You and your family could be asylum seekers by this time next year.

[Nevermay]

Just want to point this out, as many posters seem to be of the opinion that asylum seekers are a different species, with different aspirations, different hopes and fears, different medical biology, and different housing and nutritional requirements than the rest of humanity

It could be you and your family next year.

There could be any number of natural disasters in the UK. Meteor strike? Tsunami? Volcanic eruption? All of these are likely in the UK at some point. There could be manmade disasters, war, famine, there could be something more personal that happens to you, you could be a witness being searched for by a hostile government.

You might be a highly qualified professional, ( many asylum seekers in the UK are) you could have worked hard all your life to pay off your mortgage ( many asylum seekers in the UK have) you could have kept yourself fit and healthy all your life and you may also have an assortment of serious or trivial medical needs. You might have french or spanish GCSE to help you, or you might not.

None of these things will mark you out as special, or different, if you are in a crowd of asylum seekers seeking refuge in another country. You will just have to sit and wait and hope with everybody else, maybe for years, your children with you.

I really wish people understood this, refugees and asylum seekers are no different to our own population, some are uneducated, some are criminal, most are decent people, many are highly qualified and come from affluent and successful back grounds.

When ever you think and speak about them, please just keep in mind, this could be you next year.

Actually, I reckon most don't want your sort here.

@Jamtartforme "But we can’t afford to house and care for our own population? Please do tell me where all this magic money is, and how we can utilise it quickly enough to ensure allowing an enormous influx of migrants won’t push the British public further into poverty?"

But what if we COULD afford to house and care for people here. It's just a political choice not to.

Doesn't mean they're not either. Assuming everyone is a lovely person is as stupid as assuming they're not.

Your eyes might be opened though if you had any real experience. It would (one hopes) turn your stomach to hear how women are spoken about by a depressingly large number of men from many parts of the world.

Sorry OP: British Exceptionalism at its finest. “I don’t know what you are talking about!” The huffing and puffing from this thread could power a hot air balloon.

Fortunately we live in a country which for hundred of years has respected the rule of law with an independent judiciary, is a democracy, has relatively low levels of corruption and is not dominated by religious zealotry.

It’s a pity that a number of other countries don’t also adopt these principles and their populations would have a better life.

A local politician where I am (Northern Ireland) had been working with migrants and asylum seekers and stated that nearly every woman she spoke to had been raped. I think that tells you a lot about the conditions of migrant camps and the kind of men who fill them, and why women don't tend to make the journeys that men do. But it also shows why we need to be so wary about letting men from these cultures into our towns and cities. You can call me every name under the sun but the crime statistics from Europe speak for themselves.

There's a difference between refugees and economic migrants.
Genuine refugees don't bin their paperwork or refuse to disclose their identities and country of origin. Imo anyone who refuses to say who they are and where they come from, should be automatically treated as an illegal economic migrant and not an asylum seeker. They should be automatically refused entry to the country.
People who have their paperwork (or if they escaped in a hurry are forthcoming with their personal details) should have their claims fast tracked.

I'll take my chances re being a refugee. If it happens I certainly won't be throwing my passport in the sea and not disclosing my identity to the nation I'm seeking refuge in!

And then the necessary schools, doctors' surgeries, hospitals, dentists, roads? And easily be able to staff them, right? Because we definitely have a surplus of those professions 🤨

And we definitely want to cut down more of our trees and green spaces to accommodate all of that. Because climate change is definitely not a threat...

@Coriolise "Well yeah because where we are building is on good agricultural land. Every new housing estate reduces our food security on an already over populated island. It’s not racist to be thinking ahead and thinking ok, when do we say we cannot keep building houses. How much food security risk can we accept? "

Except we're not building on good agricultural land. National planning policy specifically directs development to grade 3b, 4 and 5 and away from the best and most versatile agricultural land. The fact we spend so much time and resource arguing over every housing development that comes forward because of a loud minority who oppose to everything near them sometimes means, in some areas, good agricultural land is built on because there is a presumption in favour of development of enough housing isn't being delivered.

I take from your posts you’d like more people to be given asylum here. Do you have a number in mind?

It would turn your stomach to hear how many men here, born in the UK, speak about women.

Here's an idea! What about we employ some of the migrants to help build these things, and then work in them? Most migrants are of working age and many are from professional backgrounds - fleeing is much easier if you have a few quid.

Still, you're not interested in facts and arguments, are you?

This isn’t the first time I have been accused of being racist in my supposed lack of knowing British history. 👩🏿 it’s true, I didn’t just accept what was taught in British schools to me as a black girl because it was incomplete. It was deficient. It was over generalising and treated everyone else as a monolith. And invariably it was we came, we saw, we conquered, we colonised. A consistent message of British superiority and aren’t I lucky the British in the kindness of their hearts decided to grant independence?

But the truth is that just as often the British came and saw, LOST and left. Claiming the two years you had troops roaming about as success colonising and that you colonised country x is rubbish. You invaded and then you were kicked out of the country.

