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.

Well, you see, just like the claim that 99% of the arrivals by boat aren't genuine - but the facts say otherwise; that unsubstantiated claim also isn't true. Adjusted for population size, in 2023 the UK ranked 10th, when compared with the EU+, having granted protection in 2023 to nine asylum seekers per 10,000 of its resident population. Source: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/#:~:text=The%20value%20of%20asylum%20support,and%202023%2C%20despite%20nominal%20increases.&text=In%202023%2C%20the%20UK%20ranked,it%20falls%20to%2020th%20place.

So you see thius is what happens. On social media someone makes up a fact. Hundreds if not thousands of people read it and believe it to be true. Simply because somebody said it. You may as well get your well-informed opinion on a street corner. Someone else comes along with a fact that disproves what is said, so the response it not "find a better fact" but insults, calling people naive or foolish, and repetitive comment - if they say something three times and click their heels you'll end up in Kansas believe them. And loads of people do. This is no different from the way that mysogynists like Tate build up their following - tell a lie often enough and it becomes true.

I have now posted twice on this thread (I only allocate myself a limited number of lost causes per day) and on each of those I have provided FACTS to challenge the misinformation. And nobody has presented alternative facts - they resort to insults because they have no facts to substantiate claims that they know are lies.

A couple of weeks ago I was having a conversation in my local park with a lovely young man (genuine comment that) when he said to me that the three girls murdered in Southport were killed by an asylum seeker who had arrived by boat two weeks before he attacked them. I was genuinely 🙄because this was November... so I just said "you know that's not true, don't you?" He told me it really was true because he read it on social media. I told him that the person arrested was born in the UK and had lived their entire life in the UK. Then had to get my phone out and show him the facts because he didn't believe it.

It's not hard to fact check stuff. But racists and bigots depend on the majority of people simply sucking up whatever rubbish they tell them. That is how Farage works. That is how Trump works. And that is how threads like this work. They depend on you simply accepting without question whatever you are told.

Which countries allow Brits in as economic migrants. ? Not talking about those with particular skills sets that they apply for jobs and visas before going there ( Canada Australia NZ etc)

I‘m not quite sure what this long post hast to do with your previous claim that because of Brexit different guidelines were being used in the EU and the UK to determine whether someone‘s asylum claim should be granted or not not.
You responded to PP who said:

“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.“

To which you reply was: „Discus why the UK and the rest of Europe are not working to the same guidelines. The answer is BREXIT.“

So do you agree with them that the guidelines applied in the UK allow for higher percentages of asylum claims to be granted?

I know I’m going off on a tangent but people who are having parcels stolen can have their parcels delivered to a post office or local shop and stop trying to blame anyone else. Then nothing gets stolen. In the age we live in anything not nailed down is likely to be stolen. Race doesn’t come into it my mind. People of all colours and creeds steal. And are naive enough to think valuables left unattended all day are safe.

The point is both sides of the argument become extreme and I have seen people make such claims, that is what happens when people are out to prove a point their claims become ridiculous on both sides

you have proved my point you decided I needed a lecture🙄 I am well aware having lived in a country where many economic migrants have come from and well aware of how hard life can be and how many want to come to Europe, my family is also from a poor country that we have allowed some to seek asylum here along with many who have immigrated here (my father and mealy all my aunts/uncles being some of them)

and there are reasons why the uk is more attractive to many, the free healthcare the belief that council accommodation is available and that life is easier to make money here, it’s more attractive to young people without the constraints of their culture and the black market economy/work force

life unfortunately isn’t about what you always want regardless of how hard and desperate life can be, it’s possible to feel sorry for people and concern to what is happening along with the concerns of the right rising and the concerns of how we manage the people that are coming here seeking asylum

Adjusted for population size, in 2023 the UK ranked 10th, when compared with the EU+, having granted protection in 2023 to nine asylum seekers per 10,000 of its resident population.

