Asylum seekers and immigrants.

[doormat]

Carrying on from benefits-unfit parents thread.

Any views on this subject anyone????

Boe's post was on the 10 July, 2003 3:34:10 PM.

jojo ive been to romania,met lovely people there,still no reason for some of them to abuse the system,they had jobs so no need to claim benefits as well,ive also been to india so i know how other people live,im NOT agaisnt refugees and inmigrants,my parents came here in the late 50s trying to get away from francos regime,and they worked hard!!never claimed a penny!i was just pointing out how some people take the piss and don`t deserve to be given anything

Jojo21 and pie- I think you are arguing brilliantly. I wish I had time to join you properly.

Totally off topic, pie, but Black Mask attended Holland Park too. I think he's a bit older than you, though, so not sure that your paths would have crossed.

oh,and by the way,we didnt go on a package holiday to those countries,we travelled all over india and ive seen poverty at is worst,ive also seen poverty in the phillipines,china,russia,egypt,shall i go on? so dont you talk to me as if i was ignorant or a racist because i`m not

Scummy, BM went to HP, well that explains the twisted sense of humour

What year?

quick aside - I am rushed and can't stop to preview this:

This discussion is different to the ones on benefits isn't it?

Why? I assume not one recent immigrant has contributed to it.

There are plenty of people here who have first hand experience of living on benefits and bringing up children on benefits, people who are single mothers, people who have children with disablities and cannnot work because they have to look after them etc etc But They have a voice in those other discussions.

Recent immigrants (because none post on mumsnet to the best of my knowledge) have no voice here in this discussion. I wonder how the messages would look if we had some recent asylum seeker mothers posting here?

Good point tighermoth, given some of the views expressed here the response would probably be along the lines of 'What you doing posting on the internet, I don't pay my taxes for that'

i'll talk to you in any way that i want to! oh and by the way benefits are a right not a charity, if you need them you'll get them and if you don't you wont and if you want to see yourself as ignorant and rascist who am i to stop you! those are your words not mine! those who do 'take the piss' do so because they're expected to work for peanuts and as stated only get a portion of the money the 'born and bred' do and if possible are fobbed off with accomodation which i wouldn't allow my dog to shit in and food stamps-very dignified! so don't talk to me about your grandparents never having to claim a penny because they survived while others can't and either way that doesnt make them any better than the other person does it?!

and to tell you the truth whymummy i don't care where you've been and what you've seen because at the end of the day you came home and didn't live in the shit day in and day out!

jojo this is a debate not a slanging match.

and how do you know how i lived?have you ever lived under a fascist regime?you know nothing about me,you are being disrespectful and im going to let you carry on,cos to be honest i couldnt care less about who you are or what you think about me

Don't take it personal whymummy, some people just feel better commenting this way, then again perhaps its their time of the month

Jojo you sound like an intelligent person, but your opinions will be taken less seriously if you post so aggressively. It's a shame when a debate gets into a slanging match. Can everyone try and keep calm please?

I am on the 'pro' side of the asylum debate, but I don't think that it helps anyone's argument to say 'i'll talk to you in any way that i want to!' I don't think that anyone wins an argument by being offensive. You don't change people's minds by being unpleasent Reasoned arguments should win the argument.

im sorry if my opinion offends but only my mother tells me how i should speak to her and whymummy is not my mother! being that i work with asylum seekers everyday of the week you dont know how hard life is until you've heard some of their stories! i don't want to change anyones mind or opinion i just hate the fact that asylum seekers are classed as either genuine or piss-takers by people who dont know the full story! and btw if you think this is slanging you are really deprived this is how i speak everyday, sorry to say!
oh and the time of the month comment well i don't get those horrible things as im very much pregnant!

im sorry if my opinion offends but only my mother tells me how i should speak to her and whymummy is not my mother! being that i work with asylum seekers everyday of the week you dont know how hard life is until you've heard some of their stories! i don't want to change anyones mind or opinion i just hate the fact that asylum seekers are classed as either genuine or piss-takers by people who dont know the full story! and btw if you think this is slanging you are really deprived this is how i speak everyday, sorry to say!
oh and the time of the month comment well i don't get those horrible things as im very much pregnant!

jojo "if you think this is slanging you really are deprived this is how I speak everyday sorry to say."
No offence jojo but if that is the way you speak to people no wonder 2 people approached you for a job, they would be too scared.Yes you are right we dont live your life and see what you see but we are all individuals with different opinions.

