The Refugee Ship

To all the people opposing this solution, " What do you suggest?" These people come here illegally at their own free will. Why don't they use the legal immigration routes?

I would suggest there is a big difference between refugee families and the huge number of single male asylum seekers Iam. Families don’t cause fear but large numbers of single men, especially those from cultures which don’t acknowledge women’s rights and freedoms, certainly do.

JOJO60 you have summed up the situation with illegal migration perfectly and I agree with every word.

This is a huge problem affecting the whole of Europe, so isn’t the answer for every European country to get together and try to come up with a plan to stop them landing in the first country?
I imagine, geographically speaking, that would include Italy and Greece, both of whom presumably are more than happy to push the immigrants further on their journey.

We must stop them landing in the first place, by stating that anyone who tries to enter via the people smugglers are automatically banned from applying for asylum.

I seem to remember our government said something along those lines so I hope that is part of the Illegal Migration Bill which I believe has passed, although doubtless in a watered-down way.

JOJO60
When you go into your local small town do you see large groups of foreign men sitting around drinking coffee, smoking and watching local girls and women? Why aren't they at work?
Well whoever those men are they are unlikely to be asylum seekers given the small amount of money they receive each week-not enough for coffees.
If they are asylum seekers they are not allowed to work
When you pick your grandchildren up from school do you stand outside the classroom amongst mostly foreign people, a huge proportion of whom are men? Why aren't they at work? Why aren't their wives at school? How are teachers expected to teach to a certain standard when half the class don't speak English fluently? And how can those teachers/classroom assistants help children like my grandson who has special educational needs when they are under such pressure?
Asylum seekers are not allowed to work.
Many Asian families run businesses and work in the evenings
My son regularly collects his children from school.

Teaching English funding was cut
Education spending has been cut
The failure of the school is a direct result of government underfunding.

How are we to protect vulnerable teenage girls who are conned by charming foreign men whose own cultures mean they don't respect women. How many young girls are groomed and rapes?
Better social services
Have you ever waited 16 hours in A&E with a sick relative, who then died, because the NHS can't cope with such huge numbers of people?
Yes, before Covid with my mum
The NHS has been underfunded for years
Have you got relatives in poor rented housing because local council don't have enough housing stock, yet immigrants get put in luxury hotels?
Promoting right to buy for council housing. Not building new houses.
Our country cannot afford it. Unless you have lived in such areas as I do you have no idea how different cultures can be so different from ours. It's easy to sit in your comfortable homes in nice quiet towns and villages and theorise about the rights and wrongs of it all and feel sorry for these poor people who you may never come into contact with. It's a completely different story for those who do
Large city lots of asylum seekers. Met load of them. Most want to work. WE need them, shortages of staff in catering etc.

I, like most of us here, am happy to welcome peoples in fleeing from death, wars or disaster….BUT with climate change more and more and more refugees are economic migrants or fleeing new climates which are decimating their homelands….this will only get worse unless Globally peoples take action to stop it. We are a small Island and need a lot of foreign workers in a lot of areas to help us (think Farmers/ NHS, etc ) but Brexit put paid to that, a system between us and the EU which WAS working and now isn’t thanks to con man Boris etc. Despite World organisations trying to supply answers, it is’t happening, Wars/ Politics, etc, etc keep the World from coming together to solve this…and it was ever thus on different scales! I wish I had an answer…but until the countries get together to solve this it won’t happen…and likely the time they realise this it will be tooooo late for everyone….many say it already is! Doom thoughts for today…but true. This influx of migrants is soon going to be unstoppable unless Individual Governments get their act together and find some sort of solution. Most seem to be infighting … no cohesion anywhere. The USA is a Prime example… almost Civil War over ‘cultural’ issues, Biden is doing his best…but…. I will say no more!

Another 574 arrived on dinghies yesterday where are they going to go they all need beds.

They do "work" cash in hand at car washes etc. There are videos on line of them leaving their hotel, cycling to work and back again. I would like free accommodation, free food, £40 a week spends, mobile phone, a bike etc.

When I emigrated decades ago we had to jump through hoops to get there, an "Alien" badge we had to wear, left in what seemed to be an barracks. We received no help whatsoever and to cap it all someone was murdered with a machete outside our window the first night we were there. I flew home, at my expense a year later.

I have no problem with refugees, but young men who can afford to pay the smugglers thousands of pounds to get here, throw any form of ID into the English Channel, and possibly run away as soon as they reach the shore. I do have a problem with that. Think of all the females they have left behind to struggle on their own.

Nannashirlz

Iam64

It’s an international problem. We need to speed our assessment process. I can’t support putting vulnerable people seeking refuge into such totally inappropriate ‘accommodation’

Well you can always house them yourself if you that concerned, they are living in tents in France and have travelled through many safe countries to get here. They walk around in groups of 8-9 and are very intimidating if you walking alone in broad daylight. Tell your local Mp you want them in your area because i don’t want them in mine but we didn’t get asked

I’m not in a position to ‘house them myself’. I live in a town identified as a city of refuge for asylum seekers. I’ve worked with a number of refugee families. Guess what, they’re just like us, except they escaped war. They had family members murdered for being in the ‘wrong’ political party.

