to be annoyed at so much racism re “the boat people”

[NavyOrca]

A large hotel local-ish to us (around 10 miles away) is currently closed for bookings as it is being occupied by just under 400 asylum seekers.

Recently, in our village and a couple of neighbouring ones, there has been a spate of parcels being stolen from doorsteps. I’m sure you can all work out who has taken the blame for this….! Even though one of the perpetrators is known to be a local lad, born and bred in our village, some people are still blaming others..

The comments on Facebook community groups are disgusting.

Since when has it been acceptable to so readily stick the blame upon those literally fleeing their countries?

I honestly feel that as a human race, we are devolving.

Trump won a landslide because Americans want change.

Trump didn't win 'in a landslide'.

Where did you get that idea?

He didn't get the majority of votes and he had the third smallest lead over his opponent of any US election in the past half century.

Everybody wants change. That's the constant in politics. Unfortunately, real power doesn't lie in the hands of politicians so the change they cam realistically offer are never going to impress.

Elections aren't won on what any politicians promise, they are won on how well they play the game. Trump changed the rules, the Democrats tried to play him at a game he wasn't playing.

I wasn't really discussing the election though, I'm sorry if this triggered something in you. I was talking about how 'facts' even once they are proven to be false can continue to be peddled as fact.

I guess this is the racism you are talking about. It's depressing as fuck.

Certainly that's true. But if it's false that (say) asylum seekers commit more crime than the general population, it would empower the people trying to make that point and weaken those trying to make the opposite one.

And if it's true, then I think that's important to know too, so that we can i) try to manage/mitigate that, and ii) so that people who still want to defend having an substantial asylum system (including me, unless the crime figures are extreme) could make a case that it's still worth doing. Then we can decide if I've made a convincing case or not.

On a slightly different immigrant-related point: most UK studies show that immigration is either neutral or a small positive economically. In other countries that break the data down, it becomes clear that certain types of immigration are big positive economically and others are quite negative.

I'd like to be able to make a very strong case for most types of immigration (using the data), while also being able to engage seriously with people who have economic concerns. Why? Because I'd like more of the big positive and less of the quite negative. And I want to do that based on facts not innuendo. I think that makes better policy and more healthy public debate.

@Petrasings You might add that. But official statistics say that only one quarter of asylum seekers arrive in small boats, and 66% of applications from people arriving in boats are granted refugee status on their first application. That is HIGHER than the percentage granted refugee status who arrive by other means (that was 52%). So people arriving in small boats aree MORE LIKELY to be genuine asylum seekers. Your post is therefore totally and entirely incorrect; and you are doing a disservice by lying about the facts relating to people arriving in boats. Your claim that 99% are economic migrants does not exist anywhere (except possibly in the mind of Farage).

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-september-2024/how-many-people-are-granted-asylum-in-the-uk#:~:text=In%20the%20year%20ending%20September%202024%2C%2033%2C038%20people%20who%20arrived,year%2C%20which%20was%2052%25.

I think it would be wonderful if there were enough people who wanted to engage woth the data and start a dialogue. However, it has been proven time and time again that flashy false claims get a lot more support than nuanced discussion of fact.

I agree that immigration brings a lot of positives. I also think that as extreme weather events become more common due to environmental collapse it will be interesting to see the effect on the demographic of immigrants and see if that changes people's perceptions.

Just because they are GRANTED asylum that does not automatically mean they are genuine FFS!

Anyone can say they live in a country that persecutes gay people and they are in fact gay - job done - what checks can be made to ensure that is the truth? Do we ask them to prove their sexuality? Of course not.

For heavens sake the whole immigration service isn’t fit for purpose, because these guys are advised what to say, what do before they even set foot here !!! I can’t believe you are seriously that naive. It is frightening assuming you are of average intelligence.

The world is really very shit in places, billions live in poverty and under extreme conditions are you going to offer everyone a free house, benefits and an indefinite right to stay?
😳

Ukraine is said to be the most diverse country in Europe. It's also two and half times bigger than the UK with less than half our population. No comparison.

Just because they are GRANTED asylum that does not automatically mean they are genuine FFS!

FFS how stupid can you get? You said that 99% were economic migrants, the government and their immigration officers has said they aren't and you say the government is lying and you aren't???? I may be "naive" - you are demonstrably stupid. If they are GRANTED asylum the LAW says they are genuine.

True that public debate is often disconnected from the evidence. But better have that evidence than not.

Also, your principle doesn't seem to have any obvious boundary:

Many people say that men commit more crime than women, and young men in particular. There have been flashy headlines castigating yob culture, some of it scaremongering perhaps.

Should we stop reporting the age and sex breakdown of crime stats? Then we could insinuate that people worried about violent young men are motivated by ageism and sexism. We might even manage to make it taboo to discuss.

But I think that would not actually help. It would not help the victims of violence, and it would not help the large majority of young men who are not violent thugs either.

