To think the RNLI are 100% in the right

[SanFranBear]

I've just seen this story on the BBC news homepage where the RNLI are being accused of acting as a taxi service for migrants trying to enter the UK on small boats from Europe.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8dejyg4l37o

The organisation and volunteers quite rightly have responded to say they make no apologies for saving lives at sea and that their work has no political motivation.

Damn straight - one of the volunteers further down the article explains the profound impact he feels of encountering people struggling in our waters.

It makes me wonder what critics of the service expect them to do - just sail away, leaving the people to die? Pick them up and cross the channel to dump them back 'where they came from'?

What is wrong with them? Where is their compassion? Regardless of your thoughts on immigration, this is so cold and inhuman....

Why is the French government allowing these people to "set sail" from France, knowing that it is dangerous?

I find it frustrating that our RNLI volunteers are having to put themselves at risk for people who shouldn’t even be there, but also I fully understand why they wouldn’t leave people who are in trouble, regardless of who those people are or where they came from.

I suppose I feel very conflicted about it.

Thank you for your great explanation.

But we are in the UK, so how is EU guidance relevant to us now?

Your perception of asylum seekers being showered with freebies is false. They get housed in pretty awful conditions, can't choose where they live, and will get the princely sum of £49.18 per week for food, clothes and toiletries. If your accommodation provides meals, that goes down to £9.95. No phones.

Really we should let asylum seekers work, it would make much more sense, and would be massively helpful in areas where we are chronically short of workers such as the hospitality and care sectors.

The RNLI are a wonderful organisation and thank God their volunteers are wonderful, compassionate people who don’t discriminate about who they rescue. They’d even rescue Farage, despite him being an odious cunt who quite frankly belongs in the sea.

It doesn’t matter what you feel about immigration. Leaving people to drown would be despicable.

Suggestions that the RNLI should take asylum seekers back to France are ridiculous. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue, states who have picked people up from the sea cannot taken them to another state unless that country agrees. If one of our boats entered another country's territorial waters, it could be considered as "prejudicial to the peace" if it loads or unloads people contrary to the relevant country's immigration law. We don't have any agreement with France allowing this.

In any event, surely it's in everyone's interests for RNLI boats to return to base as quickly as possible rather than spending hours flogging off to France and back? We need them to be available here, not stuck in Calais.

As someone who believes the UK needs a very serious conversation about migration to its shores, I completely agree with you and the RLNI. They have one job, save lives at sea. This mission is completely apolitical. Sort the rest out when everyone is safely ashore

As someone who believes the UK needs a very serious conversation about migration to its shores, I completely agree with you and the RLNI. They have one job, save lives at sea. This mission is completely apolitical. Sort the rest out when everyone is safely ashore

We all live in the real world. Most of us if in the UK have asylum hotels in our towns. The one in mine really was a 4-star hotel previously probably you’ll tell me I’m lying. Keep denying and calling people idiots but fewer and fewer are believing the lines, as they see differently with their own eyes.

I am sure it is just a given in any maritime organization that if someone is at trouble at sea you go to help, regardless of race, politics or any affiliation. And people say they support Reform and its odious head. It beggars belief.

'Previously' being the operative word.

I've been inside these 'luxury hotels' where asylum seekers live. They are run down, often infested with vermin, and the food if provided is very basic. And as PP said, if it is, the money for essentials people are given is drastically reduced as to be almost worthless.

But you keep believing what GB News and Nigel Farage tell you. Or, here's a better idea, do some good and volunteer for a refugee charity and find out for yourself what life is like for these people. See where and how they live. Go on, dare you.

I live in a large village - 6000 people. We have two HMO's that house asylum seekers that I wouldn't house a rat in. No 4 star hotel. That's also the real world. And I would lay bets that there is a good reason why the owner of a 4 star hotel would rather have a government contract to lease it than depend on passing tourists. One third of the hospitality sector (including hotels) is operating at a loss, places are closing and many struggle to make even a small profit. Hotels are going bust across the country. Why would they not want a guaranteed income?

Why would I do that? I have a job and a family, charity begins at home. As you seem so invested then you crack on and do so.

If the hotels are now hovels whose fault is that? As they weren’t before these people moved in. Serious brainwashed delusion no more or less.

Why they’d let them out is blatantly obvious for money. That doesn’t make it right.

But if they have not been vetted and their asylum claim looked in to, how would they be able to work in the care sector?

I saw this on the lunchtime news. I may have missed it, but who exactly is accusing them of being an immigrant taxi service, just vague "social media"? Came across as a fund raising pr exercise by the BBC imo.

I think the French might say ‘non’.

I think it’s tied to a TV release, not sure why the BBC ties it up with a news type article when there isn’t anything new. The quoted line was from 2021.

The bbc link in the OP says social media, including Nigel Farage. Came across to me as the RNLI firmly rebutting those cynically trying to politicise them.

Because they want rid of them. They pay lip-service to trying to stop them. Police half-heartedly wandering around, supposedly stopping boats setting off. But basically these people are costing them money, and if they're happy to risk their lives to be another country's problem, France won't complain!

Therein lies the problem. We have people who are capable of working who can only work illegally because the system for assessing asylum claims isn’t fit for purpose. I don’t recall all this outrage against Ukrainian refugees. But I personally know people who were shot at as they left Syria. It’s like people blaming Jewish families from fleeing Poland and Hungary during the war. I despair.

@Internaut that is the opposite of what an asylum hotel worker has recently been saying. I don't suppose any of us know the actual truth.

I too have a job and family. I also volunteer with two refugee charities so yes, you could say I'm invested and I have indeed cracked on and done so.

The hotels - and as PPs have said, asylum seekers are usually housed in HMOs not hotels anyway - are run down before they move in. Many years ago they might have been the luxurious hotels you and Nigel Farage imagine, but they haven't been for quite some time. Owners find they can make more money out of asylum seekers than it would cost to refurbish the hotel to a suitable standard for guests. Did you imagine asylum seekers are being moved into four star boutique boltholes then trashing them? Is that what you thought?

I see these people and places almost every day. How many have you seen personally? Spoken to? Listened when they told you about their family members being raped in front of them or their homes burned? Or have you just listened to what the right wing media and Reform tell you? But hey, I'm the brainwashed one, aren't I.

Clearly charity ends at home for some.

Some people manage to have jobs and families and a bit of compassion for others. But I guess not everyone has the capacity to look beyond their own self interest.