Volunteering with asylum seekers and refugees

[Lemniscate8]

There is so much said on MN about asylum seekers and refugees, and often it is speaking about them as a block, rather than by people who know any as individuals.

AIBU to suggest that some of you who currently feel fear and hostility have a go at some volunteering to get to know one or more individuals and see if your feelings change?

There are lots of ways to get involved in helping welcome a refugee to the country, and maybe more people extending more welcome will help with intergration, which seems to be one of the main concerns of some posters.

Many places have volunteers facilitating english conversation sessions, or literacy support. Many councils look for volunteers to support refugee and asylum seeker children in schools, you can ask your local council, or one of the main refugee organisations what volunteering opportunities are available in your area.

Also volunteering with any homeless charity is ineviatably going to bring you into contact with refugees, as so many are sleeping rough

You can find out about people first hand, rather than through the right wing press. Personal relationships can only help people understand each other better

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We cannot afford the obligations we have, and yet we are adding more people who will be massive drains on the system over the course of their lifetimes. This will ultimately undermine and lead to the failure of our welfare state - helped along the way by do gooders like you who tried to shut down all conversation about this problem because you felt it was ‘pernicious.’ I hope the moral righteousness keeps you warm in your eighties when there’s no state pension.

@NidaNearby

Well said!

👏

You cannot have porous borders and generous non-contributory benefits.

There are so many people on here who think they are morallly superior but are woefully ignorant on economic issues and think we can just increase taxes for whoever is earning more than them to solve all of life's problems.

Having a strong in-group preference is not a bad thing. Minority cultures in the UK have it in spades. It is also a core feature in most animals, especially mammals.

Why do you think it is a bad thing for the indigenous Europeans?

you didn't answer the question - presumably asylum seekers fleeing the countries where their lives are in danger, so the choice for them to is to die there or in the sea, with a slim chance of making it safely to the UK. I'd assume that women and children are in the same danger as men. Why men are coming here alone then? aren't they concerned about leaving their families there? presumably these women and children left behind will be prosecuted for being a family of a runner?

I'd imagine they realise that authorities would be more compassionate to children?

Or is this situation more nuanced than some people are willing to admit?

Given we're almost bankrupt as a country, I'd say it is far from pernicious.

What all of them? They’re all doctors and engineers are they?

@Blossomtoes immigration to the UK has risen from an average annual figure of just 7,800 between 1951 - 2001 to a figure almost 100 times that in recent years. Surely the rise of an analysis of “net contributors” is in response to this astonishing increase and the potentially related economic issues rather than anything “pernicious”?

You can say whatever you like. That doesn’t make it true.

As of the latest available data, the UK's national debt, measured as public sector net debt excluding public sector banks, was £2.87 trillion in June 2025, equivalent to approximately 96.3% of GDP.

In 2025/26, the UK is projected to spend £111.2 billion on servicing its national debt, equivalent to about 3.7% of GDP.

Your response is absurd.

Very well said. Our great grandchildren are going to be paying for the largess and unending benevolence of these people. They have absolutely no morale right to advocate for saddling unborn generations with yet more debt and giving their country away.

@BlossomtoesThe OBR predicts that UK debt could rise to 310% of GDP within 50 years based on current trends while government borrowing rose by £6.6bn to £20.7 bn in the last year alone. We are definitely on the road to bankruptcy unless things change.

Until 2006 my tax was repaying the debt for a war that ended nearly a decade before I was born. It’s how government spending works. It’s not support for immigrants that’s caused our economic woes - the national debt rose steadily through the austerity that was supposed to pay it down, then went through the roof with Covid. But you keep othering - it’s immigrants, it’s pensioners, it’s sick and disabled people. Who will you blame next?

The IMF are paying close attention, and can see the writing on the wall. We’re replaying the 1970s at this point - except we’re in a much worse state now. The question is not if, it’s when.

What on earth are you going on about? Try to read what is written, I said nothing about pensioners or disabled people or anybody else.

I was talking societally. It’s not all about you. Although it’s interesting that your personal focus is on immigrants when pensions cost many multiples more.

@BlossomtoesI haven’t seen anyone here blaming illegal immigration solely for our economic woes but the estimated £4- £8 bn annual cost
(and isn’t it terrible that the UK can’t even accurately calculate this figure?) sure isn’t helping. Let alone the impact on social cohesion.

It is all about me actually, when you're addressing me directly and putting words in my mouth.

I did no such thing. Never heard of or used the generic “you”?

Through years on all threads you are othering "rich and wealthy", whatever this means to you in terms on numbers. Incidentally this group funds all your good intentions. Your solution to all UK problems is to tax them more until they disappear.

Other people might choose to other someone else. I'm not saying if this is right or wrong, but you're the same as them.

You were replying to me directly and now you're back pedaling because you made an idiot of yourself.

That simply isn’t true. By many people’s standards I fall into the “rich and wealthy” category. I’m tired of seeing sections of the population blamed for the state this country is in while the politicians who got us here are let off the hook. Blame those who deserve it.

This is the most common fake news item tossed around about migration - Britain can't afford them. Britain can't afford not to have them! Britain has a very low birth rate and an ageing population that is set to double in the years ahead. Your younger population cannot afford to carry you in your 80s! It is that simple. What do you suggest happens?

I remember being so shocked by the blatant racism I witnessed in the UK as a 20 year. At that stage, I was working in care industry there and the way people from ethnic minority groups were spoken about by white English people was an unbelievable eyeopener for me. Britain is systemically racist, Nigel Farage was allowed to say unchallenged on national tv last year that Muslims had anti British values. It was like listening to a Nazi on German radio in the 1930s. The sense of social division, of hatred of whole groups, is horrendous. In Northern Ireland this month, unionists built a huge bonfire with a sculpture of migrants in a boat on top and they burned it down - to silence from a Labour UK Govt. People have migrated and travelled to new parts of the world since the very start of humanity, long before nationhood and borders. God knows the Brits certainly migrated, and took over half the globe! Migration isn't the problem, white racism is.

People have migrated and travelled to new parts of the world since the very start of humanity, long before nationhood and borders. God knows the Brits certainly migrated, and took over half the globe! Migration isn't the problem, white racism is.
whilst that may be true, previous immigrants demanded and received precisely nothing.
They arrived in new countries America, Australia with the clothes on their back and they built a life for themselves without putting their hand out and that’s the difference.
Even today you immigrate to Australia and you have no right to public funds until you’ve put into the pot for two years. They are looking to increase that to 5.