Something I always think is worth remembering, is that we are who we are by an accident of birth. Whether that's someone who will earn a huge salary, living in a western country with a high standard of living, or living in a refugee camp in a war zone, hoping the next bowl of rice will appear. Why do people, always well in the upper half of this spectrum (or upper 10%, or whatever), feel we have the right to criticise those trying to improve their own circumstances. We don't have a right to anything in this world, and I feel we should be grateful for what we do have, not begrudge sharing a little with people less fortunate. I've done nothing to merit living in our situation, just as most asylum seekers have done nothing wrong to cause them to live in desperate situations in their own countries.

There, preachy enough? It is a Sunday!

I'll just copy and paste this from the mumsnet getting started page then.

Rules and "Netiquette"

When writing your messages, please use the same courtesy that you would show when speaking face-to-face with someone. Flames, insults, and personal attacks will not be tolerated. It's fine to disagree strongly with opinions and ideas, but always with respect for the other person. Great minds do not always think alike, and that's where the fun is!

For you musica....

"The idea of the original position is perhaps the most lasting contribution of John Rawls to our theorizing about social justice. The original position is a hypothetical situation in which rational calculators, acting as agents or trustees for the interests of concrete individuals, are pictured as choosing those principles of social relations under which their principals would do best. Their choices are subject to certain constraints, however, and it is these constraints which embody the specifically moral elements of original position argumentation. Crudely, the rational calculators do not know facts about their principals which would be morally irrelevant to the choice of principles of justice. This restriction on their reasoning is embodied, picturesquely, in Rawls's so-called veil of ignorance, which occludes information, for instance, about principals? age, sex, religious beliefs, etc. Once this information about principals is unavailable to their agents, the plurality of interested parties disappears, and the problem of choice is rendered determinate. (Because each individual's trustee has the same information and motivation as every other individual's trustee, the original position is a situation of choice, not of "negotiation" between a plurality of distinct individuals.) According to Rawls, agents so situated would choose two principles of justice, lexically ordered, affirming the equality of basic rights and an approach to social inequalities governed by the difference principle, according to which inequalities are unjust unless removing them would worsen the situations of the worst-off members of society. Original position argumentation is an example of contemporary contractualism, involves a pure-proceduralist approach to the determination of moral principles, and is framed by reflective equilibration with widely agreed principles of public morality."

ooh doormat..4'11 and 8.5stone its kinda hard to be scared of me! the reason why people didn't want to do voluntary work was because of pride and the fact i told them they'd be in a better situation if they did it than if they didn't even so they turned their noses up- those poor poor homeless people-the government should help their own right! i have no sympathy for those who don't want to help themselves and those who do will reap the benefits! and no offence but if comments offend they weren't meant to and if my disgraceful language makes you mad...well...im what 'ENGLAND' made me!

Genuine asylum seekers deserve to be helped in one way or another as they are trying to escape a life of percecution.Economic immigrants are to my mind a completly different group of people.The so called "brain drain" could be called high level economic and intellectual immigrants.Friends of mine who have gone to New Zealand basically went to get a better standerd of living for their families.Isn't that the same thing on a different level?Likewise I believe that many of the immigrants into Uk and many other european countries just want the same thing.If you talk to any of them the over-riding theme is that they want to build a better life for their children.

