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

@Creesla which country is less racist than the UK?

Oh look the race card! BINGO 💥

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?

This is utter nonsense. We are talking specifically about the asylum system in this country. People granted asylum have significantly lower rates of employment and earnings when employed than people born in the U.K. How on earth do you think importing vast numbers of people who will be a net drain on the economy going to help fund pensions and services for the elderly?

The levels of ignorance by the self-proclaimed virtuous elites on this issue never fails to astound me.

Yep.

More misinformed, emotional tripe.

A) Why is Britain’s birth rate so low? A massive reason is that people are putting off having children, or having fewer children than they would like, because they cannot afford it. Why can’t they afford it? Because they are spending far too much of their income on housing costs, because of our massive housing crisis. Why is our housing crisis so severe? Because we’re adding 700,000 people to our population a year through net migration without making anywhere near the additions to our housing stock needed to keep up. Mass immigration is making our housing crisis, and thus our birth rate crisis, worse.

B) How will adding populations who are disproportionately net takers, not net contributors, help Britain’s budgetary challenges at all? Simple answer - they won’t. They only make it worse - we end up with more and more people living off the labour of the productive few.

While our government deliberately chooses not to publish data on the financial contributions of different immigrant groups, Scandinavian countries do and we can easily extrapolate to our own situation. Denmark’s comprehensive data shows that immigrants from EU countries, the UK, US, Australia, Canada and NZ are, on average, net contributors to the Danish state over the course of their lifetime. Immigrants from non-western countries are, on average, net drains - the average immigrant from a non-western country will take far more from the Danish state than they contribute. In 2018, native Danes contributed a net 41 billion Danish krona (DKK), western immigrants contributed 7 billion DKK, while non-western immigrants drained 31 billion DKK. Tell me again how these people are going to pay for our retirements?

I have nothing against highly skilled migrants from any country who pay in more than they take out. But I will never forgive Boris Johnson’s government for choosing to import low paid care workers from developing countries, who will be eligible for ILR, UC and social housing within 5-10 years, and will then be heavily subsidised by the state for the rest of their lives. In a heavily redistributive society like Britain, importing poor, low paid, low skilled immigrants makes us all poorer. That is a fact. Johnson could have given care workers a small pay rise - but for the sake of a short-term saving, he instead decided to burden us with infinitely greater costs kicked down the road.

The thing is with importing more and more people to pay towards the existing older population is that it's a ponzi scheme. The new people are going to get older too, then what? Plus there's no affordable housing for the existing population. Young people (the people who are suffering the most in this) are left either homeless or stuck living with parents for ever. Unable to get a job either. No future. We're worrying more about people from abroad than our own youngsters.

How many incomers are actually paying tax as well? I'm not talking about the legal migrants who have proper jobs to come to, but the men sitting outside of the money laundering barbers and vape shops. These places are obviously adding to organised crime which costs the country, harms people and reduces tax income. Nobody seems to care about this situation. I also wonder how undocumented men are passing enhanced DBS checks to get work in care homes. An undocumented person who is unable to prove their identity has no business being here because we have no idea of their background or if they intend to cause harm.

I did answer the question.

Because we closed all safe routes to non Ukranians

So now the other option is far more dangerous.
The women and children will be moved to a safeR location (probably a crowded refugee camp on the border with Jordan or Lebanon (for example).

Then the men make the dangerous journey to full safety and send for the remaining family after.

Except “6% of the population being unoriginal
when naming their sons” is not a “core cultural change.”

Yikes on steroids. Prosecco Stormfront rears its head.

(Also is there ANY data supporting this? The high IR dating and marriage rates of some groups suggests otherwise.)

What about people in key roles that don’t happen to pay much? I would argue nurses are fundamentally net contributors even if not paid a lot.

Did you write that definition someone linked on here?

Even if we closed our borders tomorrow there would be no state pension / very limited state pension in the future.

Longer life expectancies, an ageing population and low and falling birth rates will see to that.

If the countries that they are travelling (alone) from are so dangerous, why do they often go back there on holiday?

I volunteered for a year teaching English to asylum seekers and it did not turn me into a liberal on immigration policy.

There were many people I got to know who had been through really harrowing circumstances through no fault of their own, often women and kids who'd left their husbands back home in civil wars, and who I absolutely think we should be helping out.

There were also people who, while very nice, openly admitted to me that they had come to the UK because Germany had not accepted their claims and it was known Britain was easier to claim asylum in.

I was also harassed by men I taught who thought young white British women were easy, and the response I got when I brought this up to the other people I taught with were along the lines of "well, it's not very nice for you, but he's had such a tough life..."

What I learned from that year is that we need to be very discerning with who we do and do not let into the country. You also can't and shouldn't take every story at face value - this isn't something I personally encountered but I'm aware that there's quite a few instances of Ethiopians pretending to be Eritrean for the purposes of gaining asylum in the UK, and discussing on tiktok etc how to successfully pass yourself off as Eritrean.

Sure, let's make it even more limited then by having more people who will claim it and won't pay much in 🙄

Then they should come in legally.

They are legal

Dogs are innocent of having evil thoughts, intentions, and of doing evil deeds. On the rare occasions when we hear about someone being mauled and killed by one or more dogs, those dogs will have either contracted an awful disease, such as a brain tumour, dementia, or even rabies; or will have been bred - probably from a long line of fighting dogs - to be a fighting/killing (in illegal dog fights etc) "machine". But even those dogs aren't evil, they don't plan it out, and decide whether it is going to be one bite or dozens. But of course, the ones that turn, will unfortunately have to be put to sleep.

When adults plan, and groom, and rape our children, they are the truly evil ones. However, after having served part of their sentence, some of them have been released far too early, and then, instead of being sent home to the land of their birth, they are allowed to return to not only the same town where they had lived and committed their despicable crimes, but to the same street, and indeed the same house. Imo that is not anywhere near an appropriate punishment for that type of horrendous crime, nor is it a deterrent to any other monsters who might also think that torturing children is just another form of entertainment

On the other hand the puppies may have been sold to ordinary people, who might not have realised how important it is to see the puppy with both it's mother and father, and, therefore, didn't realise that their very sweet and cute puppy, had some rougue genes that would eventually make themselves know - maybe at puberty. Of course, the other scenario, is the one where a possibly sound and healthy little puppy was very sadly bought by the evil type of "owners", who start training the poor dog as soon as they get it home...

So @MrMucker, domestic dogs are almost entirely dependant on us, 99.7% loyal to their families, and at about an equivalent age to a two year old human toddler. They are nearly always delighted to see their humans, and will make their human laugh every day! That is why some of us get much soppier over beloved dogs being mistreated than over strangers with bad reputations!

Edited to say that when I started this post I had shown a quote from @MrMucker, I don't know where it went!!

Not all of us want to volunteer. Your post comes across as a demand. Regardless of your 'good intentions.' I don't want to volunteer as much as I choose not to go to church.

Certainly not Spain. I lived there for 20years and I witnessed and experienced it first hand.