Asylum seekers and immigrants.

[doormat]

Carrying on from benefits-unfit parents thread.

Any views on this subject anyone????

There's a very good reason why people come to Britain - they speak English! I am definitely on the liberal side of this argument - I can't help imagining if I were in a country like the ones the asylum seekers come from - wouldn't I want a better life for my boy?

Actually, I have a scheme, which is that all asylum seekers should go to the UN, have their cases examined, and then each country that takes asylum seekers be given a quota, thereby getting rid of the unfairness of some countries refusing to take any, and also stopping the human smuggling racket that seems to have been going on.

beetroot i didn`t say every albanian is agressive i have nothing against anybody from any country i was just telling what happened

At last - a thread where I won't come across as a right wing cow. I have no problem with the vast majority of asylum seekers. I don't think the problem is anywhere near as bad as the Express and Mail make it out to be, and as a Londoner I have never heard anybody refer to my home as Londonistan.

I do have an isse with the governments negative treatment of asylum seekers - the vast majority who come to the UK want to come and build a prosperous life for themsleves and their families, and yet get put into apaling accomodation with very little help to make the fresh start they so desperately want. Welcome them into the country, allow them to work - even the young blokes - it's not as if the jobs they are prepared to do are hugely oversubscribed or as if the UK actually has a serious unemployment problem at the moment. The entire history of this country is full of waves of immigration which have formed our national character and the wonderfully multiculural society we live in.

The only ones I do have an issue with are the Eastern European women who beg on the tube with either drugged up babies as an accessory. Now when I see them I want to snatch the kids and send the mothers to somewhere far worse than home.

Beetroot - I dod not say that - I just wanted your opinion - thought it was an interesting scenario. Just think it ironic that soldiers are still being killed over there when they are fighting to secure liberty for these people and they are coming over here!!

I believe anyone should have the freedom to get away from oppression or have to opportunity to go about their everyday life without the threat of violence, torture or threat.

Right lots of grey areas- and my thoughts.

1. In some areas there is a problem with the number of asylum seekers (in kent- especially dover- it is a real problem). However this partly due to the way asylum seekers are handled.

2. If someone is fleeing from persecution they should be given all the help to become a useful funtioning member of UK society. My old dr was an Iranian refugee. I know other people who fall into this category.

3. The problem with economic migrants is that it leads to the perception that a lot of money is going to them. Now I have no idea whether this is true or not. However I do know that if you need access to heath services for your child, if you child has SEN, if your elderly parents need care from social services then you won't get it. Therefore these people become an easy target (and I have no ideas about the figures involved). If the welfare state was fully operational and provided as it should then there wouldn't be a group being made a scapegoat. People will say that we need to look after our own before extending help to others who are not at risk of death, but just want "our benefits". Now I'm not syaing whether that is happening- I've just got my Mrs Grady old lady head on and am repeating how they think.

4. Overall thoughts on economic migrants- mixed. If they came here to work/study and were aiming to be self supporting asap no problems at all. Alowing them to work legally quickly would make sense all round - for starters they would start contributing tax and NI etc. If they are coming here with the plan to live on benefits and never work and take take take- no thanks - but only in the same way as the previous thread. How many people fit that description?

Do we contribute to rebuilding places like the former Yugoslavia? Wouldn't it make sense to if the asylum problem is so big. Surely most people would prefer to stay with their families in their home country (assuming something is left I suppose).

Beetroot, Boe finished ber post by saying

"Can I just ask what we do about places like Iraq - I presume some of you thought the war was unjust - what do we do just ignore these breaches of human rights and cruelty and keep taking in the asylum applicants from countries like this or go in sort it out (although not too good a job has been done) and then send them back to their own country?? "

Thanks beetroot.

There is definitely a perception problem re economic migrants in the UK. I do believe that it indicates that our services are not providing for people as needed. Perhaps the problem really is one of how to improve schools, health and social services- and then we wouldn't need the scapegoats.

Olive Oil
London (where I have lived for 7 years now) is a great place precisely BECAUSE it is so multicultural. Life is far more varied and interesting and also tolerant (though there are racist small minded areas of London as well) than it is in many other places in the UK. Long may this remain this way and if it is called Londonistan, so much the better.