No comparison to what?

Is that your way of saying “if that’s racist, then so be it”?

I'm sure I remember your username from a thread about voting intentions a while ago. Your post made quite an impression on me and clarified the meaning of "white feminism".

If the accusation of being racist, Islamophobic, transphobic etc. is an attempt to shut down the conversation regarding concerns for women’s safety, I’m afraid it just won’t cut it for me.
Men commit 80% of violent crime and 98% of sex crimes.
If you put 400 men into a small area, with no jobs and with no idea about who they are or their criminal background, women in the area are not safer.

I hear this a lot.

Just thinking about my own family, there's no set of circumstances in which I'd send my son off and leave my daughter in a misogynistic hellhole.

Better to smuggle my daughter out and leave my son behind to fight for change eh?

But no, it's always the young men that have to escape for some unfathomable reason.

Of course it's important to have the evidence and anyone who is willing to engage with it, discuss absolutely should.

I don't think we shouldn't be collating or making this evidence available. I am saying that bringing a piece of evidence into a debate like immigration will lead to a lot of people misunderstanding (deliberately or not) the data and carrying on with their belief feeling more vindicated.

I don't know what the answer is. Everyone should be allowed to debate but we see time and again individuals who speak out being silenced and attacked. As a society we seem to have lost the ability to have a collective conversation and form nuanced views. I don't know what needs to be done but the world isn't binary and the "red team / blue team" attitudes of a lot of people need to change before we can even look at introducing any sort of data to discuss.

Sorry, none of that was an answer to your question and I do agree with you. I just don't know where we go from where we are to get to a place where we can have respectful debate.

You've made an interesting point, although I doubt it's the one you wanted to make. Asylum seekers risk their lives by making the crossing to the UK as they are far more likely to be granted asylum here, rather than in France etc. Why such a disparity in the number of successful applications? All safe countries should be working to the same guidelines and assessing applications to the same standards.

If you did this what you'd find is that among black people (including those born in the UK) - both men and women - there are much higher rates of both arrest and incarceration than white people. These statistics have been known about for years, and were traditionally used by racists as an argument against immigration and for prejudice against people of colour.

The right have now largely moved on from trashing West Indian migrants to trashing Muslim migrants.

The bottom line is that the number of violent crimes per head of population has gone down significantly in the past 20 years, as the percentage of immigrants in our country has increased.

For those who think the barrage of anti-Muslim and anti-migrant sentiment in the right wing press and in social media is a reasonable and proportionate response to our current situation vis a vis immigration and multiculturalism in this country, and nothing more than a simple reflection of public concern - well I can only conclude that you know nothing about history, and nothing about how propaganda works to stir up hatred of minorities for political gain.

You'd send your daughter out with criminals that you were paying to transport her somewhere that she knows nobody, has no legal protections etc?

I think the families making these choices are less worried about the other migrants and more concerned about the risk to the migrants from organised criminals.

Things can go badly for anyone but there are massive criminal enterprises built around things going badly for women.

I moved from a nice area (very lib dem/“woke” perhaps) into quite a deprived area, some of the comments I see here on local facebook groups are quite shocking and definitely racist. However, it has been really eye opening for me at how some people in this country are actually living and so I can see where these tensions come from when people here are struggling and they see all this fake news online from Nigel/reform etc blaming immigration for all their problems. Also for some reason there seems to be a lot of contempt for the very poorest already here and that they only have themselves to blame.

Not at all. I don’t care what your views are or why you dislike people, I would just much prefer we at least admit that those views are racist so we don’t have to keep up this charade that racism doesn’t exist.

If someone said “I’m racist and it’s because I prefer white people”, I would respect that much more than “It’s not racist to only want to be close to people who are the same ethnicity as you.” Both mean the same thing, one just lets the rest of us at least know where we stand.

Oh you beautiful woman. I'm very glad you and your daughter feel safe here. You made me cry, because you're so right. I can't tell you how angry it makes me to see women cede their privilege in the name of what? Some bastardised form of 'liberalism'.

I'm all about personal freedom, however, the whole point of freedom is that it comes with caveats, freedom without a decent social construct is just anarchy.

And religious or cultural equivalence is just utter bollox.

There are absolutes when it comes to us as humans, absolute rights. Any woman has an absolute right to feel safe and not be constrained by the laws of men. I will not have it. I will not accept nonsense from idiotic regimes. And I will not accept their men en masse.

That was to @Kianai btw.

And I will not accept their men en masse.

What are you going to do about it?

Here’s where I stand:

Men are a danger to women. Brown men. White men. Tall men. Short men. Men in dresses. Men in police uniforms. Muslim men. Atheist men. Men.

Higher concentrations of men equals higher incidence of violence. If these men also happen to have no identification or record of criminal history, if these men have nothing to fill their time, if these hang around in large gangs, this makes it even more risky.