Labour's new policies for asylum seekers

[frommyheadtomyfeet]

Are rumoured to follow Denmark's, which include the seizure of valuables from people arriving here to pay their accommodation costs.

Is anyone else disgusted by this?! How will it work, they can take people's jewellery, phones etc., and leave them with nothing? What sort of message does that send?

Yusuf has apparently said today that Reform would be voting against the government on this issue.

I'm surprised at that, but stand corrected if so.

@matresense out of interest, do you know what is the population figure as per water industry calculations? I ask because the big supermarkets were pushing back against official census figures back in the early 2000s. According to them, we were already at somewhere near 80 million, a figure we still haven't officially reached in 2025.

FWIW, I think we're probably between 5-10 million illegals, although that figure is probably lower now that 5.7 million EU nationals gained official status to stay from the EU after Brexit.

I've seen estimates of between 700000 and 900000 illegal residents of UK along with warnings that figures are hard to estimate. I've no idea myself and haven't found any convincing arguments for higher or lower figures.

I'm not sure what you mean about EU nationals gaining settled status. They were never illegal while we were in the EU.

Yes. I know Italy were (and possibly still are) giving citizenship after a few years and then waving them off UK-wards. Albania had an amnesty of prisoners, gave them passports and then waved goodbye too. That is why lots of asylum seekers throw away their passports; they need them to travel through Europe but then want to appear as if they haven’t been in Western Europe for years.

Before Brexit there was the threat of Turkey being admitted to the EU and literally millions of people being able to come from there (and through there) legally.

It would have been a possibility although, just like here, it takes a good few years for EU countries to grant citizenship. If refugees to Ireland get Irish citizenship they would be able to come to the UK for work (and vice versa).

There is a thing called an exit tax. England is in the minority - it’s a bit insane we don’t tax people who have assets here but are registered as overseas residents in an equitable way to those who are residents.

it’s quite unpatriotic really to think that some don’t want to pay a fair tax, and would think that an extra 1-2 % on wealth over £10m isn’t that burdensome. The alternative is what too - tax us more? Tax business more? Reduce the state more (if that’s even possible - it’s been cut to the bone)… reduce pensions, reduce support for disabled/ sick, reduce support for young people..? I mean so much has already been cut - and cutting more just will increase costs (people will get sicker = more strain on NHS as one example). There isn’t another way apart from tax (sizeable £10m + wealth). All this brouhaha about migrants … even if agreed with the nonsense coming out of reform / government atm, it won’t actually bring in the money we desperately need.

I recently sold some jewellery my grandmother gave me because I needed the money. It never occurred to me to ask the government to just give the money to me - so why should immigrants get special treatment? If they have money/valuables they should pay their own way as far as possible.

Are you suggesting migrants should be encouraged to work if they can?

The top 1% pay 33% of all tax. So there's a limit eventually as to how much you can make those pips squeak. Particularly as they won't be costing the state much presumably re benefits and services compared to most people. There aren't really that many income millionaires either.

Only if they obtain the legal right to stay here.

Sorry to hear you’ve fallen on hard times firstly - hope things are getting better for you.

isn’t this a bit fighting amoungst ourselves.? Isn’t the bigger question - where is all the money that business, that workers, that we all create actually going? When take example of our train networks as one case study - so many networks are owned by overseas rail networks. The profits go to the owners and profits are not reinvested back into our train networks. Prices rise and on and on. Huge companies - pensions funds, investment funds own our businesses, our properties, even our banks. The shareholders benefit from profits. Not us. It’s mad that the gap btw the poorest and the richest in UK is now at 19th century levels…this gap is increasingly every year. The wealthiest can’t spend their money so they invest it in assets or funds. And this wealth expands and expands, gobbling up more and more of our assets - stuff that was in public hands over past 20 years has gone into private hands. All the while we normal people become poorer as wages aren’t increasing but everything else is. We can blame the 0.001% of the population who arrive here via precarious means, but it’s like going after someone who owes you 10p rather than someone who owes you £1,000,000. Immigrants aren’t at the heart of what’s going wrong - it’s the unfair distribution of our wealth, that we create through working, that businesse’s create etc.

They were if they didn't find work within 3 months. We never policed the rules properly and it ended up being a free for all. We let everyone in and sent no-one back. 5.7 million people from Europe applied for settled status. That is an incredible number, given how many supposedly upped sticks and went back home after Brexit.

Totally correct - but everyone is benefiting for public services, tax pays for our roads, our schools, our waste collection and on and on. The poorest to the wealthiest all benefit from these things. Talking of squeezing pips - this is the rub, the people of this country can’t (and I’m including buisnesses too), afford their pips to be squeezed anymore and nor can public services. If we don’t as a nation have money to spend our economy falters - and it’s a contributing factor to high street decline for example too. Realistically there is no other answer bar - those with £10m + to pay 1-2 % more. Considering the interests on assets or wealth on £10m would more than cover this, it’s a small yet patriotic thing to do. There are many millionaires who have formed a campaign saying they want to pay more tax - hopefully it’s a bit of a no brainer :)

But you're assuming that this is all about money. It's not. Open any newspaper in any given day and you will find yet another headline about a violent rape or murder committed by an asylum seeker. And no, not all asylum seekers are bad, but one such crime is one too many.

We need to reduce spending. Cut our coat to suit our cloth. Rather than tax rises to pay for things like payrises for already well paid public sector workers. Stop net zero ruining manufacturing.

Otherwise Labour kill the golden goose if it hasn't already been killed. The problem with tax rises for patriotism is that no one believes Labour are in any way patriotic.

So perhaps if we sped up the time taken to get legal right to remain we'd save a lot of money. Instead of holding people in semi-captivity at great expense and slowly removing all their remaining jewelry.

What will happen is that there will be significantly more approvals so that the waiting list reduces. But no corresponding deportations. We just end up with more mouths to feed with a legal right to stay here.

I get it. But then we could apply same logic to Brits who travel and create new lives abroad who commit crimes - heinous crimes. Does that mean no Brits should then be allowed to take up residence abroad or travel abroad.?

I find it harsh to believe that a migrant would first go to Italy and jump through their hoops to gain citizenship in some kind of long game to reach the UK. Where they'd have to start again.

Although this would be a good case for Europe wide co-operation to share biometrics to prevent this kind of unlikely scam working.

Hyperbolic much? You go to great pains to separate fact from fiction and correct posters on getting it wrong, yet jump to exaggerated language on " captivity" and " ripping jewels off". Seems like you might want to correct yourself here...

We'd have the same number of mouths to feed but they'd be able to work in order to pay for the food. And some of them would be working in jobs that now wouldn't need others to arrive on visas.

But we won't be able to kick them out.

You're also encouraging people here in order to work. Which is probably not a great idea.

Deliberate hyperbole.

For a bit of political theatre