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.

The discussion moved on by justifying people’s reasons for the racism.

If you have concerns about immigration on a mass level, I have no issue with that (I might disagree on some accounts, but as a PP said, if we’re looking at big data then a discussion around immigration could be had around that). However, this thread is using the discussion about immigration as an excuse for racism.

People being concerned about immigration is not the same as blaming the individual immigrants for crimes they did not commit, but there is no is doubt that that’s the direction people in this thread have decided to take.

It’s difficult to get statistics on UK figures but these are from Germany:

“The Germany-wide statistics on sexual violence were also sobering. An internal study by the German federal law enforcement agency, leaked to a Zurich newspaper, revealed that asylum-seekers have committed some 7,000 sexual assaults (ranging from groping to gang-rape ) between 2015 and 2023. Although they make up only 2.5 per cent of the population, asylum-seekers made up 13.1 per cent of all sexual-assault suspects in 2021.”

https://thecritic.co.uk/germany-is-acknowledging-the-unspeakable/

Ignoring the issue or calling anyone who has concerns “racist” just pushes people to resort to voting for more right wing politicians than they ordinarily would. They feel they’re the only ones listening. This has been true across Europe. You are sleeping walking us into extreme politics because you’re uncomfortable discussing the fact that undocumented, uncontrolled migration might negatively impact society.

Proclaiming racism for opposing views now days, thankfully is being recognised as a woke left calling cry and thankfully the transparency of this call is now being noticed.

Maybe save the racist card for actual racism and stop diluting the harming effect's of real racism not faux outrage.

It's becoming tedious and even more harmful than the affect's of racism you are so called defending.

If someone is abusive, and you call them abusive, should they be insulted?

Lol. “Yay, they can’t call us racist when we’re being racist anymore! Finally!”

@GretchenWienersHair

Ah, I see.

That's not a property of the word. You are just silently adding "And I'm right and you're wrong!" on the end of each of your utterances. It doesn't prove anything and it actively reduces your likelihood of persuading.

Thanks for proving my point, you should give it a rest as it now shows your rambling and no one is listening.

I'm sorry but this is an infantile take.

The important question is "is X true?" (i.e. is X racist). Debate that. Passionately and devastatingly, if you can. Playing with definitions to make the charge definitionally true, but only when you make it, is just a power game. One that privileges the already powerful (because who else gets to redefine words to their advantage and then impose the consequences)?

It's also dishonest. Because you're not claiming that a racism charge is always true (and therefore not an insult) if someone is accusing you of it. The only person's pronouncements you seek to define as beyond scrutiny are your own.

No I do not - because I have just provided FACTS to show that is not true. Please provide FACTS and not misinformation based on nothing to prove otherwise. There is no EVIDENCE that people come to the UK because it is easier to claim asylum, and the FACTS show that other countries in Europe accept a greater proportion per head of population than the UK does.

But facts are not something bigots are comfortable with, so they continue to assert unevidenced and unsubstantiated lies.

Again, blaming individual immigrants for crimes they didn’t commit is not what’s happening on this thread.

The OP talks about people in her town blaming immigrants for something they might or might not have done. I don’t agree with that behavior either.

But the rest of the thread also discusses other issues.
You might disagree with people having reservations about hundreds of men moving to their area, but if you look at the statistics provided by @TENSsion for sexual violence in Germany, you‘ll see those reservations might not be completely unreasonable.

That doesn’t mean that people who have them regard every male asylum seeker as a sexual predator.

Its interesting too how the English people are basically on track to disappear after being around as a distinct people for 2,000 years. Already less than a third in London. https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/no-one-cared-that-the-english-died I guess some people think its a good thing and some people don't care and some people think something is lost. Opinions may vary.

Yet apparently I was being dramatic when I said this thread is sounding very “Rivers of Blood”…

I don’t doubt that there are arguments and statistics on this thread that could be valid. If you notice, I have not disputed anyone’s arguments for this.

As I said, my issue is not that people have concerns about immigration. But if you cannot see that discussing these concerns in response to someone being concerned about growing racism adds to that racism, I don’t know what more I can say.

You're definitely not being unreasonable, you're being a decent human being. We have several hotels near us and my only concern is the conditions that these poor souls are having to live in and the fact that the hotel owners are exploiting the system by making a fortune and not providing decent bare bones basic accommodation.