As a product of the British Empire, I have self-educated on the differences between commercial influences and trade vs political influence, vs economic sanctions vs diplomacy vs military conflict vs military occupation vs conquest vs colonisation.

It seems that a few posters have not gone past what was taught in our state schools and lumped everyone nonBritish together and don’t really know that our experiences were not all one and the same of 100% defeat and colonisation. They haven’t really bothered to think about the fact that the British have had very different impacts on the peoples, including my ancestors, that the they came into contact with over the centuries.

I agree with you in that a lot of people need to recognize we are just lucky that it isn’t us. And it could be us one day. However, volcanic eruption?? That’s not likely no.

I was looking out the kitchen window only yesterday and I thought to myself “ aye up, that volcano next door looks a bit angry. “

I've met some rude, and dodgy, and creepy, and vile men in the UK. I have never seen anything such as the scale as inbuilt epic misogyny on a societal scale as I have with migrants from certain countries.

You literally can't even imagine it.

Except we are. I live out there among the farm land and in the past ten years over 20,000 homes have been built on what was agricultural land that in my living memory was growing wheat or was grazing land. I am seeing it happen with my own eyes.

the uk cannot afford all those illegal immigrants who come over on boats from france. why dont they stop in one the other countries they have passes through? where are all the wives and children?? majority are just men! We have much unemployment in uk and many uk people do not have homes so how are we meant to house those immigrants?? People are becoming angry that the immigrants are receiving things before uk people. we can get doc appointments but they get one right away. everything like that is annoying to people who pay through the nose in tax. Health service falling down on its knees. councils struggling to provide any services. schools packed to the gunnels!!!

@Jamtartforme "So the houses wouldn’t be funded via taxation? Where would the money come from then? Because asylum seekers don’t have the cash to buy newbuilds from Persimmons.

As for the greenfield land, we have built on 10% of the country already. Now think about what that actually looks like. We still require farmland, parks, meadows, open spaces, play grounds, forests to soak up the CO2 we churn out, natural habitats as I’m guessing you don’t want to wipe out yet more species. How much more do you propose we build on to solve this? And what happens when the population goes up again afterwards do we just keep building?"

No, houses not bought on the open market are paid for by the developer through "betterment" - ie it's written into the cost of their scheme as an obligation they're required to deliver. Registered providers can then buy it at a discounted price. And many asylum seekers, once allowed to work and pay tax etc May we be able to buy from Persimmon et al.

Between 88% and 99.9% of the UK is not previously developed land. 0.1% is "continuous urban" land. 10% is NOT built on - it's "built UP". That includes "greenfield" but within built up area boundaries and includes parkland, cemeteries, playgrounds, etc". A lot of that is under-utilised and could be redeveloped to be much denser than it is now.

Firstly OP can you tell me where the volcanoes are in the UK?

I know your point is “By the grace of God go I” but did you really have to be so patronising?! This isn’t the DM - most people here support asylum seekers coming into the country and are FAR more concerned that they are treated humanely than they are that they are coming in in the first place.

I don't think you understand the concept of a "straw man", but whatever.

The UK is a poor country, with limited resources. Your opinion that the "right wing" are corrupt is irrelevant. Where does the money come from to pay for refugees and asylum seekers? (Regardless of the largely irrelevant, tokenism that is International Law).

Your logic suggests that if 30 million migrants showed up at Dover, the UK could afford to accommodate them. Socially that wouldn't be acceptable, nor would it be possible in terms of the cost to the tax payers. So there IS a limit to the numbers, whether you like it or not.

I don't pay taxes for the Government to sort out the refugee crisis. I pay taxes for the Government to provide efficient public services. If you pay tax for the Government to "sort this out" then please put a number on the cost of "this"?

Would you agree that the Government should spend twice the amount on asylum seekers as it does on say the NHS?

Would you be happy to pay for your own medical treatment, as long as all asylum seekers were given benefits?

Apart from throw away insults, what properly costed solutions do you propose?

Oh absolutely. But where would you hazard very extreme misogyny (no female education, women being legal property of their husbands, marital rape, women being groped or abused in the street) is the most prevalent? And why? And we can’t deport British men so that’s not really a valid comparison.

What "facts" are you referring to?

The number of people arriving from France in small boats each year are in the low five-figures (around 18,000 so far this year, and the peak has passed). That's one medium-sized city every two centuries. These are tiny numbers compared to 'natural' population growth, legal migration etc.

All your other points you raise have been addressed elsewhere in this thread. If you're interested in the subject, why not have a proper read? I bet you don't.

@awaytofrance "Doesn't mean they're not either. Assuming everyone is a lovely person is as stupid as assuming they're not.

Your eyes might be opened though if you had any real experience. It would (one hopes) turn your stomach to hear how women are spoken about by a depressingly large number of men from many parts of the world"

I'm under no illusion that there are some horrible people around - this thread is a great reminder that we're not all lovely people.

Plenty of white British women hating arseholes, paedophiles, rapists, murders, thieves, criminals.