WTAF? Asylum seekers to be detained across the UK in shock Rwanda operation

[Tenmus]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/28/home-office-to-detain-asylum-seekers-across-uk-in-shock-rwanda-operation

"The Home Office will launch a surprise operation to detain asylum seekers across the UK on Monday in preparation for deportation to Rwanda, weeks earlier than expected, the Guardian understands.
Officials plan to hold refugees who turn up for routine meetings at immigration service offices and will also pick people up nationwide in a two-week exercise.

They will be immediately transferred to detention centres, which have already been prepared for the operation, and held to be put on later flights to Rwanda. Others identified for these flights are already being held."

I am actually shocked by this. A cruel, inhumane action with terrible optics and a colossal waste of money.

I don't think there's any resources to "track them down".

Our chief weapon is surprise, surprise and fear, fear and surprise. Our two weapons are fear and surprise, and ruthless efficiency. Our three weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical dedication to demonising those less fortunate than us....

Plan for asylum seekers.

People will just disappear.

I saw on the BBC that refugees are trying Ireland now, and the Irish Prime Minister is pissed off. (I can't spell the Irish word for PM, sorry!).

There must be a better way than this. But what?

I'm in favour of refuge for people who genuinely need it, and immigration for people who are in a key worker profession that the UK needs such as nurses.

This is disgusting.

Amongst those men sent will be hundreds of son's who did nothing more than try and find a peaceful country to live in.

They are being sent to a place still reeling from the genocide of 1 million people.

France have offered many times to host a processing centre on their side of the Channel, it could be built for the price of deporting one person to Rwanda.

The Tories keep refusing the offer because it would take away the only real campaign issue they have left, trying to look tough on immigration.

The solution is to reopen legal routes to claiming asylum and processing claims more quickly, i.e. having a basic level of competence in managing your own borders, like most countries do.

we should be processing them here, and allowing any that are awarded refugee status to remain, and returning any that are not.

What are we going to do without refugees in our society? Almost every school I am aware of relies on refugees to teach maths, for example, so without them who is going to fill the maths teacher vacancies?

If you have a child in school lucky enough to be getting maths lessons from a specialist maths teacher, this will most likely be because there are refugees teaching maths in your school, and so there are enough maths teachers to go round.

Other subjects too, of course, but maths is the most extreme one that I know of...

Grant them asylum? Set up a clear route for them so they don't have to risk their lives at sea. Seems sensible.
Again. Yours?

And I have absolutely no confidence in the government to take responsibility for the welfare of deportees. They are supposed to do that already, but don't, and just among my students there have been awful consequences of this failure by the home office to do basic statutory safe guarding

First of all, stop getting involved in wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) and have a plan in place to stop or minimise new displacement of people, e.g diplomacy around the world, not funding or sending weapons (Israel) but the horse has bolted on that so provide proper processing so that genuine asylum claims are processed and people recruited to fill the jobs Brits don't want to do.
Before you say "we are full" people didn't say that for Ukrainians did they?

The planes to Rwanda is nothing but willy waving. It’s just a very visible symbol of power. It has and will cost a fortune, much more that having people here in hotels but no one wants that kind of logic they just want them foreigners out.

Imagine how historians will write about this and children will learn about it in schools in 100, 150, 200 years. They'll wonder why citizens accepted it. They'll wonder why we kept voting for these arseholes. I'm ashamed to be British right now.

France is a safe country, they do not need to risk their lives crossing the Channel. Treat them the same as the French and they'll stop coming, it's that simple. The people dishing out mobile phones and 4 star hotels, or shouting for it, have blood on their hands.

My plan is this:

Open safe routes for people to claim asylum from their own countries.

Put money into speeding up processing claims.

Allow asylum seekers to work while they are waiting for their claims to be processed.

If they are found to have a claim, support them into work etc.

If not, return them to their home country.

Simple.

Im wondering what the view will be when the inevitable influx of people seeking asylum from Palestine/Israel appears, given the high level of support that is in place for that population.

I think it will be like when Ukrainians came here, welcome and open arms to them, but not to others.

I agree with others on the thread, process people's claims, invest in people coming here, fill the millions of job vacancies we have.

How is anyone surprised by this? Surely it was obvious this would happen when the awful Rwanda plan was legalised.

So vans will be driving round asylum seeker spotting like the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?
It is not enough for the tories that the UK is now an international joke we will now be the face of cruelty. If only we could get Rishi and his abhorrent cronies on the plane instead.
I heard ryanair said they will provide flights to rwanda for the immigrants so hopefully they will lose a lot of business if they do.

I would vote for this! Will you be standing in the General Election?

I've said I'm not opposed to Rwanda. Most methods of processing people in France or the UK are overwhelmed by numbers and by people destroying their papers so no one knows who they are or where they come from making it very difficult to sort true asylum seekers from economic migrants.

But why are they all so desperate to live in the UK rather than Europe? I really don't understand why the UK is the holy grail. What's so bad about France, Germany, etc that people are willing to risk their lives to get out?

French police bulldozed tents, and poured cold water on people's belongings in the middle of winter. My friend was working for a refugee charity and was horrified by the cruelty she saw.

We should be judged by how we treat our most vulnerable. It could be me or my children, but for an accident of birth.

This gets answered on every single thread about asylum seekers! The answer is surely really obvious, firstly a lot of them have family already in this country. If you were leaving a warzone or torture, would you rather go to a country where you know absolutely nobody, or somewhere where you have a relative(s) or friend(s)? And secondly the English language is the other obvious answer. Would you rather go somewhere you speak some of the language or somewhere where you speak not even one word of the language? English is taught and learned much more widely than other European languages.

The majority of those seeking asylum DO stay in mainland Europe. France and Germany both have far more asylum seekers than we do, by any metric (per capita or by land area etc) that you wish to use.

The way people talk you'd think that no-one stays in the other safe countries. The UK is fortunate not to have a land border with Europe, or we'd have far more.

And of course if geography was different and we WERE the first safe country that people arrived in, you can bet your life that Brits wouldn't just shrug and say 'fair enough'. The populace and the government would be demanding that other countries took their share.

If I was a refugee I'd probably go to a country where I spoke the language, if I could. Ideally if I had relatives in a country who were willing to host me or help me get a job I might try and go there.
More people learn English at school in more countries than say Greek or Turkish which might help make UK more attractive, especially if they already have an uncle or something here who has offered help when they have lost everything.

There are already millions of Palestinian refugees in the surrounding countries. They don’t tend to come to Europe but stay in Syria, Jordan etc as they have done for decades. I know plenty of Palestinians in Europe but they tend to be educated people who came here on education and work visas before settling, rather than as refugees.