Anyone who has a problem with people coming over really need to give their nasty, miserable, often racist heads a wobble.

No I do not - because I have just provided FACTS to show that is not true.

But you didn’t. The data you provided is the number of granted asylum claims in relation to the resident population.

That doesn’t necessarily say how strict (or not) the guidelines are which the UK applies during the asylum process, and that’s what PP was talking about.

It would be interesting to see the numbers of granted asylum claims in relation to the claims made.

How many do you house or have you opened your door too? just asking out of interest.

@TENSsion yes Germany has a real problem on their hands, the left is very uncomfortable talking about it and AfD is capitalising on it.
I was one of those who would have dismissed discussions as racist and offensive until the mass sexual assaults in Hamburg at New Year 2015/16. There have been some horrifying incidents since then involving gang rapes and attacks on children, with the usual derisory sentences.

Simply, it is fuelling racism, as evidenced by the hit of the summer being Ausländer Raus.

Is it possible to lie about being gay to claim asylum here, only to go on to murder a woman in a sexually motivated attack?

Yes.

https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/lorraine-cox-killer-azam-mangori-5272603.amp

Probably because it's not as safe and welcoming as you seem to think it is

@MintShaker

Anyone who has a problem with people coming over really need to give their nasty, miserable, often racist heads a wobble.

This is too simplistic.

Asylum seeker costs are charged against the UK's overseas development budget, which is fixed.

Average costs to house an asylum seeker is about £41k per year. Total cost must be higher.

The average cost to save someone's life through the best reasonably-scaleable overseas interventions is about £4k per person.

The cost of one asylum seeker for one year is about ten lives, therefore. (Yes, big oversimplification here I know, but in crude terms this is correct).

You think it's nasty and miserable to prefer the ten (lives!) over the one (year of accommodation)?

Why? It is just because the asylum seeker is closer? Isn't that just another form of irrational bias?

All of your posts seem to indicate you are more racist than other posters tbh.

Even if you ignore the cultural aspects and views on the value of women, I imagine the majority posters you decry as racists would also object if all these immigrants were white.

They have been clear that their objections are not about their skin colour, but taking resources from a country already on its knees and unable to cope with its current population.

And brown, white, whatever groups of men hanging around with nothing to do, with no ID, no police records, are indimidating and unnerving.

I think you need to work on your conscious and unconscious bias.

“Paedophile” is not an insult.
“Paedophile” is not an insult.
“Paedophile” is not an insult.

But you try throwing the word paedophile around onto people who don’t deserve it and see where that gets you.

That's really sad. Poor woman and her family and generally covered up. We all know why it will be covered up.

I have felt uncomfortable walking passed large groups of men gathering on street corners in cities and larger towns. Express worries and you are labelled racist. Whether, black, white, Asian I feel uncomfortable passing large groups of men hanging around. When fears are dismissed they don't go away, people just stay in and resentment grows.

I don't think the current system which is relying on multi billion dollar gangs is sustainable, over the next few decades maybe it'll strain too much

My preferred option would be (probably unworkable):

I) Return all boat arrivals, no exceptions. Cuts out the criminal gangs and removes the incentive to make dangerous crossings (mainly because children can't make an informed choice to take that risk). Done properly it should stop the flow.

II) Take a share of refugees via a European centralised scheme.

III) Most money to go to supporting refugees close to source. Neighbouring countries shouldn't bear that burden alone, and we can 5x or 10x the number of refugees we help because of cost differentials.

IV) Recognise special obligations. The way we abandoned Afghan translators etc was shameful. And we have a special obligation to the general population where we have intervened too (eg Iraq, Afghan). HK was the right call.

VI) With boats shut down, remaining arrivals will be by plane. Destroying documents should be a presumptive refusal. They had documents when they boarded.

VII) Once our system is robust, allow asylum seekers to work. Many are highly skilled.

VIII) Monitor impacts carefully and publish the data (eg crime). This is the hard one because if we are selecting right then many asylum seekers will be highly traumatised. Provide proper support. Separately, if we see patterns of abuse from specific countries, cut them off. The places are still there and they can go to cases more likely to be genuine.