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

nasty sarky response;
why so horrible? this is a forum
for mutual support after all?

From my experience coming across asylum seekers through healthcare some are absolutely extaordinary and lovely people, very unassuming and embarrassingly grateful for help.
And others I could have cheerfully throttled and had a clear view that the UK had limitless money for benefits and healthcare.

No they're not all doctors (though many are healthcare professionals), bit many work in care, construction - jobs were we have massive labour shortages in the UK. That's why some of the new policies on care visas lead to many care homes saying the will struggle because the majority of their workforce are immigrants.

If people are volunteering with any of the groups you mention they would know that the system is being held up by immigrants working in those fields so they are unlikely to be the people on MN complaining about immigrants.

nope. Guarantee that the Venn diagram of people complaining about immigrants and people who do fuck all for society will be almost a perfect overlap.

Absolutely this ^

Yabu to assume people with any limited free time want to spend it coaching others to "open their mind" rather than spend precious time with their own kids, pursuing their own charity goals and interests. It comes across a bit patronising and white saviour.

Yes sure they are all extraordinary and lovely people, lets face it most lovely people leave their wife's and families behind in dangerous countries and dump their ID on the way here.

How many of these extraordinary and lovely young fighting age men who are in the majority, who have little prospects of getting a partner or sexual desires met for months on end are going to say yes its fine. How many young british women are queing up to date these men when they get frustrated?

Should be all be telling our daughters OP, that all these immigrants in large groups on my street corner are wonderful and they should be chatting to them and volunteering to make sure they are okay.

What about the ones that keep stealing from where I work or harassing people and following them around? and fuck off with the wing press, I don't need that to see exactly what is happening within my own community and what is being covered up and not reported.

Do keep polishing your self awarded halo....

I would rather help animals and wildlife. Please don't tell anyone who to volunteer for.

YABU. I don’t think people with racist, xenophobic attitudes should be encouraged to volunteer with the most vulnerable people in society. The last thing a traumatised refugee needs is to be ‘supported’ by somebody who feels fear and hostility towards them and is probably just waiting for something to validate their point of view and catch the refugee out. If I was a refugee I would want to be supported by a volunteer who was open-minded, empathetic and who had a genuine want to help, not by somebody who saw me as a number, was fearful and hostile towards me and was doing it simply because somebody on Mumsnet suggested it would be a way for them to achieve personal growth.

Facilitating and indeed encouraging economic migrants is not quite the virtue signalling win you think it is.

In some regards the OP is part of the problem.

I’d happily volunteer to work with women and child refugees and asylum seekers……….

I get where you're coming from, OP, but honestly, the people who thrive on promoting hatred are never going to put themselves forward to volunteer with asylum seekers or refugees. You are mistaken in thinking that they are reasonable people who could actually learn something from the experience.

I won’t be volunteering in this field thank you OP. My area of London has long had a large asylum seeker population and for years I worked across many local schools supporting the children of refugees and other newly arrived immigrants; some of what I’ve witnessed would be shocking to people in less impacted areas of the country. To be honest, I and most of my former colleagues in education have developed compassion fatigue over the years, to the point that I am now relocating from this area as community relations have deteriorated to the point that things feel hopeless.

Most of the refugee children were perfectly lovely (though some were deeply traumatised and supporting them through massive social and cultural barriers was often a huge challenge). But the wider families were often highly resistant to any kind of support from those outside their clan or culture, had no real interest in integrating (and had no real need to integrate as they tended to join large existing cultural networks and everything was translated for them into community languages), frequently had fundamentalist religious views and had little curiosity about British culture other than to extract what economic support they could from the system. There were huge cultural tensions emerging in the ‘melting pot’ of the schools that I worked in, and at times teaching there was like being a UN negotiator. I know that the situation varies hugely across the country, but the people are worked with were definitely not health professionals and engineers.

I still volunteer for local youth groups and a couple of small charities where I feel the effort I put in is genuinely appreciated and the positive impact is more obvious, but my days as a ‘do gooder’ in this area are definitely over.

The problem with your post is- it's extremely patronising.

You aren't ever going to win hearts and minds by patronising people or talking down to them.

And definitely not by trying to prove you are right.

I can't volunteer because I work and have young kids. I find it difficult to even visit my own mother on occasions never mind volunteering in spare time I don't have.

But i dont think I'm your target group anyway. As I don't have anything against them.

Just found your posts very patronising.

I agree with this.

I agree with this.

The people with negative attitudes towards asylum seekers/refugees are either:

1 (more likely) sitting at home and moaning from their armchairs

2 (less likely but still possible) volunteering for causes that better align with their natural sympathies - though hopefully not Reform

Best to leave them to do one of the above. They aren't a good fit for volunteering at Refuweegee, etc.

A lot of people are becoming increasingly against the current system we have for refugees because the hard truth is that you have to be a fairly high earner (~£41k on average IIRC) to be a net contributor and most refugees will never become net contributors. It's unrealistic to keep importing people in this way however nice they are.

Also, you seem to be suggesting that people granted asylum are saving some industries (presumably the care industry?) from collapse. This isn't true in my experience as most of the people I know who work in care have come via the visa route. Also, we have enough British people to fill those roles and there is something very wrong with the pay in that sector and the benefits system if British people keep turning down those roles.

I have known lots of very nice asylum seekers and people who have been granted asylum, but I think with my head not my heart.

Shall I match your patronising attitude OP and suggest that you study economics and tax and see if you still feel the same?

🙌🏾

Just a thank you to the earlier poster who mentioned Refugees at Home, I’ve had a look and dp and I are having first conversations about whether we could do this.

They're not allowed to. Or at least not until/unless they're finally granted leave to remain.

OP a huge part of the integration has to come via understanding our laws though and I'm not equipped to delve into cultural or religious issues on this to unpick ,untangle and explain our values.
Then they also have to want to integrate and that usually comes from very small numbers of people simply not wanting to be lonely again they are coming in large gangs so why would they want too ?

You missed off 3. People who live in communities that are facing and experiencing huge negative affects from unmitigated housing of large groups of unfettered immigrants mainly young men, where even those in charge have zero knowledge of their history or criminal past.

I don’t want men coming into the country.

In the UK a refugee isn’t one until found legally so under UK refugee law which is is primarily based on the 1951 Refugee Convention and incorporates it into domestic legislation.
So someone homeless who doesn’t have a UK passport isn’t automatically a refugee. They may well be in need but also have no legal basis to be in the Uk.
They could be an asylum seeker. But that’s different from a refugee