Boats this month…

I agree, Casdon.

Just because someone arrives, doesn’t mean they are given permission to stay.

Refusals of asylum applications have increased. The grant rate in the last year to March 2026 was 39%, a 10% reduction compared to the year before and a 38% reduction compared to when the Tories were in power. 77% down to 39%.

No, JenniferEccles that’s not what I meant, tabloid mentality is reading headlines and believing that a headline figure tells the full story, and getting worked up about the figures on that basis. We all know that the boats will not magically stop, so we have to accept that some will continue to arrive until every possible route is closed down. Nobody surely believes there is any other way to tackle what is an endemic problem affecting all first world countries which border those which are not?

Have you a comment on how "successful" the USA system I now JenniferEccles after the stats above?

A problem I have with some of your posts is that you only seem to see "the bad" in people arriving from other cultures. I cannot recall you posting on happy and productive encounters with our minority populations.

I have had so many and there is good and bad there just like anywhere else. And appearing at least to ignore sexual assaults and rape from within generations of white UK citizens which is sadly so very prevalent.

Graphite

I agree, Casdon.

Just because someone arrives, doesn’t mean they are given permission to stay.

Refusals of asylum applications have increased. The grant rate in the last year to March 2026 was 39%, a 10% reduction compared to the year before and a 38% reduction compared to when the Tories were in power. 77% down to 39%.

Refusals of asylum applications may have increased but how do we know who these people are if they arrive with no form of ID and spinning some story as to why they can't go home. Criminal records cannot even be checked.

It is heartbreaking to think of genuine sorrowful cases being lost amongst the fake ones. The BBC has highlighted many cases of fakery, and we know that people pretend to be gay or to have suddenly converted to Christianity in order to stay.

Weeding out the genuine applications must be virtually impossible, and with hundreds more arriving every day how can this be in any way accurate?

Casdon

What we are looking for is steady progress rather than draconian measures which put people’s lives at risk. So here are the totals by month since 2018. Let’s compare the figures for May crossings at the end of the month for 2026, compared with previous years, instead of ‘sensationally’ posting the day to day numbers which mean nothing as stand alone headlines, unless you are sucked in to the tabloid mentality.

commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10590/

Maybe you should have a word with the person who started this thread. 🤔

JenniferEccles

If ‘tabloid mentality’ refers to people who are angry and genuinely very scared at the huge numbers of undocumented males entering our country, many from cultures very different to our own here and in Europe, then I put my hand up to that, as would many others.

Well said JenniferEccles 👏👏

Hundreds more are not arriving every day as the opening post clearly shows.

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Hundreds more are not arriving every day as the opening post clearly shows.

Only because the weather was so awful!

A former Border Force official was just on TV saying now the better weather is here the boats will increase and we can see he is correct.

Then speed up the application process. Which is already more effective since Labour came to power.
Continue with projects like the recent one, hunting down the organisers.

Let's have a system which enables genuine asylum seekers to apply without having to be actually on British soil, then it's easier to deport those who arrive by small boat. Most of those who arrive by small boat are given asylum because they are genuine, they shouldn't have to risk their lives and people traffickers should not be able to make money out of people's misery. The UK should take it's share of refugees and asylum seekers and we should try to do this as humanely as possible.

In the year ended March 2026, 39,000 people arrived on small boats so it isn't hundreds (plural) arriving every day. It is just over one hundred a day averaged over the year.

There was a total of 94,000 asylum applications to be processed which included those in the 36,000 who made applications (not all do) and those cases which has been brought forward.

There were 18,000 port returns straight in and out plus 9,000 voluntary returns, 9,700 enforced returns and 2,000 in detention. I make that 38,700.

People love to talk as if the current government is doing nothing when it is clearly doing a great deal and a darn sight more than the Tories. They just shoved people in hotels (Jenrick) and stopped processing applications. They knew the Rwanda scheme was a dead duck and knew they would soon be out of office so why not leave a big backlog for the next government to deal with?

The Tories claimed they would be deporting tens of thousands of people to Rwanda when there was never any agreement with that country to take more than 200 which could be accommodated in the Hope Hostel in Kigali. Rwanda spokesperson Yolande Makolo confirmed that to Laura Kuenssberg on TV just days before Sunak called the election.

In August 2025 Rwanda agreed to take 250 deportees from the USA to be accommodated in the same hostel which indicates that that was the only accommodation they ever had.

The French are seeing the UK as the Rwanda scheme now! Wash their hands of them, get them here and we will accommodate their every need.

This government are doing more about the problem than the previous one and getting through applications faster. It's a difficult situation with no easy answers.
It's noticeable that people voted for Brexit to stop the small boats but now it's worse than ever.

