The situation with migrants and illegal immigration

[Gingermakesmesick]

What is the answer?

I would hate to be in the position of making the decision because I hate to think of how desperate the individuals concerned must be.

But I can also quite see that there simply isn't the physical room to allow all of them into the UK, or the resources.

What is the answer? Is there no answer?

TBH most of the asuylum seekers who want to come to the UK do not want to be put up in somebody's home

They want to work and earn the money to pay rent on their own homes
these people are educated and articulate - more so thanmany of the UKs unemployed

they want to do what they are trained to do, not live in limbo as the current government forces them

This is an important article:
www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/jul/08/in-the-spirit-of-the-kindertransport-we-want-to-extend-a-warm-welcome-to-syrias-refugees

Two key quotes:
"Last week I travelled on a minibus from north London with a group of elderly members of our synagogue to the Houses of Parliament to meet their local MP, Mike Freer, and discuss the refugee crisis in Syria.

Anyone looking at us would have seen a group of retired doctors, social workers, teachers and accountants, but the conversations inside that bus revealed an extraordinary gathering of people. As we journeyed they shared their own experiences and trauma of being child refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria, most of them coming to this country alone. Despite the time that had passed, their recollections of realising, as children, that there was something terrible and wrong happening in their home countries, were still raw."

and

"If the government in the 1930s had listened to the critics who said we didn’t have room, and we had enough problems caring for our own, then the entire group stood before the Houses of Parliament with me would not have survived. We should not forget that the Daily Express in its editorial on the issue on 19th June 1939 was less than charitable saying: “There is no room for any more refugees in this country.” But instead the Kindertransport and many other refugee programmes undertaken since are part of a proud British tradition of helping those in most need. It’s in that spirit that we call on our local council leaders, our constituency MPs and our prime minister to listen to many of those same faith institutions and civil society groups and work with them to expand the VPR scheme and offer sanctuary to some of the most vulnerable refugees who simply are not able to stay in a camp. We must act now."

Talkin: of course! But many refugees are willing to be put up for months or years, and to do work they're overqualified for. This was true of my grandparents, one of whom worked as a housemaid for her host family having trained as a teacher, and it's true today.

I fully agree that forcing destitution on asylum seekers is completely reprehensible. I think it's even worse that there is no way to apply for refugee status from the embassies of European countries inside troubled states. You have to get to the European country first. But without passports etc, you can't do this legally. There is a grotesque Kafkaesque official expectation that a family will fly out from Syria using passports as if going on holiday and declare themselves asylum seekers at Heathrow to passport control. So our policies are creating the conditions for people smuggling to thrive, and stripping refugees of all resources in the process (fees to the smugglers are exorbitant). And most perniciously of all, if your only way out is illegal, your legitimacy is damned from the outset.

A grim reminder of what is at stake

www.change.org/p/rt-hon-theresa-may-mp-no-more-drownings-immediate-sanctury-for-those-fleeing-from-war?recruiter=14039853&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=des-md-share_petition-no_msg

And a powerful poem too:
"No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.
You only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well.
Your neighbours running faster than you, your breath bloody in their throats
and the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body.
You only leave home when home won’t let you stay.
No one leaves home unless home chases you, fire under feet, hot blood in your belly
and even then you carry the anthem under your breath, only tearing up your passport
in airport toilets, sobbing
as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you would not be going back.
You have to understand,
no one would put their children in a boat unless the sea is safer than the land.
No one burns their palms under trains, beneath carriages.
No one spends days and nights in the gall bladder of a truck feeding on newspaper
unless the miles travelled mean something more than journey.
No one crawls under fences,
wants to be beaten, wants to be pitied.
No one chooses refugee camps or strip searches where your body is left aching,
or prison, because prison is safer than a city of fire,
and one prison guard is safer than fourteen men who look like your father.
No one could take it.
Could stomach it.
No one’s skin would be tough enough.
“Go home blacks”, “refugees”, “dirty immigrants”, “asylum seekers”.
“Sucking our country dry”.
“Niggers with their hands out”. “They smell strange”, “savage”.
“Messed up their own country and now they want to mess up ours?”
How do the words “dirty looks” roll off your back?
And maybe it’s because the blow is softer than a limb torn off.
Or the words are more tender than fourteen men between your legs.
Insults are easier to swallow than rubble, than bone, than your child’s body in pieces.
“I wanna go home.”
But home is the mouth of a shark.
Home is the barrel of a gun.
And no one would leave home unless home chases you to the shore.
Unless home told you to quicken your legs.
Leave your clothes behind. Crawl for the desert.
Wade for the oceans.
Drown. Save. Be hungry. Beg.
Forget pride, your survival is more important.
No one leaves home unless home is a sweaty voice in your ear, saying
“Leave. Run away from me now. I don’t know what I’ve become,
but I know that anywhere is safer than here.”"
— – Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth

The UK space we live in relative to similar sized economies, is small, and arguably with erosion getting smaller - but FOR YEARS it isn’t just inward migration increasing our population at a faster rate than ever before – it is the UK birth rate as well.

Aug 2013; ”Now we are 63.7m: UK had biggest population growth in Europe over past year”
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/now-we-are-637m-uk-had-biggest-population-growth-in-europe-over-past-year-8751929.html

”The UK's population has grown by more than 400,000 to 63.7 million, new official figures show.”

”The growth of 419,900 in the past year means the UK has had the biggest growth of any country in Europe in the year to 30 June 2013 and it is now the third largest EU nation behind Germany and France, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures.”

”France's population grew by 319,100 in the past year to 65,480,500 while Germany's population went up by 166,200 to 80,399,300, the ONS said.”

HomeHelpMeGawd ..... In the 1930’s the UK had a population around 53 million and clearly world wars either side of that decade took their toll, so there really is no comparison with ‘making room’ back then to now - when our little islands are already projected to be the most populated within the EU within decades.

Aug 2015; ”UK to be EU’s most populous country in just three decades, due to immigration”
www.rt.com/uk/313929-uk-immigration-eurostat-germany/

”If current immigration and birth rate patterns continue, the United Kingdom will overtake Germany to accommodate a population of over 75 million people by 2050, which will continue soaring, while the rest of Europe stabilizes. The projections have been published by the official EU body Eurostat.”

So why I totally get the demographic need for a larger, younger UK workforce to both thrive and support an ever older workforce when it comes their turn to retire, our demographic path is written, so with our population in 2015 at 64.6 million - it is THE OTHER EU countries that will need to import and give birth to a larger, younger workforce full of aspiration and drive.

Isitmebut: are you genuinely arguing that it was easier for the UK to absorb refugees while fighting World War Two than it is today? Please do let me know if that's your genuinely held belief, as we can then bring this to a halt, as it would mark you in my eyes as someone not worth engaging with.

Greece! Who were made bankrupt through capitalist EU involvement.

Um, Greece is bankrupt through its own financial mismanagement. It was allowed to get into such catastrophic debt via loans from the EU, a group it should never have been allowed to fudge its accounts in order to join, but Greece is the master of its own downfall.

while many millions of families could not put someone up, many other millions of families do have the resources to do this. But hardly anyone will.

WTAF? So anyone with a spare room or two should be forced to house a family of Syrians then??? I've read some utter drivel on MN over the years, but I think this might take the cake. I assume you'll be first in line to open your home to a refugee family then?

If Greece hadn't been so corrupt and inefficient, there would be far more money in the eu to help asylum seekers.

"we stayed and fought for our freedom and our country"

Really? Our experience was our forefathers got continually slaughtered, came back to nothing, laughed at by the war criminals who sent them and blamed for their poverty.

Juneau: who said anything about forced? I certainly didn't. The drivel you read is the drivel you project. I made observations about what was, in fact, possible for British people to do. I went on to comment that vanishingly few of us would, as you yourself quoted. And funnily enough, I did indeed start a discussion with my DP last night about opening our home to a refugee family. Three of my grandparents benefited from precisely this welcome when they fled the Nazis, and I feel an obligation to do the same. Many members of my family who were not so lucky perished in the death camps. This is not abstract or impersonal for me. It is not some interesting minor debate on Mumsnet. It is life, and death, and humanity, and what I and all of us mean by "never again".