That’s about the number of granted asylum claims in relation to the resident population, not in relation to the number of claims made.
It doesn’t really say how likely it is for an asylum claim to be granted in the UK in comparison to EU countries.

Just a thought OP now we are accepting thousands of unknown men mostly, that have discarded all their ID so they can stay. virtually all of them have likely have not been brought up with the same social values as others born and brought up in the UK with regards to how women should be respected and and are now bundled in huge complexes.

They have little to do and not much money, how long before they all become frustrated at the lack of female interest and company? The sheer number of them out weight the volume of english women in this country who would date them or consider them as potential partners.

What happens when they realise they cant get what they want and decide to take it are you going to come and tell all of us on MN well they are just misunderstood and wonderful.

I agree.
When people say: „What does it matter whether they’re genuine refugees or economic migrants, everyone is striving for a better life“, then it’s understandable on a personal, human level, but it’s not a sound basis for immigration policies.

People wishing to move for economic reasons need work visa.
It applies to Westerners too - I‘ve known Brits who had to jump through several hoops to be able to move to the States and also vice versa.

I saw a post on a different thread the other day, where someone said they were an immigrant in the UK and would love to bring their elderly mother over from their home country, but could see how if all the immigrants living here did the same, it wouldn’t be sustainable. Personally, I‘m in exactly the same boat.

There’s a reason there are different routes for different types of migration.
Asylum routes should be for people in genuine need, escaping war and persecution

@@DingDongVerilyOnHigh

"I will not have it. I will not accept nonsense from idiotic regimes. And I will not accept their men en masse."

Sorry - is this you saying 'I will not accept Muslim immigrants?'

It's not up to you thankfully.

Honestly, the pompousness of your post - I'm blushing for you. Ugh.

For those who think Labour are all about letting illegal immigrants stay...
https://www.gbnews.com/news/keir-starmer-three-record-breaking-flights-over-600-migrants-deported-nearly-10000-removed-since-election

How many people seek asylum in the UK?
In the year ending June 2023, 71% of asylum applicants were granted protection in the UK.
In the same period, 44,460 people arrived by small boats - which accounts for just 3.7% of the total 1.2 million people who immigrated to the UK during that year.
Since 2018, over 90% of small boat arrivals in the UK have sought asylum, and approximately 75% of their claims have been approved.
Of the top 10 nationalities applying for asylum, half have a grant rate above 80% (Afghanistan 98%, Syria 99%, Eritrea 99%, Sudan 99% and Iran 84%).
Just 1% of the refugees who have been displaced across the world make the UK their home. They make up around 0.6% of the UK population. And, based on the number of asylum applications per capita, the UK currently ranks 20th in Europe.

How do you seek asylum in the UK?
There are very few safe routes for refugees to travel to the UK, and the existing pathways are extremely restricted by nationality and number. These include:

Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme
Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas) Immigration Route
Ukraine schemes (e.g. Homes for Ukraine)
For those ineligible for such schemes - or unable to access them, due to lost documents, or fears of persecution - the options are incredibly limited. People seeking asylum in the UK must first be physically in the country to make a claim. There's no specific asylum visa available which allows someone to enter regularly to access this legal right. Under the Refugee Convention, it is lawful to travel to the UK irregularly to seek protection.

Why is there a higher proportion of male asylum seekers?
In many countries, societal expectations of men - such as being the breadwinner, or joining the army - make them a target in times of political and social unrest; but these traits also make them more likely to risk the dangers of unsafe routes, such as small boat crossings. As a result, more men make these initial journeys to the UK than women or children (although 17% of asylum applications in 2023 were from children aged 17 and under). Following grants of asylum, many young male refugees will go on to be joined by female partners through family reunion. According to the Migration Observatory, from 2012 to 2023, 81% of adults receiving refugee family reunion visas were women.

Is life hard for male asylum seekers and refugees in the UK?
A 2016 study of young migrant men from seven European countries (the UK, France, Ireland, Germany, Czech Republic, Finland and Italy) found that they often feel like "second-class citizens", especially due to their experiences of racism and discrimination. Eight years later, little has changed. The demonisation of male asylum seekers in the UK media and by rightwing politicians has stoked tensions to such an extent that during the summer, following the spread of disinformation around the Southport attack on social media, rioters targeted and set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers.

