People blocking Lifeboat Stations.

I lived in a town in Germany with a high population of refugee's back in the 90's, not a place most Gransnetters could imagine or cope with. I won't tell you what it is like to live there as it won't fit into your "all people are lovely" world. The truth hurts.

Lucca

I say it again, how nice would it be if everyone read what you have written elegran.

Totally agree.

but the answer is not to accept human beings that we cannot treat humanely.

I have some sympathy at a certain level with that. We can't even treat our own UK human beings humanely...

But. It's no reason at all for attempting to turn these people away. How would you propose to do it? Bomb the little boats? Machine gun the occupants?

WHATEVER ANYONE DOES WILL NOT STOP THEM COMING Why is this so bloody difficult to understand?

trisher I do realise all of this - but how much use is it to talk about what should be? It is as it is, and there is an immediate and growing potential for disaster - many people lost their lives only last week. You would have to be made of stone to not have pity and compassion for people who flee, but the answer is not to accept human beings that we cannot treat humanely.

Not only do they want to work- but we are desperate for people to do the jobs.

Precisely, trisher. ?

Rosina

Depressing to keep reading accusations of 'outright racism', 'bigotry' etc. when, if you 'RTFT', which I have, posters opinions seem to be contradicting each other on almost every 'fact' that is being put forward. I am well aware that European refugees are suffering trisher - it happens when your economy and society have collapsed and/or you are in the middle of a war zone - and the UK has always had a welcoming attitude apart from a few lunatics of the sort that prompted the original post. However - my concern was expressed for what happens once the refugees are here. How well can we educate children who cannot speak the language and are likely to be extremely traumatised? The waiting lists are horrendous for mental health services for young people - and many inner city schools have portakabins in playgrounds. Then there is the question of housing and the pressure on the NHS. This is not bigotry or racism - it's a matter of hard facts, and if people think more money from the government is the answer, then perhaps it is, but it won't cure any of these problems at once. New hospitals need staff - a shortage of which is part of the health crisis that we have now.

More money from the govenment is the answer Rosina cuts to education in the last 10 years have decimated schools. It costs £99 a day to keep someone in immigration detention and around 2000 people are held in these places. That's £200,000 every day. Most of these people want to work. Asylum seekers (who are not held in immigration detention centres) want to work. Farmers need workers, the care system needs workers, the NHS needs workers. Workers pay taxes and contribute to the economy which means we can run a decent education service and a proper health service. Instead we have a crazy system which stops people working, keeps them in limbo for years and/or deports people forcibly and returns them to places where they have suffered. Not only is the system inhumane it is ridiculous and the only possible reason it continues to exist is because it feeds racism and xenophobia.

Don’t get me started I get so angry at the way people are dealing with this dreadful situation. My own brother in law was sending me anti immigrent comments in watts app. I blocked him in the end I was so disgusted. The lengths people will go to .

Lucca Just wait until climate change turns the tables, the havenots of the globe become the haves, and we cease to be among the haves. I wonder how we will be treated?

I say it again, how nice would it be if everyone read what you have written elegran.

The facts quoted can be based on legislation or reliable statistics, or on personal experiences by the poster, or on what they believe is true because someone has told them they read it in an online rant (by a bigot).

Contradictions of the posted facts can also be from official legislation published by the agencies that actually deal with the people in question, or from personal experience of talking to them and hearing their stories, or from pure resentment that someone may be getting away with something that the poster isn't, or from complete ignorance of what is going on around the globe.

The world is changing. It is getting smaller every year as communications become more instant and troubles as well as material goods are exported thousands of miles to be shared by the lucky and the unlucky. Some of the unlucky - in all senses, in their freedom or lack of it under a corrupt or draconian government, their food when their climate becomes less and less capable of growing anything worth eating and they can't afford to buy from the lucky ones who are doing OK and wasting theirs, their health if they can't pay for treatment, their very chance of life for themselves and their children as war kills and housing is destroyed - if they can manage it, they travel to where the lucky ones live to throw themselves on their mercy.

There they find that a good proportion of the population believe that they are all there under false pretences, and no-one should be given even enough to keep them from starving or freezing, or rescued from drowning if their boat founders. What a case of "I'm all right Jack. Pull up the ladder."

Not everyone of course there are obviously some good truthful people on here.

When I opened this post I knew some people would have differing views, but, I did not expect the amount of sheer bullshit some have posted. Vociferously in some cases.
I will pull back now and realise why I had stopped opening threads.

Rosina

Depressing to keep reading accusations of 'outright racism', 'bigotry' etc. when, if you 'RTFT', which I have, posters opinions seem to be contradicting each other on almost every 'fact' that is being put forward. I am well aware that European refugees are suffering trisher - it happens when your economy and society have collapsed and/or you are in the middle of a war zone - and the UK has always had a welcoming attitude apart from a few lunatics of the sort that prompted the original post. However - my concern was expressed for what happens once the refugees are here. How well can we educate children who cannot speak the language and are likely to be extremely traumatised? The waiting lists are horrendous for mental health services for young people - and many inner city schools have portakabins in playgrounds. Then there is the question of housing and the pressure on the NHS. This is not bigotry or racism - it's a matter of hard facts, and if people think more money from the government is the answer, then perhaps it is, but it won't cure any of these problems at once. New hospitals need staff - a shortage of which is part of the health crisis that we have now.

How do you think the countries which take many more refugees than the UK cope? Is the UK really so much less resourceful than they are?