The level of hostility and anger shows by many of the anti immigration posters says a good deal about them.

I think it’s the best place for these men. I would make sure they were detained on the barge and not allowed to roam around on land. If we were tougher with these people they might put off yet more arrivals. I pray they are kept on board until all the paperwork is completed

Shoot me now but I feel everyone entering the country should have their prints and DNA taken and blood tests to check for medical issues and be given the appropriate immunisation vaccinations.

Big difference between asylum seekers and economic migrants. Genuine asylum seekers should of course be given refuge but how many of them are?

Germanshepherdsmum

Yes I’m familiar with that GG. They are all to be men. My son lives in the next village. There is considerable and genuine fear of hundreds of single male asylum seekers with nothing to do roaming around the rural area. The local housing market is absolutely dead as a consequence of this plan. I am very much in favour of a facility which detains people until their identity is established and their claim to asylum determined - so for me the boat is an excellent facility.

They are not detained as such, they are given freedom to roam and also free transport to three different towns locally. That is a particular bugbear as our local buses are very unreliable and infrequent. They also have gym facilities on site and they are fed and waterd. I asked our local police officer why, when they have entered the country illegally they are allowed to roam. He said basically it is government policy to alllow asylum seekers freedom until they are proved to be either accepted or not. They will alos be given money to pay for transport to visit faily in other parts of the country. So we will end up with 1700 illegal male immigrants right out here in the countryside, on a site that has been proven to contain chemicals in the soil that are dangerous to human life. This is totally the wrong place for them.

I do sympathise with refugees and their plight but there must be a better solution than this. It's definitely a government problem they must do something to speed up their screening processes and either remove the unwanted and give the successful applicants a proper standard of life.

DiamondLily

To be fair, they will be allowed to get off of the ship and go where they like.

The ship is just for eating/sleeping.

Not exactly slavery.🙂

That is not what the poster meant DiamondLily - the refugees arrive, no papers, housed somewhere, free to roam get ‘talked to’ by people who offer them jobs ‘under the radar’ then they get ‘trafficked’ into ‘unsavoury jobs’ for little or no money with no escape, if they had papers they would be taken away ‘for safe-keeping’ - just like a slave.

Surely if they were genuine asylum seekers they could spend the £3k+ on a flight here and apply for asylum that way.

And how do they get on the plane without having the appropriate visa / paperwork?

Do you really think there is a British Embassy in places like Syria issuing visas ?

www.liberties.eu/en/stories/why-refugees-do-not-take-the-plane/16316

I'm finding it slightly disturbing to see some attitudes towards immigrants (or are they asylum seekers) here which seem to come straight out of the Donald Trump playbook. No-one on this thread has been foolish enough to be quite as specific as he was as regards Mexican or Latino immigrants, referring to them as rapists and criminals, but several posts have certainly implied that this description may be appropriate here, and that the female population near these barges, or indeed detention centres in general, may somehow be at increased risk.

I'm sure that Trump's redneck support base, and certainly his so-called Proud Boys will be right behind that message. Do you really feel comfortable being associated with that viewpoint? Your choice, but count me out.

Please don't point to the fact that Castro emptied his jails in the early 80's and exported thousands of criminals to the U.S.A. That's not what Mexico ever did, and that's not what's happening here. We'll certainly get a few undesirables amongst the large numbers who are arriving, but not a disproportionate ratio in terms of the general population. As has already been pointed out, almost three quarters of the cases of requests for asylum have been approved after careful vetting. I'll rely on figures from the O.N.S. rather than respond to what is reported in some of the newspapers. We've all seen what they're capable of.

To all you posters who think it's ok for all these migrants to come to the UK, think about this:
When you go into your local small town do you see large groups of foreign men sitting around drinking coffee, smoking and watching local girls and women? Why aren't they at work?
When you pick your grandchildren up from school do you stand outside the classroom amongst mostly foreign people, a huge proportion of whom are men? Why aren't they at work? Why aren't their wives at school? How are teachers expected to teach to a certain standard when half the class don't speak English fluently? And how can those teachers/classroom assistants help children like my grandson who has special educational needs when they are under such pressure?
How are we to protect vulnerable teenage girls who are conned by charming foreign men whose own cultures mean they don't respect women. How many young girls are groomed and rapes?
Have you ever waited 16 hours in A&E with a sick relative, who then died, because the NHS can't cope with such huge numbers of people?
Have you got relatives in poor rented housing because local council don't have enough housing stock, yet immigrants get put in luxury hotels?
Do you have poor areas of town that were once respectable now turned into ghettos with men hanging round the doorways and children playing on the road late into the evening? Not to mention the rubbish dumped in the street.
I could go on, but all these things have happened to me and my family.
WAKE UP .... Most of these immigrants are here for economic reasons, the UK is a gold mine to them. Meanwhile our own people suffer. Our country cannot afford it. Unless you have lived in such areas as I do you have no idea how different cultures can be so different from ours. It's easy to sit in your comfortable homes in nice quiet towns and villages and theorise about the rights and wrongs of it all and feel sorry for these poor people who you may never come into contact with. It's a completely different story for those who do.