Greece in the 50's and 60's was very poor.Thousands of Greeks left,notably to Australia(Melbourne has the 2nd biggest Greek population after Athens in the world) and the USA.They started in the lowliest jobs and over the years and through the generations have built themselves decent lifes.They nearly all still send money back home.Now Greece has a vastly improved standerd of life so we in the last 10 years have been flooded with immigrants.From the neighbouring Balkans post-communism and from further east namely Kurds,Iraqis,Indians and Pakistanis.Here they get nothing in the way of help from the state (No state benefits for greeks either but thats a different story.)Mostly the men come over on their own first, try to establish themselves and then bring their families over later.I admire what they try to do for the families and say again that I believe we all do it -its just that we all start from different starting lines and of course have different finishing posts.Those of you who agonise about getting your children into the best possible school for the best possible education are really doing just the same as the Albanian who lives downstairs from he-its just that he wants his children to have an education.He's not far enough up the economic ladder yet to search out the "best" school for his kids.( this last comment is in NO way a criticism of anyone seeking something better for their kids.I too want mine to have more than I did)

Having said all this I have to say I have been approached seversl times by local immigrants asking me to help them get into UK.Thay "have heard" that the govt will give them a house and money until they get a job.When i tell them it isn't quite that simple they look at me agast.I don't believe that they want all that as something for nothing - we are talking about people who have lived lives of hardship that none of us can imagine.They have never been given something for nothing.Instead they imagine (I think ) that they will get some help until they can sort themselves out.

Britain isn't the only country in this situation - its all over europe and I believe that only a european effort or even a worldwide effort will be able to tackle it.

Sorry, haven't had time to read through everything here in detail as have baby less than three weeks old so please excuse any points that are being repeated. The thing is, everyone usually starts by saying 'I'm not against genuine asylum seekers BUT'...well, I've just written an article on asylum seekers and one of the things I think needs to be pointed out is just how hard it is, in fact, to claim asylum. And it's getting harder, with immigration officials demanding to know very personal things (I talked to the founder of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, who was very striking on just how personal, how shaming it is to talk about torture under ANY circumstances, let alone to someone who isn't trained in this, who doesn't even necessarily speak your own language...). I've interviewed people who've had to go through appeal after appeal, even when they've left everything - a woman who'd had to leave her two small children with her mother, because she was in such danger herself (the children weren't, in case you were wondering) - another who had to 'prove' that the torture she'd undergone years before, and the constant persecution by state police, were justifications for seeking asylum.

Also, there are quite narrow definitions of what you can claim asylum for. If you're escaping cliteridectomy or forced marriage - well, sorry, those don't count.

Think about it. And all to live on a level of benefit which is, quite frankly, pathetic, and to be considered scrounging scum by the Sun et al...

Right, must return to my daughters (who combine my Anglo/Indian/Scandinavian genes with their father's Anglo/Bangladeshi ones), whose paternal grandfather was, in fact, a refugee after being a political prisoner for several years. He's dead now, of a sudden brain haemmorhage 10 or so years ago. Those things tend to happen to people who go to prison and get knocked around a fair bit. Hardly surprisingly, asylum, political imprisonment and torture are things my dp cares about rather a lot.

Brilliant post Scummymummy, thank you.

Eh Cam?! I haven't posted on here except to tell pie that my partner went to her alma mater- he left in 1988ish by the way, pie. Did you mean GRMUM or mother inferior or musica? All interesting posts I thought, to add to those of pie and others.

While I am posting though I'd like to say that it is my previous experience that it's very difficult to remain calm about this issue and I do sympathise with the spirit of jojo's heated posts and admire her for sticking to her guns even if they've upset people and perhaps not even the main offenders. This is one of the issues where I find it very difficult not to be personal, at least in my head. I've deleted a couple of insulting posts myself since reading this and the benefits thread. I know it's not fair to judge people on their posts alone and I'm sure that ignorance plays a huge part anyway but I do find it hard not to think less of people who appear to me to be racist and/or mean. I hope against hope that patient, reasoned posts such as pie has been producing for the last few days will change minds but I fear that one or two of the views expressed may be unshakeable and entrenched as well as ugly.