How bothered are you about Small Boats?

[Spinet]

I think the idea that people think Small Boats with illegal immigrants on them is a really pressing issue is made up by politicians to have something to campaign on. Am I right? Is this a pressing issue as far as you're concerned?

I'm not really talking about immigration/ asylum seekers in general, just the small boats everyone keeps mentioning. If you're worried about people dying in the channel I get that, but do you think people finding their way here illegally is a major issue for our country at the moment?

I think it's clear I don't but I will accept I'm wrong about this being a made up issue if the majority disagree with me.

If you want to vote YABU= this is one of my top ten concerns. YANBU = I don't think it's a top ten issue for the country.

How many people would you like to see processed through safe routes?

And what will you do if someone arrives outside that route?

I say to Labour just keep going! It’s hard to float so many ideas that would kill their vote stone dead at every level, but they seem to have managed it.

Sue Gray has obviously been a let down.

Even if Sir Keir was not a multi millionaire elitist with all the charisma of a funeral director, flopping all over the place like a wet lettuce how could people possibly vote for this bollocks?

For most people it will be turkeys voting for Christmas. The only winners being those that glue themselves to roads, trans people and migrants - the rest of us will be shafted.

Do you mean ideas like "Stop the boats"?

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/08/08/public-lack-confidence-conservatives-stop-boats

That's certainly a vote winner!

Imaginative I will give you that 🤔

DuncinToffee
I like that, they would get my vote

I'm not surprised - I thought you were a Dutch national.
Does the Netherlands extend voting rights to all foreign residents?

That DM link is funny, especially when Johnson put the son of a KGB agent in the HoL

Even funnier:
Evgeny Lebedev
And in the spirit of transparency here is a text to me from @ KeirStarmer: ‘Congratulations on your elevation to the House of Lords. All best wishes, Keir.’

😂😂😂😂

You really couldn’t make this up!

I have checked my log and here are some examples of trips I have made without passing through passport control at either end of the journey.

UK to France, France to UK, UK to Belgium, UK to Holland, Holland to UK, US to Canada, Canada to UK.

Even sailing into and out of Port of Dover did not involve a passport check.

Leaving out various Schengen crossings as well.

Are you a stowaway? Is that it?
That answers a lot - thanks

They're not being kidnapped FFS. Or don't you think people should be allowed to better themselves and the lives of their families? People have agency and, if they have the skills and meet the criteria, should be able to work where they want. I moved from the shithole that I grew up in to somewhere with better job prospects and pay - should I have stayed there? We're not slaves.

There's plenty been made up on this thread.

Like the notion that asylum seekers are some how illegal.
Like the notion that there are millions of refugees in the UK.

@jgw1 Perhaps because the individuals arriving on the Kent coast are not, mostly, doctors and dentists... however, if they are mainly qualified medical professionals and coming by unorthodox routes, the UK is by definition 'not going around taking them from other countries'?

It’s as if we didn’t even brexit - passport free joy, how lovely brexit makes no difference at all to you travelling.

We were all told by the bbc we would never be welcome anywhere ever again if we dared vote leave, impoverished on this god forsaken island - but that doesn’t sound like your experience at all 😃

In one GP surgery 50% of our looked after children are unaccompanied asylum seeking minors.

Now x that by every GP surgery in the country.

Yes it's an issue.

No, no you have got this all wrong.

The boats ARE packed full of doctors, dentists, nurses, surgeons and chicken pluckers. One pp even said there were bottom wipers on them - so thank heavens for that. So rest easy y’all. They are on their way to a hospital near you. How reassuring.

It doesn't bother me. I managed to enter the UK as a refugee myself and I think it's great that people of all nationalities have the opportunity to live here.

I'm sure we were told on this thread a few hours ago that most asylum seekers were young men? Are they also children?

If you look at the figures, immigration has been higher under the Tories than under labour.

Why make this kind of false statement? Is it because you are ignorant or because you are trying to dupe other people into voting Tory?

Oh and why was that? Because the nasty tories offered a safe home to Afghans in genuine peril, Ukrainians driven out by war and HK residents that are having their rights systematically violated by the Chinese government. How dare they be so compassionate!!

Yes they are 6ft 3, hairy with dental records that reflect a 30 year old man but hey ho.

I suggest you let @Whiskyinajar know then.

I think she was talking tongue in cheek. Not your sharpest moment jgw.
Its illegal for a doctor to see a real unaccompanied child.

By unaccompanied do you mean without a parent being present?

Yes, I'm concerned. Immigration isn't always, automatically, a good thing. Immigration can be good, neutral or bad. It depends who you let in. If you let in an Indian cancer surgeon and his wife, or a Canadian with a PhD in engineering, or a Japanese biology professor, or an Australian poet, or whatever, they are going to enrich your country. A violent, illiterate drug dealer, or a man who has fled his home country on suspicion of rape or sex trafficking, is NOT going to enrich your country.

The left-wing nutcases who want open borders are like religious fundamentalists, or members of a cult. You get the same glazed expression, the same intolerance, the same rage against those who disagree, the same contempt for alternative viewpoints, the same smugness, the same fanaticism. Unfortunately, they have a disproportionate influence over our media and universities. I keep being told these people are "frightened refugees" and that they're "fleeing war and persecution". But when I look on google images, or watch youtube clips (not the biased, carefully selected footage we're shown on the BBC) all I see are boatloads of fit, often quite arrogant, young men. Presumably they've left their girlfriends and sisters and children and grandparents to face all the "war and persecution" on their own.

If people do accept we’ll be seeing increase in numbers due to climate pressures

What numbers would people like to take to feel it’s an acceptable level?

And how do you manage anyone outside accepted routes when they arrive?