Yup £49.18 p.w.and roof over your head, a life of luxury indeed

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Primrose53

Casdon

What we are looking for is steady progress rather than draconian measures which put people’s lives at risk. So here are the totals by month since 2018. Let’s compare the figures for May crossings at the end of the month for 2026, compared with previous years, instead of ‘sensationally’ posting the day to day numbers which mean nothing as stand alone headlines, unless you are sucked in to the tabloid mentality.

commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10590/

Maybe you should have a word with the person who started this thread. 🤔

Anybody who makes inane comments needs to take this on board. The comparative numbers over a sustained period are the only reliable measure of success here.

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

There seems little point in trying to discuss anything with the fact-blind. The energy is takes becomes exhausting after a while - Brandolini’s Law but I feel I have to try else Gransnet just becomes an echo chamber for the Daily Mail.

I have just pointed out that as many people are being turned around at entry, are leaving voluntarily or being deported as are arriving.

I’ll also repeat what I have already posted. France receives between 130,000 and 160,000 asylum applications every year. Recent annual intake figures average roughly 130,000 first-time applicants, with thousands more arriving through specific United Nations (UNHCR) resettlement programmes. France is one of the top destinations for asylum seekers in Europe, typically processing the second or third highest number of applications each year, trailing only Germany and on a par with Spain.

Germany, France and Spain … the UK is not even in the top three.

Put simply, France has a similar population to the UK yet is receiving and processing far more asylum applications.

This is a pan European issue that all countries need to deal with.

As for Ebola, it could take months even years for a person trafficked from the DRC to reach the UK even if they wanted to come here. The language of the DRC is French. Untreated they would be dead long before they ever reached France let alone the UK. Asylum seekers from the DRC make up a very small fraction of those seeking refuge in the UK, with only 134 Congolese nationals applying for asylum in the year to June 2025. Ebola is not an airborne disease. It transmits through blood, sweat, saliva, vomit, semen or vaginal fluids. There is an effective vaccine.

The current Ebola outbreak poses a low risk to the UK population. Although the outbreak is serious, it is rare for Ebola cases to occur in returning travellers. In the UK, the NHS has safe procedures in place for any such cases and specialist centres where they can be looked after.

ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/18/what-is-ebola-and-how-does-it-spread/

Do read the official information about this and stop scaremongering.

"Put simply, France has a similar population to the UK yet is receiving and processing far more asylum applications."

France is twice the size of the UK so they have far more room for an expanding population.

The councils are already building on our greenbelts to accommodate the population growth.

Only around 6% of the UK is developed and that includes all the houses, schools, shopping centres, factories, the entire built environment and all the green space within it.

We have far more land given over to golf courses than urban development. Fairways cover about four times more land than continuous urban fabric, and roughly twice the land used for all UK homes. The UK proritises people chasing a small white ball over housing and infrastructure.

There are around one millon homes in England alone sitting long term empty.

It is a complete myth that the UK does not have enough space to accommodate everybody needing a home including those coming from overseas.

What it doesn't have is the political will, or even if it does, the the cooperation required from powerful landowners and construction companies to build more homes or to bring back into use those that are sitting empty.

JenniferEccles

I don’t necessarily think highly of him generally - like I said he certainly has had some crazy ideas, but I am thinking about how he has stopped, or at least drastically reduced, the number of Mexican migrants and drug smugglers from pouring over the border into the US.
He said he would do it and he did.

Yes, let’s just ignore the US citizens killed along the way 🙄

It’s an easy solution for lazy thinkers to say it’s France’s problem though. As is any other glibly voiced ‘solution’ which implies that the UK should not face up to the reality, like other developed nations have to, and work together with them to help find real solutions. It’s the me, me, me culture at play.

friendlygingercat

With the outbreak of a new and virulent strain of Ebola in Africa (for which there is no effective test or diagnosis) is no one worried about these horrific African diseases entering this country? We have no idea where these boat people have been or what land route they took. So a good reason to process them offshore until they can be cleared of infection. We have enough cold and wet little islands in the far North of Scotland.

WTF? Those cold and wet little islands have populations just as important as you! Though Tbf, Scotland is far more welcoming to immigrants than England generally is.

Incidentally, they’re not “African” diseases. They’re diseases that affect human beings. You know, the same species as you?

The way some people try to “other” is pretty disgusting.

“These boat people”? Seriously, have a word with yourself. They’re just people.

Though Tbf, Scotland is far more welcoming to immigrants than England generally is.
Scotland has a nearly 93% white ethnicity, England around 81% white ethnicity, London as a whole 54% white ethnicity. I wonder why so many immigrants choose to stay in England and especially London when Scotland is so much more welcoming?