Children’s Asylum Centre ‘too welcoming’ 😢

Here
inews.co.uk/news/asylum-centre-mickey-mouse-mural-welcome-signs-foreign-languages-2470151

Where did the Tories find Jenrick? Children's facilities need to be appropriate to their age and adequately provisioned and staffed. A former Tory Children's Minister on Newsnight last night said he wouldn't have had the Mickey murals overpainted - good for him!

Welcome signs in different languages have been taken down at the children’s asylum centre that also removed a Mickey Mouse mural, i understands.

i revealed last week that Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick had ordered staff at Kent Intake Unit to paint over cartoon murals to make it a less welcoming environment for the children.

The move was criticised across the political spectrum, with Tory MPs left appalled, ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage describing the move as “mean” and children’s organisations saying they were “horrified” by the instruction

When Nigel Farage says it's mean then it must be very bad, very bad indeed.

Jenrick is the kind of man who wouldhave starved children to make them thin enough to climb chimneys, but not his children, of course.

Germanshepherdsmum

Are welcome signs appropriate in a detention centre?

I suppose you could argue that they are misleading and give children completely the wrong idea, and they might as well get used to being abused and criticised.

They are being detained aren't they? A detention centre isn't an airport.

Germanshepherdsmum

They are being detained aren't they? A detention centre isn't an airport.

As I said welcoming signs might give them entirely the wrong impression- you've just confirmed that.
But look up the word "asylum" its true meaning and synonyms.
Then tell me why welcome signs are not appropriate.
Hint- "a safe refuge"

They had that in France but left it.

M0nica

Primrose53 That is just about the most callous and stupid remark I have ever read on Gransnet.

If you live in a country which is safe and beautiful and has a thriving tourist industry so much so, in fact, that thousands of people choose to holiday there ……. Why would you want to leave it and get in a rubber dinghy and come here?

I don’t see anything callous or stupid in that.

Because the tourists have a lovely time but the tourist industry cannot begin to employ even a fraction of the number of young men and women in the country and youth unemployment runs at around 40%. Many jobs effectively are unpaid. Young men, out of work, with no chance of finding any start looking elsewhere to find work.

They will not find it in Africa, other African countries have the same problems Gambia has. 60% of the population in Africa is under 30.

Read this article mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/113516/1/MPRA_paper_113516.pdf . It goes along way to explain why these unemployed young men with no opportunities of any work in their home countries are prepared to take all the risks that the journey to the UK entails. Gambia was part of the commonwealth and most of these young men have some knowledge of English, so they want to go to a country where they have some grasp of he language.

So they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers.

You may be interested, re Gambia, 2,544 people fled Gambia in 2022 and applied for assylum elsewhere in the world.

The UK had 79 of those applications from Gambian asylum seekers in 2022.
We accepted that15 were entitled to stay as refugees,
We rejected 12.
Technically that means we had a 55.6 % acceptance rate.

In addition to this we undertook some reviews of previous decisions regarding Gambian citizens:
7 requested a review
5 were accepted
5 were rejected.

The numbers seem slightly odd as they refer to a single year. Applications are often made and then processed in different years.

You may be interested to know that the US abd Canada have similar acceptance rates.

Presumably, then Germanshepherdsmum we decide that under half are either economic migrants or just aren't entitled to stay for some reason or another.

This is UNHCR data. Hope it helps.

The original post is not about the rights or wrongs of asylum seekers coming to the UK. Neither does it reference how they get here via some imagined, comfortable Cook's Tour type journey through so-called "safe" European countries where they could have simply chosen to break their excursion, rather than dare to break into "fortress Britain". It's not about people smugglers either. It is purely and simply about how those vulnerable children should be treated once they are here and in our care. The idea that they somehow deserve cruel treatment in order to demonstrate that they are unwelcome is a vile, heartless concept. Should they also be fed on bread and water and forced into hard labour? That would really get Jenrik's message across wouldn't it? The total lack of humanity and compassion evident in attempts to justify this shameful episode is truly loathsome. As has so accurately been emphasised before, the top and bottom of the issue is the shameful Home Office decision to paint over murals, painted by caring volunteers and designed to cheer up a centre, the purpose of which is to receive unaccompanied child asylum seekers. It was an act motivated simply by the milk of human kindness, and the fact that some here are now determined to turn that milk sour is beyond my understanding. The focus should remain on the core issue.. which is a move which has no other purpose than to make children suffer. Everything else is just an attempt to make irrelevant, diversionary noise. Indefensible and truly shameful.

As an afterthought, it's not about whether or not they are asylum seekers or economic migrants either... although how a child can be an economic migrant is beyond me. The smoke and mirrors about how old they actually are is also irrelevant. It may be stretching it to describe some of them as children, but would the volunteers really choose to paint Micky Mouse murals for youths? There are undoubtedly young, traumatised children there, and they are being victimised, so in a place where they should feel safe and unthreatened, this callous move reminds that the hurt goes on. If you support that, your world is not a place I would choose to inhabit.

