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

Wrt the posters who want to keep increasing this number, how high should it be?

Anything below infinity is a far-right dog whistle, I guess.

Immigrants on visas get citizenship after a few years. Ask me how I know - I am one!

I'm guessing so as no answer on this one

Only to always increase

Precisely.

And the conversation about other immigrants need to include the blunt fact that our work, study and family visa schemes are also not selective. You can get a "Skilled Worker" visa to work in a takeaway or a petrol station convenience store. You can get a study visa for a "business college" and never show up to class while renting someone's Deliveroo account. You can sponsor a spouse visa as a British citizen less than 10 years after arriving here. You can get ILR after 5-10 years on any of these visas and be entitled to all the same benefits as someone who grew up here - which is in fact happening, just look at social housing in London.

PP are trying to imply that there are "only 7%" asylum seekers, as if there is nothing to comment about the other 93% and also as if the numbers of all immigration types haven't been rising across the board with no apparent means of control. I've asked several times if anyone would support a numerical cap and got no response. Not even an optimistically high cap that at least could be debated...

lol. No.

It sounds a) immature b) impolite

And c) ignorant.

Yes 🙌

lolz

Mega lolz.

Your huge lack of knowledge on this issue has been exposed, and this is all you have left. It’s a bit pathetic really.

@OneAmberFinch good point. And tbf I'm not going to try and lay this at Labour's door, from what I've read this massive increase was a Johnson policy. Anything to make that GDP line go up I guess, no matter how deceptive it is.

I don't think numbers can just keep going up year on year so where do we start to slow down on that?

Otherwise posters who do want this what's the population peak, is there one?

I also think lack of control plus trafficking is driving politics atm, see Germany as an incoming GE.

Head in the sand on this major issue just keeps ramping up voter reaction each year.

I've asked several times if anyone would support a numerical cap and got no response. Not even an optimistically high cap that at least could be debated.

No I don’t think you can cap a number of asylum seekers basically. The fairest thing you can do without wider cooperation is coordinate with the EU and take a fair % share . Taking those seeking asylum is a humanitarian response and ultimately it’s based on what’s happening in the world. It’s not based on what a country can gain. It’s underlined by principles of humanity.

Other immigration is completely different and could be controlled as much as a country wants to control it. It seems to me like immigrants are coming in doing jobs that need to be done and this suits the government otherwise they could just change the skilled worker visas or the criteria for students.

So yes of course you could say let’s just have X amount of number of immigrants under these programmes. Why don’t they do it? I’m assuming the economy needs the numbers but the infrastructure doesn’t match the people entering. And poor planning did not plan for this mismatch.

Why don’t they do it? I’m assuming the economy needs the numbers but the infrastructure doesn’t match the people entering. And poor planning did not plan for this mismatch.

Yes pretty much this in a nutshell, I think.

Lol

Can we afford the infrastructure that needs to match the numbers?

If the population keeps increasing past 70m (how high?) then where is the funding coming from

Borrowing against increased tax revenue from the increased number of contributors, many of whom have no recourse to public funds and pay additional charges for eg visas and NHS access.

Large scale infrastructure projects (when run properly) are hugely beneficial to the economy, so that’s another benefit we can chalk up to increased population.

Increasing your population is one the single easiest ways to boost the economy. It has to be done properly, but it is.

Borrowing is incredibly high already and debt servicing is huge, more than the defence budget

It's risky too as we could face another large event

France and other countries are facing issues with high debt rn

As for growing the population ad best way to grow economy where is that number in a few decades?

I have no idea. You’d like to think someone was totting up all the figures somewhere but I suspect that it is all short term planning going on. What looks good for the next 4 years kind of job. what props up the economy until we can get into power again.

my point is that immigration through visa routes can be planned on benefits to society but having the right for us all to claim asylum is a purely humanitarian response.

So years from now in a scenario where the US have taken Greenland by force and our Russian overlords are putting our civil rights activists in gulags, we too could claim asylum elsewhere.

Then why, in this time of massive and totally unprecedented immigration, is Britain’s economy more sluggish than ever?

Human quantitative easing doesn’t work. If GDP increases by 0.1%, while your population grows by 700,000, then GDP/capita and living standards fall. That is not economic growth.

Mass migration of low skilled, poorly paid workers into a generous welfare state with large fiscal transfers make the existing population poorer. It also makes that welfare state entirely unsustainable.

They have no recourse to public funds for five years. They then have unlimited recourse to public funds for the rest of their lives.

I can't see it as sustainable. Massive borrowing to increase the population every decade

The cost of borrowing is already causing us issues

No, I’m saying only 7% asylum seekers because it’s a fact and yet they are the ones the thread was started about. There does need to be a conversation about managing immigration, but it shouldn’t start with asylum seekers.
Reducing student visas is decimating our universities though, so just doing more of that is a bit of a disaster.

Borrowing against increased tax revenue from the increased number of contributors, many of whom have no recourse to public funds and pay additional charges for eg visas and NHS access.
Large scale infrastructure projects (when run properly) are hugely beneficial to the economy, so that’s another benefit we can chalk up to increased population.
Increasing your population is one the single easiest ways to boost the economy. It has to be done properly, but it is.

Honestly, I don't want this. We already have such a high population density and I really don't want to see any increase. For me, any supposed economic benefits won't be worth concreting over green belt.