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

There are people who abuse every system - but they tend to be a tiny minority.

There are very few people who game the benefits system, but they make the news a disproportionate amount.

There are very few ‘fake’ asylum
seekers - but rags like the Mail use them to demonise an entire group of the most vulnerable humans on earth.

It is so very wrong.

About half of decisions on asylum seekers are approved - with another quarter approved on appeal.

Of course there are bad actors in the asylum system - there are bad actors everywhere.

But let the system worry about weeding them out - concentrate on all the positive things refugees bring to our country and focus your energies on demanding better infrastructure and amenities from our government.

Asylum seekers aren’t ruining Britain - tax dodgers and poorly resource management is.

I don’t feel any particular way about asylum seekers tbh. They’re a fairly distant concept. I’m healthy, I’m wealthy, I don’t live in the kind of area where they tend to be housed, I don’t need to worry for a second about the pressure in my area of their healthcare needs, or eligibility for affordable housing once granted refugee status, and they aren’t going to be applying for my job.

I imagine I would understandably feel a little bit differently if my life was difficult and a bit shit already and my perception was that more and more people were arriving to compete with me for the scarce jobs I was qualified for and the housing, the GP places me and my disabled child were already chasing, and I was a renter who’d been on the council housing waiting list for almost a decade.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but aren't they supposed to go the nearest safest country which would never be England so the only reason they come here is they know how soft we are housing, benefits the nhs. Which would be fine but where full

This sprung to mind.

The Gulf countries, the wealthiest states among the Arab world, have been the largest donors to Syrian refugees. But they do not take in refugees to their own countries: none of them officially recognize the legal concept of "refugeehood".

This is not a specific issue of hostility to any particular group of refugees: the six Gulf monarchies have never signed the international conventions on refugee rights and statelessness, which began to be established after the Second World War.

The Daily Mail supported the Nazis in the 1930s and published a headline 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' about the British fascists led by Sir Oswald Moseley.

My Jewish grandparents had their windows broken by these people.

They are on the right wing of British politics and their reporting is biased.

What do I think about asylum seekers?

Well, having worked with young asylum seekers, I think it's horrific that after experiencing unimaginable trauma in their home countries, often followed by a perilous and terrifying journey that you wouldn't even contemplate if you weren't absolutely desperate, it is incredibly sad that they encounter so much resentment, prejudice and threat in a place where they had believed that they might find sanctuary.

I think of the 16 year old boy that I knew who, having watched his mother and sisters being raped and 13 members of his family being murdered in front of him, escaped from persecution in his home country by turning to traffickers who sexually abused and exploited him throughout his perilous journey, finally arrived to what he had hoped would be a safe haven here in the UK. And within a week of his arrival, he was subjected to a horrific attack by two local thugs who wanted him to fuck off back to where he came from.

I think of the young man who had fled his home because he it wasn't safe to be gay in his own country, plagued by self hatred and guilt, and tortured by nightmares about the perilous sea crossing on which he thought he was going to drown. I think of his sadness at the realisation that he would never be properly accepted in this country either, and his constant struggles with the idea of ending his seemingly hopeless life.

I think of the young girl who was sold into sexual slavery by her own father when she was just 8 years old, kept prisoner for a decade and abused by countless men for profit. The courage that it had taken her to escape and the resilience that she showed in trying to rebuild her life.

The Daily Mail will not tell you these stories because they don't fit with their narrative. Yes, there will be economic migrants amongst those who seek asylum, driven to make those perilous journeys out of financial desperation rather than political persecution. Yes, there are people who are tricked and exploited by the traffickers into believing that they offer a safe and legitimate way of coming to work in the UK. But those who cannot prove that they have a genuine case for asylum will have their claims refused.

You are wrong.

https://fullfact.org/immigration/refugees-first-safe-country/

This is the most balanced and understanding comment I think i have ever read on mumsnet

You're wrong. HTH

Then they don’t get asylum.

No, there are European countries out there that have a much easier benefits and arguably better healthcare systems than the UK.

It's the life long perception of the 'UK dream' or the 'American dream' that obviously doesn't exist (anymore).

That didn't answer the question. It's legitimate - are you saying you don't believe it is true?

There but for the grace of god and all that.

It’s a bloody mess and I don’t know how it could be fixed, if it’s possible at all.

There are obviously many thousands of people living in dangerous awful situations and of course they will do anything to try and improve their lives by any means they think they can- it’s human nature.

