AIBU to feel helpless about a large asylum camp in our village?

[putupwhatever]

My village has been chosen for a 1500 open asylum camp for single men. It will be an open camp (as the men haven't done anything wrong so aren't detained.)

The thing is the village only has 700 people and it is pretty isolated. it's about 10 miles to the nearest city and you can walk to another small village. There is a playpark, a pub and a primary school.

It has to go through planning, but the government have changed the planning laws so that they grant themselves planning and you can't see it as it is deemed sensitive. So they will just grant themselves planning and you can't oppose it without a judicial review--by which time it will probably be already open.

They want to reduce the number of people in hotels. But am AIBU to think that this puts the burden of sorting these issues out on one tiny community? Feels like we are collateral damage to be honest. The community will be outnumbered 2 to 1 and it feels too much. There is nothing for them to do or places to go. Also the fact that it is all single men put in one massive place with no money or means or anything to do is going to lead to problems

Apparently the camps cost £10 less a night than the hotels. But they don't count the set up costs which are astronomical (the one in Essex was £47 million to set up). So it seems like it's not not even cheaper than the problem it is trying to solve but much more expensive.

AIBU to feel a bit helpless? It seems so unfair but there is nothing I can do. We wouldn't be able to move from the village anyway as no one would buy a house here.

We should have safe and legal routes, house people properly, and process their claims quickly so that if they're allowed to stay they can get into work and become part of their new community.

I don't think makes sense is increasing the population of a village of 700 people by another 1,500 overnight. That's not fair on anyone. A village that size does not have the infrastructure to cope. People will need GPs, dentists, schools, public transport and other support. Its not fair to put all that pressure on one little village.

🙄

How on earth can you know what 'many' of them think?

Yes, this. People seeking asylum should be allowed to work. I'm sure most people in this situation want to.

I think they mean an immigration detention centre

My f was career RAF and while he had his faults, unacceptable behaviour towards women and girls, was never an issue from him or any of his team.

What absolute,utter horseshit.

There are not enough houses for those who have been waiting for years on the council list! Understandably they are resentful when migrants are housed first.
They won’t all work either, which is another benefits burden. There are plenty of able people in the U.K. who don’t work. Then those granted asylum will be bringing their wives and children over. They will want schools and healthcare. There are already too many who come here legally. How do you propose we deal with these issues?

turn they back around to where they came from! They were perfectly safe in France!!!

Which are concentration camps….

I waa reading earlier about the old RAF Bicester site being used to home circa 1250 single male asylum seeker.

Apparently most of the liberal locals were quite vocal about welcoming asylum seekers with open arms to the uk, and have now changed their stance now they are going to be housed locally 🤷
Got what they wanted then ✔️

This isn’t true. We have single sex spaces because as a society we have long acknowledged men are a danger to women. There is a minority of the population, green voters and the progressive left, who have decided we no longer need single sex spaces as it’s the only way they can make gender ideology work. but the majority of British people reject this.

We also recognize that there are circumstances which create risk, such as when unaccompanied children are with adults who are not their parents, such as when they are at scouts etc. That is why we create extra safeguarding in n these situations.

A circumstance which rather obviously creates extra risk is moving large numbers of young men, with no families with them, and who have no occupation, into a community. I think most people would be concerned by this even if all the young men were British born men. You’d expect it to cause significant problems.

Add in the fact that they are men from different cultures, with different attitudes to women and possible trauma.

In fact I see it the opposite to you. The fact they are asylum seekers means there is a cohort of people who refuse to accept asylum seekers in such concentrations will cause problems, even when they inevitably do. Those people probably wouldn’t be rushing to denial if they were white British working class men.

Of course they can’t work until their claims are processed. Would you want an unknown with possibly a criminal past working for you, especially in the care sector? Many are working illegally while waiting for their claims to be dealt with.

If they were seeking asylum they'd already have stopped in the numerous safe countries they travelled through or stayed in France a safe country.

They are economic migrants.

France gives them tents in a field or tents in a hanger we give them hotels.

Stop the benefits and being housed, clothed, fed, mobile phones, access straight away to our NHS dentist and doctors, pocket money....that is why they are coming.

It is mad, utterly mad.

No they aren't. A concentration camp is inhumane and with no legal reasoning. Immigration detention centres are for those people who are illegal aliens.

My friend and her family moved to England from South Africa because of how dangerous it was getting there. She said she's heartbroken and scared now that they're coming over here, unvetted. Listening to her say how she's worried for her daughter, knowing what she escaped from is now here, it's such an awful situation. I'd hate to be in your shoes, OP. I already avoid a couple of streets in my little town as there's something in the way they stare at me that makes me feel unsafe. Probably because it's uncommon for the average person to watch someone the entire length of the street.
For anyone about to cry about this sounding racist, I couldn't care less about colour, it's behaviour and hearing first hand about what she's witnessed and why she came over here to get out of it.

The ratio is ridiculous and definitely should be something the powers involved look at and decide against. Also there needs to more accessible than a pub, park and shop.

I agree that it is worrying OP. I live in a small town on the outskirts of Bolton, we have had a disproportionate amount asylum seekers in a relatively small town, and over 800 local terraced houses have been turned into HMOs, largely housing asylum seekers. I won’t tar them all with the same brush but most are single men, working in vape shops etc. our area has turned into a shit hole in the past 5 years. It’s depressing and there has been an uproar in our town.

They can be clean, housed humanely whilst awaiting their removal

You do know that for many people claiming asylum this would be an impossible ask? Here's an example: my grandfather. When he arrived in the UK as an unaccompanied teenager in 1939 he had precious little paperwork on him. Soon after he was interned in a camp on the Isle of Man for two years because, essentially, he couldn't prove he wasn't an undercover Nazi. He couldn't prove he was not a criminal, or even that he was Jewish. What could he do, ring Hitler and ask for a letter of recommendation?

I dont suppose the residents of the Isle of Man were that keen on having hundreds of German men imposed on them. Nor were the local women back in London where my gran was bullied to the extent that she didnt dare use air raid shelters.

These problems aren't new, but they are real and need solving. It isn't necessary to lose our critical faculties or our humanity in doing so, though.

Just in regards to timescales it does take time to gather evidence to investigate the reasons why they are claiming asylum. This can include liaising with other countries, doctor/medical records, reports etc
you also don’t want to make the ‘yes’ claims too speedy as once granted they are eligible for benefits so if people think it’s a quick grant then it becomes more attractive a prospect to continue on to the UK.

To get an idea of whether immigrant young men are more likely to rape one needs to have % of offending against numbers

We do indeed, @Grammarnut, but unfortunately stats concerning the ethnicity of offenders aren't collected reliably if at all

We do however know that women's rights are almost non-existent in several of the countries known to be the origin of asylum seekers - worse, that this lack of rights is considered culturally acceptable - so a degree of caution does seem sensible

Tell that to ICE/Trump….

👏spot on!

Plus the Home Office helping them too...

We aren't in the USA. India does this as well. Has no asylum or refugee laws and decides who they want or don't want to keep.