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.

How many would you accept cloudy?

What do you think the upper limit should be jam?

I haven’t evaded anything that’s entirely in your interpretation.

But since you’re finding it hard I’ll be blunter

Use Australian system of another location

They have zero on Nauru currently, so the number of zero is possible

You can still bring in people by work visa, and organised programmes. That number will change based on skill needs. As we see changes with the job market due to AI this is easily changed and will reduce.

Basically read up on the Aus system. It’s not vague, it’s the opposite.

Listen to the Aus politician on LBC at around 10.15 Saturday, they should have an iPlayer. There is no evasion, you just need to read up on the issue.

Sorry I must’ve missed the word ‘hope’?

Blimey, someone thinks we should reintroduce the death penalty for treason. In a country where the government has described firefighters, lawyers and judges, and people like me who oppose them, as traitors. 😮

It doesn’t really matter to me nearly as much as accepting safe routes are pie in the sky.

Put in policies and take 45k or 60k 🤷‍♂️

It’s neither here nor there. If people vote for 60k or another number around that ball park it’s no issue. If it’s double fine, but I doubt the electorate will go very high.

What people won’t want is 60k plus the arrival of boats which is what you’ll have with safe routes.

60k for aslyum that is

Work visas will start to reduce as AI increases but just meet skills requirement as Aus does.

Asylum

Accepting only women and children is all very well and good, but given we have family reunification/ spouse visa processes it's a bit of a technicality. "Children" also includes 17yo boys - and being a 2nd generation migrant is difficult and traumatic and it's very easy to radicalise, particularly if your father was left behind. Women and children are also more likely to rely wholly or partly on state support.

I would rather a small number of stable families selected partly on the basis of need and partly on the basis of skills/trades. Resettlement program to open and close depending on support capacity at any given time.

The Australians treatment of asylum seekers housed in inhumane conditions on islands that you mention is the subject of a horrific documentary and was a disgrace and NOT something we want to emulate in any way.

On the subject of Australian policy, this fromt the Sunday Times presents a more nuanced picture -

"The policy was drawn up with help from an Australian strategist, Isaac Levido, whose mentor Lynton Crosby masterminded many an election victory there through using a “stop the boats” message. The apparent success of the decision by Australian MPs in August 2012 to process all refugees offshore in Papua New Guinea and Nauru — a tiny island state in the Pacific — is often used as proof that Rwanda can work.

Yet the data paints a more complex picture. In 2013, the year after offshore processing was introduced, the number of small boat arrivals grew, from 17,204 to 20,587 – a record high.

It was only when the Australian government, by then led by the Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, launched Operation Sovereign Borders in September 2013 that numbers started to fall. Under this new policy, boats were intercepted and guided back to safe countries. By 2014, only 450 people arrived by sea; the next year, the policy was so effective that no more boats were taken for offshore processing."

So offshore processing wasn't the easy answer.

It also cost 100s of millions of dollars and led to a series of highly expensive of law suits regarding poor treatment.

The UK Government will have conducted assessments of the likely success and overall cost of the Rwanda plan and yet none of these have ever been published.

I’m fine to go with what majority decide. If they feel 10k or 60k or whatever that’s up to them and I’ll just go with it.

I don’t have strong feelings on the exact number but I do on the introduction of ‘safe routes’ as the solution. Or trying to wipe out gangs, or sending back to France

All pie in the sky.

I do. Lots. I'm quite convinced actions of our current government are also largely to blame. 13 years has ruined us.

These people are naive. They regurgitate soundbites from the twitterati and people who move in the same circles as them. They have no experience of the real world in which economic migrants exist.

Economic migration is an interesting issue given the make up of our current government.

Twitter algorithms actually have a right wing bias according to their own data.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59011271

The phrase "economic migrants" used disparagingly usually refers to people using refugee/asylum pathways (incl. boat entry etc) who aren't motivated by conflict/war but rather poverty or similar poor economic circumstances.

People tend to use the phrase "skilled migrants" when referring to people coming here on work visas and similar pathways. Of course, they may well believe we also should restrict this further but it's usually a different conversation.

Personally I don't know why it's more heartbreaking to be a mother watching your child die of a bomb explosion vs slow starvation. I do find it interesting that people make this distinction, that morally we have an obligation to "save" one set over the other.

Notonthestairs
Twitter algorithms actually have a right wing bias according to their own data.

Which country was the odd one out?

Twitter's study examined tweets from political parties and users sharing content from news outlets in seven countries around the world: Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the UK, and the US...

"In six out of seven countries, tweets posted by political-right elected officials are algorithmically amplified more than the political left...

Germany.

Germany

Yes - I've just looked myself.

Nevertheless, I see that Germany has suspended its humanitarian admission programme for Afghans - due to allegations the process was being abused and right-wing media pressure;

https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2023/06/07/germany-afghan-evacuation-suspension

Germany are talking about banning a party to the far right due to a surge in the polls, so I’d imagine Twitter algorithms aren’t that much of a priority atm

Yes I've been reading about the scrutiny AfD is under & in particular it's junior wing JA.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), in April labeled the group as “extremist” after four years of investigation.
In a statement in April, the intelligence agency deemed the AfD’s youth wing, the Young Alternative for Germany or Junge Alternative für Deutschland (JA), as “clearly xenophobic” and “propagating a racial concept of society based on basic biological assumptions.” It deemed the group was likely to adopt “non-peaceful behavior” towards people perceived as foreign.
Open to young people aged between 14-35, much of the JA’s campaigning pedals an openly anti-migrant, euroskeptic and anti-feminist agenda. The JA’s Facebook page, for example, calls feminism a “left-wing ideology” and calls on users to post reasons to reject it.

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/05/24/europe/afd-youth-wing-extremist-label-intl/index.html

But I won't pretend I know much about German politics.

The upper limit would depend on the overall object of government immigration policy really.

We know that c600 people left the UK last year, we know that c1.2m entered. We also know we have an aging population that will present challenges and have a portion of the population who believe overcrowding is an issue.

If the aim of government policy is to ensure the UK has no net inward migration then the government need to cap the total number of incoming migrants at roughly the level of outgoing migrants i.e., 600k using last years stats.

The exact composition of that inward 600k would obviously be up for debate, but I would suggest that allocating around 100k-150k of those places to asylum seekers would be an adequate starting point as 1) it's more than double/triple the number of applications we had last year and 2) puts us a little bit more in line with our European neighbours.

But sensible discussion around this isn't what the tories want. It's the division and distraction they crave.

Interesting that you don't seem to object to it for war criminals. And I'll bet you don't spend time shedding tears for the demise of Lord Haw Haw. Oh but those evilly evil fascist Tories are going to hang you, sure, sure. The fake outrage is almost as tiresome as the fake fear.

I imagine it got heated in Aus when Howard proposed policies and Aus Labor fought hard against it.

But in the end they adopted the policies when they recently won as they know nothing else will work.