Though, of course, we're not exactly getting new hospitals, are we, Alegrias? Mostly just refurbs and some additional clinical facilities which are being 'spun' as new hospitals...

New hospitals need staff - a shortage of which is part of the health crisis that we have now.

Well, if you'd read TFT you might have seen poster pointing out that some of the asylum seekers are well qualified and could well take jobs in our NHS, not be a drag on it. Also, that many of them want to come to the UK because they already speak English.

Why it is assumed that all these people are unskilled monoglots with nothing to offer us is a mystery. It borders on racist IMO.

What I find depressing is that despite quite a few posters posting true, real and verifiable facts, a substantially sized group of posters just come on the thread posting complete fiction and defending their ignorance - for it is ignorance, truly - by saying it's their opinion and they are entitled to it. You can be as wrong as you like, as long as it doesn't harm other people. But this portrayal of the asylum seekers as scroungers, terrorists, even child molesters, that does harm people and needs to be called out for what it is.

The other depressing thing is the limits of some people's understanding and perception. Countless studies have shown that immigrants to this country being more than they cost us. But there are some here who don't have the ability to appreciate that the measly sum we spend on asylum seekers will be given back many-fold by a cohort of mainly young, tenacious and grateful people who will be glad to come to this country, and glad that we have given them a chance.

New hospitals need staff. People are desperate to come here and work. See where I'm going with this?

An excellent post, Rosina.

Depressing to keep reading accusations of 'outright racism', 'bigotry' etc. when, if you 'RTFT', which I have, posters opinions seem to be contradicting each other on almost every 'fact' that is being put forward. I am well aware that European refugees are suffering trisher - it happens when your economy and society have collapsed and/or you are in the middle of a war zone - and the UK has always had a welcoming attitude apart from a few lunatics of the sort that prompted the original post. However - my concern was expressed for what happens once the refugees are here. How well can we educate children who cannot speak the language and are likely to be extremely traumatised? The waiting lists are horrendous for mental health services for young people - and many inner city schools have portakabins in playgrounds. Then there is the question of housing and the pressure on the NHS. This is not bigotry or racism - it's a matter of hard facts, and if people think more money from the government is the answer, then perhaps it is, but it won't cure any of these problems at once. New hospitals need staff - a shortage of which is part of the health crisis that we have now.

As I said earlier, benefits for asylum seekers in France is considerably higher than it is in the Uk- and France has taken in many more than the UK.

The outright racism and bigotry on this thread is so depressing.
I will make one more attempt at reason.
This article gives an insight, backed up by research, on why people come to the U.K., and how many come, compared to other countries.

fullfact.org/immigration/why-do-migrants-and-asylum-seekers-want-come-uk/?fbclid=IwAR1rEmGnlcr2JZIckR8pPi20aP7S2ES_MUIP3gOZWZYHfnQTjHlY0CXpC4U

The U.K. is a country of immigrants, my family history includes German Jews, Dutch, Irish and if you go back a bit further, French. Others from the family now live in Spain, France, Australia and Canada. If you do your own research you will find similar stories, so who are we, as a country, to think we are any better than others.

but unless we pay a great deal more into our public services, they cannot cope.

We could pay as much as we liked into our public services if the political will was there.

The government managed to rustle up £37 billion to put in their mates' pockets...

Migrants have often travelled through several European countries where they could claim asylum.

... and, strangely enough, many do. We are 17th on a list of 28 countries. And take fewer than the first 16 on the list. (from Full Fact)

Elegran

^Are our benefits really so good that they are worth dying for?^ What benefits? _They are not entitled to benefits_.

RTFT

I don't know why anyone bothers to post any genuine facts - Those who are ready to believe rubbish prefer to ignore anything that is true.

Really depends what you mean by benefits, devils advocate here, certainly not universal credits etc, but here you are
www.gov.uk/asylum-support/what-youll-get.

Rosina

TopsyIrene I have tried to make the point that there is no need to travel so far and make a terrifying journey across the channel in flimsy craft. Migrants have often travelled through several European countries where they could claim asylum. Nobody with a shred of compassion would try to prevent people from drowning - you have to be a rather 'special' person to even think of preventing the RNLI from doing their job, but why is it that people find it necessary to put themselves in such danger? Desperate people yes - but why push your life to the limits trying to cross fifteen miles of icy water in an overcrowded unsafe boat? Are our benefits really so good that they are worth dying for? I am also very concerned about what happens to people when they arrive. Other posters have said that we don't have the infrastructure to cope with thousands of people who are probably ill, traumatised, and have needs beyond that which we can provide, even for our current population. Waving the compassion flag is all very well - but unless we pay a great deal more into our public services, they cannot cope.

Really? Don't you know that many refugees are suffering in other EU countries, in particular Hungary and Poland. Hungary's PM believes there shouldn't be any immigration. Earlier this month, the Hungarian Prime Minister said he wants a total stop of immigration for two years.

“Migrant armies are banging on all the gates of Europe,” Orban pointed out.

According to Orban, “migration is inherently bad”, and all persons should be happy to be wherever they happen to have been born “according to God’s will.”
Perhaps they hope the UK will have a more welcoming attitude

For those of the hard of thinking who keep insisting that most of 'them are economic immigrants', what of your sainted Pritti Patel? Her parents were economic migrants.

This thread has to be one of the most depressing I have read, not just because of the bigotry and racism, but the complete inability to comprehend FACTS, the willingness to not only listen to rumour and misinformation but to spout it out later as gospel.