Had a great conversation once with a mad old bat on the bus (well she talked at me). She told me it was "terrible all these asylum seekers, all these foreigners coming to get our benefits. terrible problem in dover you know. Irish you know full of them in dover- the Irish- and they are terribly dirty and have no manners". I shrieked with laughter and charged home as fast as possible. DH is Irish

lucy123 mentioned that asylum seekers get put into half decent housing or shared housing etc.

What about all the homeless in this country?
Shouldn't the govt sort them out first?

beetroot mentioned that asylum seekers who cannot work receive 75%=£40.
School leavers and young unemployed receive less than this amount a week. Yes these young fit ones are capable of getting jobs and working but there are not enough jobs to go around when there is a huge influx of school leavers every year.That is why most of them go to college after leaving school. My niece receives £30 a week for studying a childminding course at college.If she is ill and does not get a doctors note she gets nothing for the other days she has been.Sorry for the rant but this is one of the ways how the govt treat our children.

We are debating on the other thread about tax contributions going towards other peoples children but yet some of you dont mind paying towards benefits for immigrants? I dont know exact figures but I was reading the other week that this country is one of the worst for child poverty. Is this true?

This is the point I am trying to make that the govt should sort its own out first?????

Hmmm, I don't know if it's a good idea for me to post here as I guess I could be classified as an economic migrant myself. I do get irritated at the way he term 'asylum seeker' always seems nowdays to be prefaced by 'bogus' and 'immigrant' always seems to have 'illegal' in front of it. I work in an immigrant community in London and it horrifies me the way my students are always going on about illegal immigrants and bogus asylum seekers. It shocks them when I point out to them that their parents and grandparents came to London as asylum seekers themselves. I blame the tabloid culture and the way people these days never seem to question what is served up to them in the media.

Can i just ask how many of us here are genuine full-blooded English? I know that on my father's side there are Irish who migrated here during the famine, so I come from a line of asylum seekers myself!

However I do understand some of the points made here. I used to live in an area where the Asians would not mix with the whites and vice versa. This is exacerbated by the government giving them separate schools, community clubs, housing, etc. Some of the whites thought that the asylum seekers were getting a better deal, and that's how trouble started.

Does it ever annoy anyone else when you see job adverts aimed at ethnic minorities only? If there was a job advert for whites only there would be a public outcry.

x2b (who is complete w*kr) always said that if they had brought out a film called black men can't jump there would have been an outcry.

Don't think it is colour of skin, more religeon that causes the problems!!

I myself am english/scandinavian (v. far back) on fathers side and english/greek cypriot on mothers.

SO I AM A MONGREL!!!!!

I am all British, at least back as far as my Grandparents but we are all mongrels whatever our background. There is only 1% difference between us and a chimpanzee. So can you imagine how minescule the differences are between the so-called 'ethnic' groups? There is only one race to my mind, the human race.

And as an intersting factoid we share 40% of our DNA with a banana

my mum was half German and half Canadian. My dad is half Indian (Kashmiri) and half Irish.Should I be shipped off to some dreadful detention centre by rabid Express and Mail readers who despise foreigners even though they ponce off abroad themselves twice a f***g year?????? the fact is, loads of the comments on this thread are RACIST.

a couple of weeks ago I was listening to a news report on radio 4 about some riots up NOrth somewhere On an Estate where Iraqi refugees were being targeted by the white locals. The locals were furious because the Iraqis all had jobs and many of the white estate dwellers didn't and felt their jobs had been 'stolen'. It turned out that these Iraqi young men were getting up at 4.30 in the morning and trekking off to factories and warehouses and doing very tough manual jobs for poor wages; when pressed , some of the white estate people admitted they wouldn't do these jobS because they were too tough and too poorly paid but that 'it's the principle that counts'. Which made me PUKE!!!!! Fat white trash.......oops, now I'm being racist.....

No personal point to say here, except, my friends council tax has gone up £100 a year to fund this and my mum is a nurse and 20 of her patients have been turfed out to make room for such people in her surgery. This was mainly old people in need of medical attention fairly regularly, but Mum says ( she is the most gentle and unbiased person) the asylum seekers are taking up all her time because they are so poorly. I heard though of one settlements for asylum seekers had their own nurse on site fo minimise the impact upon the local cmmunity. This obvioulsy a better option. I feel as though the country is committing itself to helping when it can';t even help itself.