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.

Exactly this! Stop destabilising regimes and there will be less refugees. For eg. Even the western power supporting the assassination of Gaddafi in Libya back around 2011 was bogus and resulted in an extremist and anti-black government being installed in Libya that myself and many others were speaking about at the time.

Well up to a point but I think if large numbers of us wanted to go and live there it wouldn’t be a free for all.

I think the later series of Handmaid’s Tale probably got it about right, how initially Canada welcomes escapees from Gilead but when the numbers get big and there is a perception they are bringing problems with them compassion turns out to be limited.

My grandparents were all refugees, so I understand the point you are trying to make.

However, the UK is not going to have a volcanic eruption. That somewhat undermines the rest of the post.

People traffickers are doing very well out of it.
They don’t give two shits about the people they smuggle.

The Vietnamese people left to suffocate in that refrigerated lorry
That was just grotesque.

The families in Vietnam were destroyed- Some young mothers had left children behind to get passage here to make money to send home.

No govt, Tory or Labour seems to be able to stop illegal migration.

Bit patronising op. I don't know anyone who thinks immigrants are a different species etc. If I ever need asylum. I expect to take it in the nearest safe country and not get in a boat from that safe country to somewhere where it is easier to claim benefits.

Volcanoes exist only at the edge of tectonic plates. The UK does not lie on a fault line between tectonic plates.

A volcano is not the same as an earthquake.

I can't believe I'm having to explain this to an adult.

I see a kind of similarity between the Channel crisis and Irish migration to the States in the last century. The fittest, most capable youngest son would go to America, then once established, other family members would join him. They migrated to escape poverty and hopelessness.

The difference being that the US had a strict inward migration policy and expected the settlers to stand on their own feet straightaway, find lodgings and fend for themselves. And that the US was a vast land mass with growing western communities and cities ever-expanding. The difference being that the UK is already an overcrowded island with creaking infrastructure where we are all struggling for finite resources, neck-deep in national debt and crawling out from the wreckage resulting from lockdown and furlough. We cannot house, feed and give health and welfare benefits to hundreds of thousands of destitute young men and then to any family members who choose to join them.

The Princess Victoria Ferry Disaster happened during that storm.
Should never have put to sea in that tempest

Over 104 women and children drowned, dashed to pieces as the lifeboat splintered as it was driven onto the sinking ferry
Between Scotland and Ireland.

So little known about.

Yes, this has been an educational thread for sure!

Kinda off the topic but also to anyone being sceptic about volcanic eruption consequences in UK... You don't need a volcano IN the country. In April of 1815, Mount Tambora exploded in Indonesia and ash cloud was so bad there effectively was no summer and no harvest in Europe, monsoon season in India did not happen which led to cholera outbreak (pathogens from fresh water bodies were not washed out by rain) and that outbreak spread to Europe by trade routes. It's a very fragile world we're living in. One major magnetic sun burst can take out all of our radio-wireless-fancy communications AND set electric supply lines on fire.

Duh! I realise that, hence why I mention Ukraine, but my response was to the OP who talked about natural disasters.

Most migrants to the UK come here, rather than seek asylum in other countries because they believe that the UK will fund them and give them opportunities, whether they are genuine asylum seekers or economic migrants. Many are not genuinely freeing persecution in their home countries and the public know this so have little sympathy.

I know in the city where I live women shop workers are frightened to walk alone in the dark back to their cars at the end of the day due to the high numbers of Albanian young men hanging around in gangs and the incidences of shoplifting during the day by these immigrants is alarming.

It's no wonder empathy is low.

We won’t, stop with such nonsense. Doesn’t mean I don’t support the migrants landing on the beaches 4 miles from me though.

I think it always helpful to put oneself in another’s shoes .
But to offer an anology that we are likely to become asylum seekers soon due to volcanic activity in the uk (for example) discredits your point.
May we always be kind to others.

Yes but if a volcano eruption elsewhere is bad enough to affect us the effects are going to be so widespread that popping on a boat to France isn’t going to help.
To create a situation where it turns only us into refugees it needs to be localised here.

Our local hotel houses asylum seekers. From articles in local press they seem to be iraqui Kurds or iraqui, one man said they were disposed to be going to USA but ended up in UK. Two came his Italy and France. 2 women came from El Salvador saying it was very dangerous there.

The main thing which stood out is one man said “everybody loves England so much. England helps everyone”.

In my experience people are pretty sympathetic to women and children.

maddiemookins - So you support people paying traffickers so they can risk their lives and their children's lives coming across the English channel, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, in boats that are overcrowded and likely to capsize. They're not even given life jackets. Why would you support that?

This is a good post but unfortunately doesn't fit with the op agenda here...

We need much more frothing...

My grandfather was in theory an economic migrant because as a young man he moved first to either Paris and then Amsterdam for work (banking and shipping). He then moved to England. But his family had money and his brothers moved to England and got work, both very successful. But their father was dual national French/English.

Nitpicking at the OPs examples, doesn't mean that her points aren't valid. I bet none of the Ukrainians/Kosovans etc etc sat there thinking that tomorrow it will be them either. You don't know what could happen tomorrow, and I've often thought what OP is saying.

PS there are volcanoes around the world that could impact the UK.

Men??

I thought they all claim to be 15 year olds?

You do know that most of them housed in hotels will not tell the British authorities where they are from as that way they getvto remain in Britain. Very clever strategy.

Put a post on AIBU and you EXPECT nitpicking!!!

While I agree with your broad point, if this did happen, I think I would be inclined to seek asylum in the nearest country that offered it rather than attempt to enter another country illegally.

You cannot claim asylum on the basis of a natural disaster-the purpose of it is for those fleeing persecution and even then it is persecution on particular grounds.
Asylum protection falls under Article 1 of the Geneva Convention which defines a refugee as someone who: "owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of [their] nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail [themself] of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of [their] former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it."

@Chypre that was the point I made about 1816 being the year with no summer. but, if that did happen there would be nowhere for us to go.In 1816 there wasn't the worldwide coverage, most people considered it to be a local problem. My own family left Ireland in 1817 as crops were ruined there; they ended up in the east end of London, where everyone seemed to end up.