What's your thoughts on asylum seekers?

[Lynds778]

I'm all for offering asylum to those genuinely in need but I've seen a lot of negative media recently around 'fake' asylum seekers; people pretending to be from war-torn countries etc to gain entry to the country. Also videos of men giving advice for future asylum seekers on where to say you're from so that you can get in.

Also seen a lot of uproar from local communities about asylum seekers behaving anti-socially, most recently hanging around outside a primary school in Deanshanger and it's got me worried.
I'm also wondering why the large majority of asylum seekers are men and there are less women and children?

So, what's your opinion?

Also, this isn't a racist post. I would have the exact same concerns if these were white asylum seekers from Germany for example. The worry is the system is being abused by some and that we are a bit too lax when it comes to documentation and monitoring of asylum seekers.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14058597/Fake-asylum-seekers-conning-way-Britain-telling-Home-Office-war-torn-Eritrea-bragging-thousands-followers-TikTok.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14185169/amp/Four-asylum-seekers-costing-taxpayer-estimated-160-000-year-living-575-000-luxury-home-accused-faking-Afghan-nationalities-UK.html

It's all men that you see.

Women with children are a priority for housing and they are normally housed as a family. If both parents are here then again they are housed as a family.

Single men are not a priority and are given a room rather than a house or flat so you end up with a house of multiple occupancy filled with men who are not allowed to work or study and have only a small amount of money.

So they hang around in parks, or on street corners.

They should be required to do something, education on British life and English and be encouraged to volunteer.

The best way to stop the boats is to make the places people come from better.

For economic migrants they have often paid thousands of pounds that they have borrowed and need to work to send money home and to pay off their debt.

I'm not sure if we shouldn't have an 'economic migrant visa' that cost £5000, allows you to do limited work and only for a specific time. We have lots of working holiday visas for Australian, NZ, South Africans, we know most stay for a year or two and then go home.

Ok Nigel.

It's a general consensus by historians that Romans left Britain in better state than they found it, that might be why as not sure you can the same about places Britain have invaded.

8% of the uk is built on as of 2024

that leaves 92% of the island not built, it’s highly populated in south east, but as an island there is still plenty of space

It's actually quite insulting to say where you are born is an 'accident'. It might shock you to learn that before you came thousands upon thousands of generations of people who all tried hard to have a good life, many of them suffered and many gave huge sacrifices so you could live a better life today. Where we ate born is absolutely no accident, I'm not talking in a spiritual way but saying that you are 100% the product of your ancestors. That's not to say that some people are born into hardship they don't deserve, no one deserves that. But don't for a moment think that all British people have always had an easy time, it's far from it.

Much of that 92% is already developed as farmland though, which while greenn also is far from natural. And a lot of the remaining after that is things like marshland and mountains (mostly in Scotland) which would be harder to build on. The Isles don't have much space left to develop as towns/cities we know.

Tell that to east London - much of it is reclaimed marshland and even the single skin Victorian cottages are still standing. Modern building techniques make it even easier.

Not that I’m in favour of paving over the entire countryside - but we’re not in any way ‘full’.

8% of the uk is built on as of 2024

How much of an increase in population are you after

Can you give a ball park figure - 100m? More?

As I stated earlier, I have years of direct experience of working with asylum seekers and decades of working in the public sector. In that time I have been spat on, attacked with a hammer, had my car vandalised, been threatened more times than I can count, had my family threatened and my belongings stolen. None of those things were done by asylum seekers though. They were all, as it happens, carried out by white British unemployed men. If I followed your line of thinking, I would therefore decide that all white British unemployed men were scumbags. But, that is obviously not true.
Part of my job used to be to deal with dispersals - collecting asylum seekers when they arrived into the area. For reasons I could never understand dispersals were always done at an ungodly hour so I would go, alone, in my tiny little car, at 2 or 3 in the morning to collect 3 or 4 new arrivals at a time. Never once did I have a problem, never once was anyone even remotely disrespectful.
I also used to regularly visit the properties they lived in, again, I went alone. Always HMOs so 6 or 7 young men all living together. Again, never once did I have any problems. That’s not true actually. I discovered that when they have visitors, culturally, they provide food. So they would always cook me a meal which was lovely, but when you are visiting 5 or 6 properties a day, you get fat!
So yes, my direct experience is very different to what you claim. Are some asylum seekers sumbags with nefarious intentions? I have no doubt they are but is it more than you find in the population of this country who were born here? Not in my experience.
I agree the system is a disaster. These young men want to work. They do not want to sit around all day doing nothing, with no money. And, visit any car wash or late night take away and you will see that they are working. Being exploited for pennies. Why don’t we let them work, legally? There are not many British people lining up to work in a car wash or do the 11pm-4am shift in a takeaway, so let them do it legally and allow them to contribute.
It is simply nonsensical to lump all “ asylum seekers” together into a homogeneous group and claim they are the same.
Outside of my work, years ago I was the victim of an awful crime, carried out by Albanians. It still affects me to this day. But I haven’t therefore decided that all Albanians are rotten. I actually went to Albania and it was nice, I met some lovely people. I just had the misfortune to come across some shitty people, same as can happen anywhere.