In addition, the majority of asylum seekers are left almost penniless while they await a decision on their application, which can take months or even years. Of the 175,000 people awaiting an initial decision from the Home Office as of June 2023, 80% had been waiting for more than six months; although a drive from the new government to reduce the backlog of applications has started to reduce this.

Most asylum seekers aren't allowed to work while they wait for a decision. During this period, they are entitled to support payments and housing, but these payments have fallen dramatically in real terms. The daily rate paid to a single adult in 2000, £5.22, bought goods and services that would today cost £9 - but the payment level in 2023 was just £6.77, a 29% decrease in real terms.

https://www.bestforbritain.org/myths_male_asylum_seekers_international_mens_day

In most cases I suspect the number one reason why refugees come to rhe UK from France is because of Language. The second reason is that they might already have relatives here. The third reason is that many people around the world feel more familiar with the uk because the British imported their language, culture, etc to large parts of the world.

I think you'll find very few French speaking refugees coming on a boat from France to Britain. Those people tend to stay in France.

Trust me. Not a single person would have come to the UK because they think it's such a welcoming, charitable or prosperous place.

I’m sorry but this post is bullshit. The quotes that you’ve exhaustively researched from Powell (a bit sinister tbh) in no way correspond to the quotes that you’ve dredged up from
pps. It’s all meaningless word salad.

Hi, OP here,

Okay, I’ve had a bit of a crazy time and I’m just revisiting this thread (At 2am.. don’t you just love the non-stop run-up to Christmas?!)

I don’t know if I’ve read every single reply because there are so many of them, but I feel that I’ve got a good gist of most of the opinions here.

About an hour ago, I did look at replying to a few comments, but to be honest, some of them were make me want to remove my eyeballs with a rusty spoon. So, in order to conserve my rapidly depleting mental energy, I’m going to step away from this thread and let it run.

I know that by posting such a controversial subject, I’m inviting many different opinions, but I’m truly in over my head as to what to reply to here..

I just feel so dismayed that very little has changed in the world.

I was discussing this with someone on a Facebook group who told me that because I have white skin, I have no idea what racism is like and shouldn’t be getting involved in such discussions…

My Father is an Irish man who was living in Birmingham at the time of the pub bombings. He has told me many times about the abhorrent attitude towards the Irish after this happened, and the effect this had on my grandparents and their regrets at coming to the UK. Being a victim of racism is not restricted to non-white people.

What I will say as a reply though, to those who have accuse me of being naive, this made me eye roll as I’m anything but. I may not be the most intellectual person in the world but naive is certainly not a word I would ever associate with myself.

Anyway.. It’s sad that none of this will ever change.. it just evolves as the world does.

Thanks for responding, OP.

I may well be one of the people sending you to your rusty spoon, I don't know, but I think there are plenty of reasons for optimism.

Firstly, the world has got massively better, safer and more comfortable almost everywhere in recent decades. So if your openness to others is rooted in compassion for people condemned by chance to live elsewhere then things are already much better. And of course virtually everyone alive today anywhere is in the top 1% historically speaking.

I agree we won't eradicate in-group/out-group. Nor a capacity for atrocity. It's in us.

But, racism does vary between countries, hugely. In particular, countries downstream of the European enlightenment are much less racist than others. If that's causal then there's good reason to think the whole world may move in that direction.

As for posts on this board, there are plenty I would not defend. But a lot that I would. Indeed, a lot of 'anti-' posts that I'd defend as a pretty strongly pro-immigration person.

Why?

(Firstly, as you note, worries about out-group are the default setting. You are condemning people for not conforming to quite a historically unusual position. I've put this in brackets because I also like post-Enlightenment universalist values, but we should have some humility I think. We're the statistical weirdos, not our sceptics).

