is not with UK domestic policy, it is with the European/international framework of refugee policy which processes applications on the basis of need and not capacity to support.

So what should happen to those who are in need of asylum if a country claims it cannot support them?

We could review applications properly and quickly?

And if it was faster, plus safe routes, how many applications would there be?

You know, before they used to try and sneak into vans but then after that tv programme they have been coming in boats.

I cant remember what it was called but it was a few years ago.

A couple try to come smuggled into a caravan a guy comes on a rubber dinghy. No one gets stopped and it made the boat crossing look easy.

There will definitely be more theoretically eligible hopefuls than current population of the UK. Many times over. Yes, I understand why. Obviously. Obvious I'd want the same. But everyone who wants to come cannot. Or cannot without fundamentally overwhelming the stability and infrastructure they want.

Plus... A little colonialist to be stripping huge parts of the world of their young and fit population, no? Is that the best you can come up with?

@bellac11

Can you explain the law on this please? Genuine question. I agree with @Wsmi on this but I admit I don’t fully understand the legal aspects:

If you are feeling France, you are an economic migrant

France is a safe country. People fleeing danger and unrest from their unstable home countries with high risk to life are supposed to stop at the first “safe” country they come from, no? Otherwise they are not seeking “safety” but economic stability - economic migration to the UK accounts for over 70% of migration currently.

20 million women are living in Afghanistan. Which do you think would be turned away under a "safe routes" system?

YANBU, there are safe routes, people legally migrate to the UK every day. It’s called applying for a visa.

Why are people dying in the Channel?
… Because people smugglers lie to them and then when they see the boat and refuse to get on, they’re forced on at gunpoint
… Because the French would much rather their migrants try to get to the UK than stay in France, and no matter how much we pay them, the police on French streets often look the other way as people ho pon boats in France
… Because the people smugglers haven’t been caught and stopped, I guess none of the governments involved have thrown enough money at finding and imprisoning them.

But more important than these is because life in Africa is becoming harder and harder. I look at the impact of climate change in the UK and Europe, and I wonder what’s happening in hotter countries. Seems to me the problem of illegal migration is going to get worse and worse as climate change does. Families in Africa who used to be able to grow enough food to live on are now finding that their land is too dry. So they either die there or die in Europe. Even if 99% if them stay in Africa that 1% is still an awful lot of people.

If we speed up applications we can get them into work faster so they will not need to be fed and housed on the taxpayer. This will also help as we currently have more job vacancies than unemployed people to fill them. The refugees can also be trained along with 'our own', or even provide the training in many cases, to build the infrastructure our country desperately needs after decades of neglect.

Another bonus will be putting people traffickers out of business and allowing people to bring the money they are currently giving to traffickers with them to put into legitimate UK businesses.

It's scary how many people pick the Be Good kneejerk but don't want to do the hard work of planning or facing up to the real world red lines.

So I could be accused of being 'woke" or "liberati " or some other ridiculous posturing slur (I don't use Twitter though). However I don't support uncontrolled migration. It's a complex tricky area that is increasingly being reduced to us and them binary stances.
I do find the language around 'stop the boats' and economic migrants/refugees' and lefty lawyers (who are in fact just lawyers following due process you know like legally...) troubling. Asylum seekers are seeking asylum under international laws their status is assessed against internationally agreed criteria. Yes there are far far too many people who need to seek asylum and yes with climate change here this will get worse and yes they have passed through safe countries to get here. However, people can choose to claim asylum anywhere. If they are choosing the UK it is likely because of language, historical links or wider familial/cultural links. We shouldn't be surprised by this, the British Empire was vast and spread our culture and language across the globe.
The way out is about greater cooperation not less, a quota for Europe (sorry but that's our geography) and other developed nations so that there is an equitable split and every country takes a proportion of asylum seekers. Then we could plan (housing services etc). We can barely provide services for our existing population because of poor political choices, we choose not to train more medics 10 years ago despite the obviously aging population and clear need, we pushed economically illiterate 'austerity' instead convincing the public that the countries macroeconomics were like a household budget and that we had to ' live within our means' it was a brilliant and I mean brilliant bit of politics but must credible economists now say (even the right wingers) it was shit for our long term.
Oh and it would also help if developed nations stopped being involved in proxy wars and polluting the planet as this will only increase the asylum issue

This is factually inaccurate.

Many people have no visa they can apply for.

It is important that all policy is grounded in truth.

Where would these millions of people (many illiterate - about 40% of Afghan women are illiterate) work? And live? Where would the houses be? And schools and hospitals?

What about the other 1.98bn people living in conflict zones?

Because people lack critical thinking and don't want to learn how for a variety of reasons, including no desire to have compassion for their fellow human. Compassion is hard work.

Geography is luck.

If for instance the majority of the UK was uninhabitable or we lived in a handmaid's tale country would they be happy to just stay here and suffer?