Surely if they were genuine asylum seekers they could spend the £3k+ on a flight here and apply for asylum that way. If they have a genuine reason, why destroy passport and papers. They know it’ll take ages to process and in the meantime they have a roof over their heads, access to medical aid and are fed.
A hotel locally is housing them (all males). The hotel has leisure facilities that can be used by outsiders by subscription. Most have stopped using the hotel because the immigrants monopolise the gym and are intimidating. They walk round the local town in groups, calling after girls and most have mobile phones and look well dressed.
I have every sympathy for a genuine immigrant that is fleeing persecution. As one poster said why are there so many young men coming supposedly from war torn counties. Why aren’t they staying and fighting for their freedom like the men from the Ukraine.

Glorianny

Nicenanny3

51Glorianny

Germanshepherdsmum

My concern is the vast number of single men amongst them Iam, and the safety of women. Many come from cultures which have very different attitudes towards women to our own. The housing of up to 1700 single male asylum seekers in disused barracks in the next village to my son’s home is causing genuine fear amongst the local population. Don’t you think a fair number of them will be seeking sex?

There are thousands of students from other countries, with very different cultures housed in single person student accommodation, in a city near me.
Should I be worried about them? will a fair number of them be seeking sex?

*Entirely different, students pay to study here and have full documentation with them unlike the illegals who mostly have destroyed their ID, they could have criminal records for all we know, whereas the students would have been veted, big difference*

Well I would imagine anyone with the ability to do so could fake records so there could be an offender amongst the students.
But in fact the allegation about asylum seekers wasn't to do with any crime, but was about men from different cultures seeking sex.
And actually some of the students do just that. Some of the worst of those are from Saudi Arabia. They are men with money of course, so perhaps that is the difference.

Foreign students are not housed en masse in ghetto-like conditions with no access to women. They mix with women all the time and can seek to form relationships if they so choose. They also have studies to attend to. 1700 single male asylum seekers in a former army barracks with nothing to do and with buses to local small towns laid on is not a comparable situation.

‘Worried that they’re all men…’ Men often come ahead to find work to provide for their families, then send for them. There are plenty of empty buildings in London’s most expensive areas, owned by Saudis, Chinese and Russians, bought as investments. How about a tax on unused residences to go straight into funding British house building? I did some arts workshops in an all male detention centre. Their stories (which emerged as part of the sessions) were mainly heartbreaking. The cavalier attitude of many of the staff was nauseating. NIMBYs, racists and the ignorant and selfish need to walk a mile in another man’s shoes. Still supporting refugees by TESOL.

Pinkpeony Actually in the hotels they are not normally given food, but a weekly personal allowance - normally around £46 for a single person, which is to buy all personal and hygiene products, including food and clothes, and of course no recourse to public funds, eg benefits, until they are both “processed” and granted leave to remain. It’s my understanding too that these hotels are overcrowded too. It’s an awful situation for all those concerned including local communities

I so agree with you

Btw whilst I accept there’s been an uplift in the number of single males coming here, and some maybe economic migrants, though why they’d choose to get on an overcrowded dinghy is anyone’s guess, there’s zero evidence to show that they are sex-starved criminals ! Also why would asylum seekers not look well fed ? Very strange assertion/assumption that asylum seekers should look like concentration camp survivors. This govt has had more than a decade to resolve this situation and it’s simply got worse and worse ! Perhaps they need to send our border control officials and home office staff to Canada/USA/NZ/Oz for training as they manage to protect their much larger borders far better than us. Of course we cannot accept a limitless number of migrants whatever their reasons for wanting to come, but really what’s happened to the compassion and empathy this country showed to Jews during WW1. Given the state of our economy it’s no surprise that coupled with all the negative press constantly slating migrants of all kinds that the natives are getting restless !! Let’s remember this govt has constantly “broken” it’s own migration rules to suit their own agenda ie Casual farm workers, care workers etc etc

Nicenanny3
I am in agreement with you. I don't have a problem with migrants that arrive here with passports seeking asylum, but this is a very small percentage.
I am not sure that you can believe 100% of the "facts" spouted by any proponents.
In my town we have at least 4 asylum seekers hotels. Two of them within a mile of each other. The clientele (can't say if they are genuine AS) are given food, lodgings, money and bicycles. They are ALL young men and now we see them walking or cycling between the two hotels having a lovely well-fed time while our food bank is overwhelmed.
These are facts!

Iam64, how do you know that these are " vulnerable people seeking refuge "?
I don't know, but would strongly suspect that the majority of these people may not have the best of homes, but are not in any danger. How far do you expect us to go? We are a charitable country, many of us willing to do what we can to help people in need, but there is a limit to what we can afford, especially as we are supporting Ukraine which is unquestionably in need of help.

The cost of hiring and training temporary civil servants to assess asylum claims must be far less than the annual cost of hotels, barracks and barges so I think Braverman is deliberately keeping the assessment slow so as to have lots of unprocessed refugees to play the anti-immigrant card for electoral purposes. Of course Brexit is a contributory factor as leaving prevents the UK returning people to EU countries. Rwanda looks to be a distant dream.