Refugees "visiting home"

[Notanotherkendoll]

I'm not sure how I feel after this conversation with a friend so would like to hear other opinions.
My friend took in a Ukrainian refugee back in 2022, she was a 18/19 year old teenager. She didn't stay for long before getting employment/started studying and was able to move out but they have remained in touch and my friend sort of views herself as the girls "uk mum".
Anyway friend is once again beside herself as she has gone back to Kyiv for a few days. This isn't the city she is from but sadly the city she was from was under siege for sometime and is now mostly destroyed. She is going to visit her family who all moved to Kyiv, as the only girl her family pushed her to flee when the war started but her mum stayed put.

This has me thinking, surely if it is safe enough for her to return home to visit, it's safe enough for her to move back? I thought the whole point of being a refugee was that your own country wasn't safe, if you are going back to visit how can that be the case?

AIBU to think it's incompatible with the very nature of being a refugee to be able to visit home?

Yes this is right.

I'm not sure what's so hard to understand OP? She's having an awful time, is desperate to see her family and home
and is taking a huge risk to do it

Now I am a man (in a anew green dress?) LOL
Okay, Oxana, I won't for a second believe you are not ukrainian, and casually googling 'tovarisch', most British won't remember that word from the top of their heads.

Nah a Russian bot would totally say make their username Russianbot and Putin lover101

It’s called copying and pasting, literally takes two seconds, another thing they didn’t teach you at putin university comrade

and here’s another fun fact for you, the uk is home to millions of immigrants, many half British, and many bilingual, not just British or Ukrainian ones, which could be reason why I’m familiar with Russian words, you just assume I’m 100 percent British

Nah but they totally would use a Russian saying chicken hut multiple times

deflecting, deflecting because I caught you

I know you have a job to do Andrei, and pennies to make, but this convo is over

dont drink all that vodka at once, you still have a lot of fighting ahead of you and typing on female gossip forums is not a skill that is valued in war

lets play this game then

lets say I’m not polish who’s lived in the uk since I was a kid and I’m a Ukrainian wife. That changes what exactly? you really have to lay off the vodka Nikolai

that changes the fact you are a Russian troll who was caught?

im listening

If I am 💯 honest, I will admit I’ve wondered the same thing a few times. I’m just being honest. Yet, I only had to read the first couple of pages on here to realise how obvious it is to take that risk, or potentially not see your family for years- possibly ever. I feel ashamed for even wondering why now.

We also had a Ukrainian refugee stay with us.Quite a bit older, mid 30s, and from a city some way from the fighting (although it had experienced a couple of missile strikes). She also managed to find a job and moved out, now got a boyfriend and seems relatively happy/settled. But she too has visited her parents in Ukraine. It’s not an easy trip I believe but she’s done it several times and spends a week or two there. I can’t get too wound up about it tbh. She’s working and paying her taxes etc.

Shitty weather in the UK? Have you actually BEEN to Ukraine? Makes our weather look almost tropical

Really? My guest constantly tells me “It’s 30 degrees and bright sunshine back home today”. Her online (Ukrainian) English teacher was complaining that it had been so cold as it was only 26 degrees in July when it was 14 here and raining every day. They do have very cold winters though.

Nah a Russian bot would totally say make their username Russianbot and Putin lover101
While ukrainian wives definitely would put that in their username? haha

re the source of russian words - right back at you, Oxana.

I am not going to read or argue with the rest of your post - it's pointless, as for some reason you are unwilling to admit that you are a ukrainian wife, probably fled you 'wonderful' country years before the start of the war.
I have not problem with you or anyone else being a ukrainian wife, just makes this thread misleading

Why would whether or not someone working and paying taxes change the way you feel in terms of compassion towards thier situation of fleeing a warzone?

"I have not problem with you"

😏

OP this is something I've sometimes thought about. In my small town there are families who were Asylum Seekers and now after many years they hoilday in the same country they fled from, after getting permanent residency in the UK.

Which country are they from and now visiting?

NOT UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS LAND.

which is precisely WHY they can travel back home and not jeopardise their status as asylum seekers. Because they are NOT GIVEN ASYLUM HERE so they are not asylum seekers.

That has literally NOTHING to do with refugees, asylum seekers and Ukrainians. What a daft post. Go to a Brexit thread with your anecdote
🤷‍♀️

I've been there in both Oct and Dec and it's bloody painful with the weather. No wonder all the people were miserable there ( and can't blame the war as that was before then)

@PandoraSox Pakistan and India

Well if they were granted asylum from India/Pakistan and return there, they risk losing their leave to remain in the UK.

However there may be details that you are not aware of. Is it not the case that some refugees from Afghanistan who were in refugee camps in India and Pakistan were eventually awarded asylum in the UK?

In which case there is nothing to stop them visiting India or Pakistan because that is not the country they were awarded asylum from.

It's a very long time since there were wars in Pakistan and India. Many came here after partition in the 1940s, before my time.

n 1971, West and East Pakistan fought in the Bangladesh Liberation War. This led to the creation of Bangladesh on 16 December 1971. Bangladeshi refugees came here.

Refugees also came here from Kenya and Uganda I particularly remember those from Uganda in the early 1970s when Idi Amin persecuted and expelled them. Their ethnicity was Indian sub-continent.

They can all go back for holidays now that it is safe to do so, thank goodness. It must be very hard to leave so much behind. However they assimilated well here.

Refugees from Syria would be in no hurry to return, poor souls.

My Ukranian friend has lived here for 20 years, so not a refugee, she goes back to Ukraine twice a years to see family and the country she loves. Her village has been untouched by the war, Ukraine is a huge place. Even if this persons family is still in a war torn area I can totally understand her going back to visit, she must miss her family so very much, worry about them too. No one can begrudge her that.

On what grounds?
I think you're confused.

There seem to be some people for whom anyone who is not "properly British" is a lesser breed without the law and deserves to be despised – and forbidden to go on holidays or visit their family.

I don't think I have ever met anyone with no immigrants in their family tree at all, though they may have to go back a few years (or decades, or centuries) before their noses are rubbed in the fact that they are no more "properly British" than I am, or than anyone some of whose family escaped from Nazi Germany.

Never made a typo, have you? 🙄
I also said "ukrainina" Enjoy😁

If they've been here "many years", they are probably naturalized citizens, the circumstances they fled from have changed, and they have built a life here. Why shouldn't they visit home?