People facing a fear of discrimination should not be able to claim refugee status apparently.

[cakeorwine]

Women fleeing countries where they could be stoned to death, treated as second class citizens. For example, women from Afghanistan.

LGBT people who live in countries where you can be arrested and face the death penalty for being LGBT.

I'm surprised that this Government allow Ukrainian refugees in. Their country has only been invaded but I guess that's their tough luck

"Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, Ms Braverman is expected to say: “I think most members of the public would recognise those fleeing a real risk of death, torture, oppression or violence, as in need of protection.
“However, as case law has developed, what we have seen in practice is an interpretive shift away from ‘persecution’, in favour of something more akin to a definition of ‘discrimination’.
“And a similar shift away from a ‘well-founded fear’ toward a ‘credible’ or ‘plausible fear’.
“The practical consequence of which has been to expand the number of those who may qualify for asylum, and to lower the threshold for doing so.

“Let me be clear, there are vast swathes of the world where it is extremely difficult to be gay, or to be a woman.

“Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right that we offer sanctuary.
“But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin, is sufficient to qualify for protection.”

So you have to wait until you actually get persecuted, till you get arrested, tortured etc before you can flee a country.

Oh - and apparently she has an issue with coming through safe countries?

Does she know how many refugees actually come to the UK compared to the rest of the world?

We take very few.

https://www.unrefugees.org/refugee-facts/statistics

Turkey has 3 million
Germany has 2 million
1 in 5 refugees are Syrians fleeing the war there.

Then maybe the international community needs to try and deal with the issues that make people want to leave their own country. Unfortunately one then comes up against the chestnut of 'culture'.

Anyone seeking asylum fraudulently is a bogus asylum seeker. Fraud is illegal. And the only reason you can rely on a law from 1951 to support their right to engage in fraud in the country of their choice is because decades of western governments have made sure not to allow their populations to decide what asylum rights they do and don't want to grant to the rest of the world. In service of cheap labour, high property prices and bank profits.

RefuAid is a good charity to support - they help these medically qualified refugees get their UK qualifications.

But it's not that straightforward... do you really want a non-English speaking medic? Or one whose training doesn't meet UK standards?

Great news, 51% of Afgahnistans medical professionals e.g. doctors, nurses, dentists etc, were female and therefore provide a much needed labour boost to a profession struggling to recruit

Omg, you're insinuating Sweden is racist for prioritising brown skinned refugees over white, whinging women from Britain. I'm done, you win. I can't compete against this level of absolute nonsense.

How many people claim asylum fraudulently

Guyana is in South America. Doesn't necessarily undermine your point but it's not in Africa or Asia.

Do you speak the same way about Ukrainians?

There's no way of knowing. Only unsuccessful fraud claims are recorded, obviously enough. Why? You claimed there was no such thing as a bogus or illegal asylum seeker and you relied on language tricks to do so. It makes absolutely no difference to my point whether there's 1 per year in the UK or 1 million.

do you really want a non-English speaking medic?

I see no need for a dentist to speak English.

So you are just making things up now?

What percentage of asylum-seekers/refugees arriving the UK annually require dental work, and do they require more, or more extensive dental work than the average current inhabitant does, or less? Now what percentage of them are dentists who speak English at the same level as, and are competent to the same standard as, a dentist educated and trained in the UK with English as a first language?

Making what up? The fact that people claim asylum fraudulently? Please tell me you're just being dramatic...

And how is the Welsh government funded? Why might that funding not be adequate?

I used to work in politics and a favoured line for the Tories when deflecting was "in Labour run Wales".

I lived in England and now live in Wales. I have an NHS dentist. The NHS gives my disabled DH a lot of support. The social care system ditto. My neighbour has had swift and effective cancer treatment recently. Yes, Welsh NHS and dentistry is struggling hugely and Welsh Labour could do better, but it is nowhere near as bad as the Tories make out.

Sorry OP but you have confused discrimination with persecution.
Discrimination is here in the U.K. and we see and feel it every day.

Im no fan of SB but you are being over critical of her comment by confusing discrimination with persecution and ignoring the first half of her comments. It’s a fact that minority politicians get nitpicked more than white ones do. Boris Johnson can lie all day long and get away with it, but SB says “discrimination” and you think she’s talking about turning away refugees fleeing civil war, stonings, torture and so on when the sentence she said right before she was saying she isnt talking about refugees fleeing persecution or war.

Afghan & Syrian refugees have their own asylum routes just like Ukranians do. So that’s not correct to say we don’t accept them.

I can assure you, if Ukrainians were relying on traffickers to escape, we'd only seeing men from there too. Ukraine is only unique in the preferential treatment they have received.

I am asking you for facts, no drama involved

just to repeat
Ninety two percent of people arriving in small boat from 2018 to March 2023 claimed asylum; of the small share who had received a decision by March 2023, 86% received a grant of protection.

Facts are so inconvenient.

What is your proposal for housing them all?

I have witnessed first hand the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. Thousands upon thousands of them, living on mountainsides in home made tents. Pakistan does not spend any money on these refugees, it's all NGOs working with them. Britain's problem is that it is attempting to house and educate the refugees, provide economic benefits and healthcare. Countries like Pakistan don't even do that for their own population, let alone refugees.
Yes, the women are, in theory, free(ish) and girls, in theory, could go to school - freedoms denied them in Afghanistan, but in reality there is no education available and there's nowhere for the women to go. There are no jobs for the men, no local language lessons to attend, it's just relentless nothingness day in, day out.
Same shit, different country, as they say.

Wow, you are actually claiming no one has ever claimed asylum fraudulently! This is almost as surreal as the poster who doesn't need dentists to speak English in England. It would almost be funny, if the consequences that we all have to live with weren't so serious.

We also send a lot of money to other countries to help them host refugees from neighbouring countries via Foreign Aid Programme. Many of these refugees want to go back to their own countries as soon as it is safe to do so.

That wasn’t claimed at all - we can all read. You do know that people go to other countries for affordable dentistry? It’s hardly surreal.

I certainly want a dentist who can speak English. When I am laying in a chair open mouthed while someone comes to me with a drill in their hand I want to know exactly what they are going to do.

I revile this government and Suella Braverman particularly. She seems performatively cruel, reactionary, and totally lacking in any kind of empathy. Her attacks on the legal profession are a disgrace, particularly as she’s a member of that profession.

That said, and it utterly pains me to say this, on this she might have a sort of a point. We really do need an open, transparent, debate about the whole system, and widespread reform, because it appears to be a total shambles.