@Veronay There is something so ultra nationalistic about what you are saying. You literally think that your right to a good life is in your blood? You could have been born into a family in Iran or Afghanistan- whose ancestors also worked hard all their lives.

your not inherently better than anyone from anywhere else. Ultimately we are all human beings.

I'm not saying I'm better, I'm saying it's ridiculous to say I could have been born anywhere. No I couldn't, I could only have been born from the people who gave birth to me. Something so simple yet you seem unable to grasp it.

It's very difficult and a lot of the mainstream media isn't interested in digging it up. A bit more has come out now that the centre-right press isn't worried about ruining the Tories' electoral prospects anymore, and the overall "vibe shift" around immigration meaning it's not an instant career-killer for a journalist to write something negative about immigration.

@DearDarcy

do you understand the difference between an undocumented migrant and an asylum seeker?

you don’t seem to.

i do think that generally we need to change how we deal with asylum seekers. But we can still be humane. The way to deal with undocumented migrants is completely different by the way. You need to squeeze the life out of the black economy. Countries with a smaller black economy have less illegal or undocumented immigration. the Uk has a thriving black economy.

it’s not about demonising people. Which you are very much doing.

It’s not really a simple thing at all - the notions of luck and destiny are fairly well debated in philosophy precisely because they are not simple.

Your world view might be that only you could be you, and that is down to a confluence of factors that had to come together over many years.

But is that confluence by design or chance?

It’s not quite the right fit (ironically) but it reminds me of the Goldilocks principle.

I’m sure there are many clever MNers who can explain it better - it’s a long time since I studied any of this.

A PP (not sure if it was you) suggested many Brits had worked very hard to create a prosperous country - and whilst that is true, if we are going to lean on the hard work of our ancestors as payment of our privileged status we cannot dismiss the tyranny and force they used to create an Empire that brought us wealth through the rape and pillage of other lands.

Sorry but if you're not eligible for a visa in a country then it's not right to break into it uninvited.

Go to a country where you can obtain a visa or are invited.

And if it's not 'illegal' to do it, then paying human traffickers thousands to cross the channel must be. People doing that should not be granted asylum, it's just encouraging human trafficking. Open up more schemes like Afghan and Ukraine to allow people seeking asylum to apply for visas lawfully.

Asylum seekers are coming over on small boats to claim asylum. Under international law, it's not illegal to come to a country, no matter how you do it.

They then claim asylum. If their claim is approved they become refugees. Those who are not approved, eg economic migrants are deported.

@User32459

Asylum seekers cannot get visa’s. If you are fleeing war/persecution ect.., you will generally have to get yourself here through irregular means and claim asylum (which is perfectly legal) it’s not the same as illegal immigration where people disappear into country and black economy and are not actually documented anywhere here.

So do you not think anyone should be able to claim asylum anywhere then? That we should do away with that principle of international law?

I think there should be more schemes like Ukraine and Afghan ones (in UK) to allow people to apply for visas. People weren't turning up on boats from Ukraine to seek asylum, they came in on visas and it was mostly women and children rather than just fighting age males. People should seek refuge in the nearest safe country in terms of conflict.

Countries should be able to have border protection to stop people just breaking in. These laws are not fit for purpose anymore.

What I'm saying, ehich you've yet to concede, is that I couldn't have been born anywhere else. This is a fact rooted in reality that goes beyond your philosophy.

White Britons can no longer live in the way they used to. Adult children can no longer migrate to the cities where the best jobs are (whereas ethnic minorities live there). Young adults and partners are having the live in the family home so multi generation households and their stresses and control issues are returning. People are not able to afford children and grandchildren
Some of this is due to thatchers right to buy with no replacement which has reduced competition so private rents have risen, some is due to second home owners tax breaks, some is due to grammar school system which undervalued and reduced numbers going into practical jobs so we needed migrants. However there are now more people and England at least is very densely populated with much loss of nature. Those people defending migration need better arguments or else we will end up with Reform which will also destroy the NHS etc. some say NHS workers are migrants but that is because UK govt decided not to pay to train people in the uk

@User32459 is making sense, she is citing visa schemes which exist. The pp saying visas can't do that are incorrect.

The magnitude and money made from what we have, which enables crime and risk, is no longer fit for purpose

@User32459 they already do. There are millions of refugees in Iran, turkey, chad. In Lebanon something like 1/5 people have been refugees because they got the brunt of the war in Syria.

Yoy are totally right. The answer is to make more legal routes to asylum and to help make the countries where people are coming from (the camps in neighbouring countries) better. I don’t think that governments will do this though as this would be unpopular with the many who like to demonise asylum seekers.

Unless you believe in reincarnation, or start to pick apart who ‘you’ are.

Are you only you because you were born into that body? Or would you be you in a different body, at a different time or place?

You presumably believe that any deviation from your current existence would mean you were not you. But others have a different take.

Simple only within your personal world view.

No unlimited legal routes, but controlled visas

Whether that's 60k plus per year or 20k or less can be decided by the electorate

Also, not sure what you mean by ‘yet to concede’.

I haven’t engaged with you before, and why would I concede anything that I don’t agree with?