It is difficult in that the sheer numbers of people living in those conditions are such that mean a huge number would want to try to live somewhere safer/with better opportunities for themselves and their families. Housing and resettling these people is difficult and expensive/takes up a lot of resources. This, combined at a time when the cost of living is rising/ British people are struggling/the NHS is in crisis etc causes resentment from the general population.

Again human nature- if you pay your taxes etc, and feel your government is not able to fund things such as health/education etc and then you might feel (whether rightly or wrongly) that they are spending too much on helping others to the detriment to your family and it creates tension (whether that’s worry as to how the country can sustain this all the way to the beliefs of the daily Mail’s more outrageous claims) - even if you understand that asylum seekers are genuine and fleeing an awful situation.

I have no idea of the number of ‘fake’ applicants now.

However, I know that it certainly did happen, from previous personal experience. I think it must have been 1999, I know we were all still in school uniform so I think we were y10/11- so around 15.

We used to go into town after school, hang out/mooch about the shops etc. We got approached by a group of guys that used to regularly hang out in a particular spot. As a group of young (and daft) teenage girls, I think we were probably flattered that this group of young guys wanted to talk to us.

One of my friends ended up swapping numbers and started a relationship with one of them. He was in his early 20s and Albanian. He had come over as a refugee and claimed he was 16. They were housed in a local b and b/hotel. They were eventually moved to a council house (in an area that’s incredibly expensive and social housing has a waiting list of many years).

He was abusive, both physically/mentally and financially. He was a complete arsehole and it took a long time for her to have the courage to leave him. I saw the bruises, I was there when he’d constantly phone her to harass her about where she was and who she spoke to.

I could not tell you whether bad apples such as this group are still a regular occurrence. I really and truly hope not, that the agencies are better at screening false claims. But I know that it has happened previously. However, that doesn’t mean that the majority or even a significant number still fall into that category.

When I was younger this experience did cloud my opinion, however I hope I now have the good sense to know that the situation is far more complicated and nuanced and that the vast majority of people coming here really are fleeing from awful and dangerous places where they fear for their lives.

You're wrong. There's no obligation to go to the first safe country. However the vast majority do.

The Daily Mail is not a legitimate source of news. It is so unreliable it cannot be used as a source on Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopaedia.

Bias does not mean something is a lie - it means presenting information in a way that encourages the reader to draw a pre-determined conclusion.

In this case, story after story about bad apples in the asylum system, designed to set people against all asylum seekers.

Seriously?

And if their documents are stolen, lost, or they simply don't have any. Are you saying they shouldn't get asylum?

While that is fair, I think that it behaves those people who feel they are worst affected by asylum seekers to ensure they are as fully informed as possible to check the veracity their perceptions. My experience in volunteering with young migrants in the midlands was that those approaching eighteen with their status undecided vanished and went underground, working in the black economy, at risk for sexual and other exploitation and with no recourse to help or public funds.

I'd be interested to know the numbers of how many each country is taking and if it is split fairly

No, it isn't split fairly at all. Countries such as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Jordan take a massively disproportionate number.

I don't think Wikipedia is legitimate as a source of information either. My difficulty is that having seen the BBC and the Guardian caught out enough times for outright false information or highly biased reporting, or straight up not reporting on items in the the public interest which they can't spin and would rather we didn't know about - who on earth can we go to for reliable information?

This is nuanced.

I've volunteered with refugee integration programmes, several hours per week for several years. I met some really lovely people and I want the best for them. I did more than my assigned volunteer hours trying to help each person I was working with to work through their challenges.

It was really, really hard and this programme was for highly vetted families with kids, who were as genuine refugees as it's possible to be. The sheer scale of the resources required to partially integrate just one family was eye-opening to me. Some people can't even read and write in their own language let alone English.

I've also lived abroad in countries with a lot of, again, deserving people who would easily "pass" our refugee checks. But, again, the scale is simply enormous: it's hundreds of millions of people who wouldn't have to watch their children dying if they could just get to the UK. It's heartbreaking.

People who recognise my username from other threads might be surprised to know that I've done this because they probably think I'm a hateful bigoted RWer. But those experiences have combined to make me feel that a) refugee resettlement does not work on a mass scale due to the sheer number of resources needed, and b) it's infuriating when those limited resources get used on convicted rapists, drug dealers, murderers etc.