Some people are selfish, but thankfully some people aren't. HomeHelp

WTAF? So anyone with a spare room or two should be forced to house a family of Syrians then??? I've read some utter drivel on MN over the years, but I think this might take the cake. I assume you'll be first in line to open your home to a refugee family then?

I have a good spare bedroom and would be happy to house somebody, I've even looked into it but can't find any info. Don't get me wrong, I would be very picky and probably wouldn't want a single man, or even a smoker. But I could happily take a mum and child, hopefully it would work out. I imagine the safeguarding these days would make this impossible and I am maybe a little naive but we often put strangers up for no cost so I think we could take somebody longer term.

I notice on the news an awful lot of people seem to be single men, I'm surprised nobody (Farage) hasn't suggested giving them all a couple of months basic training, arming them, giving logistical support and sending them back to Syria to try to liberate their country so it's safe for everyone and they can all go home.

My gran's family took in evacuees during WW2,two little boys from Glasgow who had never seen fruit before.

Lots of children thrived in their foster homes, lots suffered badly and were even abused.

I'm not sure any wholesale programme to accommodate refugees in private homes could work in today's world. Who would take the single men? All the appeals I've seen have said please don't send womens and kids stuff, we need men's clothes etc.

Of course most people would take a small child, but I think they make up a small minority of the total refugee demographic. And it's wide open to risk of abuse on both sides.

The percentage of refugees doesn't really matter, it's the number that counts.
That photograph doesn't show a woman holding a baby, it shows her holding onto something for bouyancy.
The reality is that people are desperate and you simply cannot blame them or reject them, well I can't.
So if we don't think we can accommodate them and maintain a good level of services and resources them we have to do something to make they NOT desperate to leave where they are coming from.
Political diplomacy and overseas aid are the key.
We (western Europe and the U.S.)need to stop interfering with other countries by imposing on them and start listening and then helping with what they need.

"We (western Europe and the U.S.)need to stop interfering with other countries by imposing on them and start listening and then helping with what they need."

While I'm sure we have some culpability, I think this is a bit unfair: Western Europe and the US are far from the only bad actors in the world. We have tried a ground war in Iraq, limited air strikes in Libya and non-military support only in Syria. No strategy has worked well, and there have been plenty of groups with contradictory requests in each case, arguing vehemently that we're doing the wrong thing and need to start listening to them and them alone.

These are decisions where there are no good answers, no right answers, and you will be haunted by the counterfactuals.

I'm guessing young single men are over-represented among refugees for two reasons:

• they're most at risk of being conscripted or executed
• they're most able to flee (stronger, fewer ties to hold them back, etc)

Homehelpmegawd
I've read your comments, I can see this is a pet topic of yours. I'm generally thinking your just spouting for the sake of it so......
You'll need to find somebody else to engage with

I have a good spare bedroom and would be happy to house somebody, I've even looked into it but can't find any info

Here you go, fakenamefor now www.praxis.org.uk/preventing-destitution-page-59.html

Took me about 20 seconds of googling and I'm sure they'd talk you through hosting issues such as safeguarding and who'd be suitable for you - there's even an application form on the site

Do let us know how you get on?

What a ridiculous thing to say mainkster!

This issue of offering homes to refugees is interesting.
I think we are far more protective of out privacy and home environments.
Around the 1940's (being used as a comparison) people were used to sharing accommodation, lots of families had rooms in a shared house.,housing was close quarters with doors open and neighbours freely walking into each other's homes, people took in lodgers to help,with costs, even sharing bedrooms.
We just don't live like that anymore. People live in isolation, 1 bed self contained flats are prolific.
2 bed facts come with an ensuite so you can't have to share a bathroom with you flat mate.
I just can't see us opening our homes however much we feel we would like to open our hearts.

The hypocritsoaf suit yourself :)

Thank you puzzle I have seen that site before but didn't look into it greatly because it seemed to just focus on London and I live rurally nowhere near London, maybe it's expanded now though. I'll have another look and see if I can find anything locally because I'm sure I can do something and don't have any money so my spare room could help, hopefully. I'll let you know how it works.

Well why tell someone who's passionate and engaged with a topic to fuck off? I don't get it.