NanaDana you are right of course.
The story is the cruel mindset here.

As you will know lots of us are mortified by the callous demand to be as unwelcoming as possible - to children of all people.

I suppose when "justifications" keep popping up about this (for what I see as despicable actions) some of us are drawn in to challenging the things that are just not true.

Apologies Dana

Germanshepherdsmum

So they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers.

Yes they are! I hear that they prowl the beaches out there pestering female holidaymakers and telling them they love them at first sight even though they are old enough to be their grandmas. They think they have hit the jackpot if they agree to marry them an get them to the UK.

NanaDana

The original post is not about the rights or wrongs of asylum seekers coming to the UK. Neither does it reference how they get here via some imagined, comfortable Cook's Tour type journey through so-called "safe" European countries where they could have simply chosen to break their excursion, rather than dare to break into "fortress Britain". It's not about people smugglers either. It is purely and simply about how those vulnerable children should be treated once they are here and in our care. The idea that they somehow deserve cruel treatment in order to demonstrate that they are unwelcome is a vile, heartless concept. Should they also be fed on bread and water and forced into hard labour? That would really get Jenrik's message across wouldn't it? The total lack of humanity and compassion evident in attempts to justify this shameful episode is truly loathsome. As has so accurately been emphasised before, the top and bottom of the issue is the shameful Home Office decision to paint over murals, painted by caring volunteers and designed to cheer up a centre, the purpose of which is to receive unaccompanied child asylum seekers. It was an act motivated simply by the milk of human kindness, and the fact that some here are now determined to turn that milk sour is beyond my understanding. The focus should remain on the core issue.. which is a move which has no other purpose than to make children suffer. Everything else is just an attempt to make irrelevant, diversionary noise. Indefensible and truly shameful.

Well said NanaDana.

And Primrose53: I hear that they prowl the beaches out there pestering female holidaymakers and telling them they love them at first sight even though they are old enough to be their grandmas. They think they have hit the jackpot if they agree to marry them an get them to the UK.
Do you have ANY proof of this and the numbers doing this? 'I hear' (from whom?) and 'they' (who?) isn't enough.

Chocolatelovinggran

Yes as my post before, which Freya interpreted as a criticism of staff, was trying to highlight, the story seems a little shaky. However overwhelmed the staff might be, I am sure that they would have been able to notice(?) and deal with any attempts to deface the walls . I am defending their professionalism and asking again if this account is accurate in every detail.

No I was not criticising the staff at all. They work in hard , sometimes distressing circumstances.what I was saying you cannot follow children around all the time. Or are these kids under lock and key. I remember when I had two little ones, up in their bed room playing. When I went to check, my makeup had been found,in my room, Lord what a mess.Kids will make mischief when they can,if so inclined.

Choughdancer. I assumed that Primrose53 was joking. You've got me wondering now.

Primrose53

Germanshepherdsmum

So they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers.

Yes they are! I hear that they prowl the beaches out there pestering female holidaymakers and telling them they love them at first sight even though they are old enough to be their grandmas. They think they have hit the jackpot if they agree to marry them an get them to the UK.

What, the young children?

An answer to pPrimrose and Choughdancer
Gambian Bumsters, Smooth Operators Preying on Elderly White Women
4 months agoAdd Commentby Wairimu Teresa.
Sorry can't copy the Web site. From Africa, but it is seeafrica today. Although a channel 4 documentary put all the onus on the elderly white woman. Of course.

All immigrants should be assumed to be assylum seekers until shown otherwise. This is not to deny that some immigrants are economic immigrants.

Ironically, it could be argued that the endurance, and determination of those coming as economic immigrants, fleeing countries where only unemployment and abject poverty awaits them shows they have just the qualitites we need for successful immigrants who can, and want, to contribute to the growth of the UK economy.

I think the contrary has proved to be the case with many economic migrants from Albania,

There is a system to return Albanian citizens back home pdq. Albania, is however a European country, and for most their journey here is relatively easy.

Many of those in the boats come from conflict zones lke Afghanistan and Syria, or desperately poor parts of Africa, like Gambia and other west African countries, and the people coming on those routes, do suffer and take enormous risks on their journey.

Just consider how bad things would need to be for you to sell everything you possess, to undertake a journey of thousands of miles through hostile territory, in the hands and control of criminals, to whom your life is valueless, where you may need to walk hundreds of miles, be locked in a lorry, go hungry and, male or female, face rape and other violence to get to what you see as a safe and rich country, where you will still live in poverty.

That is not a plea to let these migrants in, but think about what they have undergone and why before treating them with contempt.

Just listening to Robert Jenrick now on radio 4. The reason the mural was removed was that it was not 'age appropriate'. So obviously it had to go...
I think ministers are getting rather desperate; any excuse will do.