Secondly, a lot of pushback has centered on crime and on fairness.

Crime: that feels a fairly honourable concern to me. I can see you are a charitable person, so perhaps you can trust that maybe those who say they worry about violence against women and girls (say) really are motivated by that. That it's not always a smokescreen for bigotry.

You note the Irish example. Irish people 100% faced and face prejudice. I agree. But you point at the 80s as a nadir. That was in middle of an Irish bombing campaign on the mainland. I think if you have to recognise there can be a legitimate reasons to fear a group that is bombing your country.

Fairness: a lot of pushback has been based on the idea that some people abuse the asylum system. I'd like to encourage you to see that as a noble impulse. It's like stealing from the poor box. I like economic migration, and the very last people I'd admit are those whose very first act here is to try to defraud us by claiming protection meant for people fleeing truly awful circumstances.

There were also worries about changing our culture. If you broadly like our liberal humanist culture, with protections for minority rights, etc, you should agree with this surely.

Insulting people who have a different viewpoint to yours, with genuine concerns over safety, already insufficient infrastructure and services etc is extremely twattish BTW.

Oh here we go again.

“Racist” is not an insult.
“Racist” is not an insult.
“Racist” is not an insult.

I’m sure the white people who refused to rent their properties to the (also largely male) Caribbean population in the 50s and 60s had “genuine concerns” then too. We can see how they were racist then, why can’t we people how those attitudes prevail now?

@GretchenWienersHair

“Racist” is not an insult.

You've said this a few times but I'm still puzzled by it.

'Racist' is highly pejorative in normal usage. That's how the word is almost universally used, and that's how words gain meaning.

'Racist' is also something you seem to think is bad. So you're not trying to reclaim it.

So, in what way is it not an insult?

So would you say any concerns in regard to immigration are always rooted in racism?

I too was shocked but not surprised at my neighbourhoods reaction to a big hotel being closed to instead house asylum seekers last year. There were protests and people claiming that crime in the area would soar. Us women wouldn't be safe. I didn't feel the same way. I had a lot of sympathy for the asylum seekers.

So what actually did happen was that hundreds of asylum seekers moved in. Crime didn't rise. But local businesses that got a lot of business from people staying in the hotels began to close. Lots of men hanging around looking bored and congregating in groups did make women feel uncomfortable. We were approached a lot especially our teens. And it just got to a point where no one wanted to be out alone. Then in October this year we lost a beautiful lady to an unprovoked attack by one of these asylum seekers. She worked in the hotel. Had left on the night to go home after her shift. She was stabbed by one of the residents and left until someone found her hours later. She died from her injuries.

It's felt very covered up. It was covered by our local and regional news but not much in the international news. And the fact an asylum seeker had killed her was kept very quiet.

So I'm sorry if my opinions have changed regarding the men, and I've not come across a family or a woman seeker as yet, just young to middle aged men, but when you're living in the middle of it you do get a good insight into what they are actually like.

I would say that blaming the immigrants for the crimes that have been committed because you have concerns about immigration is always rooted in racism.

So anyone who objects to immigration to a racist? But being a racist not an insult?

I think you are massively wrong on both counts.

Really? I haven’t had to exhaustively research anything. Granted I had to get the speech up to copy and paste the exact wording, butlinks were all there in black and white as I was reading the thread. Growing up in a Black British household where I was always warned not to forget Powell’s speech and not be lulled into a false sense of security thinking that these attitudes don’t still exist, it is always at the back of my mind.

What I find sinister is the fact that so many people are denying their racist views. At least when Powell spouted his “legitimate concerns”, he was condemned (even by the racist Tory party of 1968!) Now, it seems people can spout the same rhetoric whilst also painting themselves as the victims when they’re called racist. It’s really quite fascinating.

That surely only applies to crimes where the perpetrator is unknown?
But that’s not the only thing being discussed on this thread.

Have you read the OP?

Yes, and also the rest of the thread. The discussion moves on, it’s not exclusively about the particular situation described in the OP.