Surely someone could have intervened to help this baby?

[Cardemomle]

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16040317/French-police-stand-watch-baby-toddlers-board-dinghy-England.html

What’s bollocks? That the UK is the gold standard for immigrants or illegal immigrants arent entitled to anything?

I genuinely want to understand the argument because I just keep hearing that the UK gov are encouraging people to come here on small boats and housing them for free and it doesn’t make sense - why would any government want or do this? But equally if there is no truth in it then where are people getting it from?

I understand that, but what I mean is - if a person has no valid claim to asylum, then they have no access to any financial support or housing from the state. So why would they come here unless they have a genuine claim to asylum? Are they being misinformed?

You need to put up the pointer to the actual post, otherwise people like me so aren't on X can't view the video.,

They lie about being gay or Christian and therefore persecuted in a Muslim country. Or they declare as victims of modern slavery. Or they hope that by the time the appeals process has been got through they will have established a right to a family life. Of course they are also being lied to about how easy that will be. Many disappear to work in the black economy (not a reference to skin colour!).

Hello Reform voters you seem to be the only PP on this thread. We made it harder on ourselves by you voting for Brexit.
Exactly how would you stop the boats crossing? Within the law, of course.

English is the majority language
Existing communities of people from the same country (thanks multiculturalism)
Free at the point of service healthcare
No ID cards
Thriving black market economy and cash in hand work
And yes, benefits are generous.

Plus the French police are hard as nails, and France is not a country that celebrates multiculturalism.

Posted too soon,.

No, it's true. Illegal immigrants are not entitled to anything.

@MagicThanks People conflate the terms 'illegal immigrant' and 'asylum seeker' all the time. They are not the same. But to be fair, it is confusing. If you arrive on a small boat, then you have entered the country illegally (ie. your entry has not been authorised in advance) but if you claim asylum immediately, as 99% of small boat arrivals did last year, you become an asylum seeker, which means you have temporary lawful permission to remain in the UK while your claim is assessed.

When you get off a small boat, you are processed and fingerprinted etc, normally at Manston in Kent. Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASCs) normally become the responsibility of Kent County Council in the first instance, and there is something called the National Transfer Scheme which aims to disperse them to other local authorities to ease the pressure.

Asylum seekers receive £1.42 per day if they get put in accommodation where meals are provided.

They get £7.03 per day if they are in self-catered accommodation and need to buy their own food.

This money is put on something called an ASPEN card (Asylum Support Enablement card), a bit like a debit card, and spending is monitored by the Home Office with controls on how it can be spent. It can't be used at swimming pools or tourist attractions, for example. Only for buying essentials. However, it can be used to withdraw cash so it's arguable how useful those restrictions are.

They cannot work (bar some rare exceptions) or claim any other cash benefits during the time they are an asylum seeker, though they can access medical care via the NHS. If their claim is successful and they are granted refugee status, then they become entitled to other benefits.

But illegal immigrants in the way most people understand them - for example, someone who has overstayed a visa, or come in on the back of a lorry and absconded and is therefore flying under the radar - are obviously not entitled to anything at all.

Excellent PR move. Will support what's coming.

First post nails it 👆

Have you met the French? 😂

I kid. Good post.

The fact you think people posting on this thread are Reform voters suggests you have very little idea of what’s going on in the world.

I think bringing/sending babies and the occasional adult female is to ensure rescue if needed. Talk about manipulation, it's criminal. Those men don't give a shit once they get to the promised land by whatever means possible, and the traffickers know every trick in the book.

There was outrage when Trump did that.

Perhaps you should stop talking about great benefits. They are absolutely the level of shit in UK compared to other countries. Reason why they come here is that it's easy to "disappear" as we have no digital ID (yet rest of the Europe has ID cards). Also, because UK is no longer part of EU, we cannot automatically return the migrants to the first country they entered Europe at. So, take that, you idiotic Reform voters. If we were still in EU, returning them would be so much easier.

How do we know this image is not AI slop. All the adults who are wearing life jackets would be waving about a baby without any protection?

This is why I hate the term people smuggler or trafficker. They are people who are working with their clients (as it were) to pay for passage. They're not being trafficked or smuggled in the true sense of the word, they're paying for a service and getting it, quite gladly. Their clients have choice and agency.

Here’s the video

https://x.com/thenowherephoto/status/2086510550297489477

Probably an AI generated video…just thought I’d get in first

This is very true.

No, anyone can claim asylum. While your claim is waiting to be decided you are an asylum seeker. People claim on entry to the UK.

I was very clear that I was watching the video

That kind of makes sense, but the bottle in the video looks like it just disappeared into the crowd

It's not quite correct to say that anyone can claim asylum. Anyone can attempt to claim asylum but there are plenty of examples of people who would be 'screened out' of the process before they even get to that point.

You first have to have a 'screening interview' - only if you get through this will you be allowed to make an asylum claim.

You won't get through the screening interview if you're from a 'white list' country that's already designated as safe (eg, Serbia, Peru, Jamaica, Mongolia, Bolivia, India to name a few).

You also won't get through screening if you've already been granted refugee status or have an active asylum claim in another safe country (it happens).

And obviously you wouldn't get through if you were an EU citizen.

I work with asylum seekers and some, found out later down the line, have got asylum in other countries and certainly many more than that have open claims in other countries.

You're confusing what I said with success rate. You can absolutely claim asylum, whether you'll successfully make a full successful claim is not what Im talking about. But once you are in the system, you're then in a series of appeals and stages. Ive worked with a number of people who have claimed asylum from countries which are not countries you would normally claim asylum from, no war/conflict etc but their personal circumstances mean asylum has not only been claimed but refugee status given. There are many people fleeing blood feuds, dangerous relationships etc.

I wasn't confusing what you said with success rate, I was responding to your first sentence "anyone can claim asylum", and my point was about the strict legal threshold of admissibility at the entry point.

Under the current inadmissibility rules, if the screening process flags that someone already has an active claim or refugee status in a safe third country, their case is fast-tracked to be declared inadmissible. The reason many of those third-country claimants are still sitting in the system or entering cycles of appeals is largely due to post-Brexit return bottlenecks. It's hard for the UK to secure agreements to physically deport them back to those safe countries, so they get stuck in a legal limbo.

But I think we might be looking at two different sides of the system. You’re totally right that people fleeing non-war scenarios like blood feuds or personal violence can secure a right to stay. That often falls under Humanitarian Protection (granted instead of asylum when someone doesn't meet the 1951 Refugee Convention criteria but still faces serious personal harm), which the Home Office considers automatically as part of the overall asylum application.

For people from 'white list' safe countries, the Home Office uses a similar fast-track rule to immediately label their claim 'clearly unfounded'. They are quickly funnelled into a removal process and lose their right to a normal, in-country appeal. That’s why I mean they get screened out—anyone can physically ask for help at the door, but the system is built to filter certain groups out of the actual asylum queue right away.

What an utterly ridiculous comment.

You won't get through the screening interview if you're from a 'white list' country that's already designated as safe (eg, Serbia, Peru, Jamaica, Mongolia, Bolivia, India to name a few.

How do the immigration authorities know where they’re from if they’ve destroyed their documentation?