comment by Trump 2024- Let's make America great again. (U9692)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by HB Fash (U21935)
posted 3 minutes ago
comment by Darren The String Fletcher (U10026)
posted 11 minutes ago
If we are not the first safe country then by and large they should not be given asylum.
———
This is dumb, the geography of the British Isles renders it nearly impossible to arrive at as the first safe country for the vast majority of asylum seekers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What's dumb is seeking safety and proceeding through countless safe countries to find a safe country
----------------------------------------------------------------------
One who speaks English, or has friends or relatives here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pretty sure you're supposed to seek asylum in the first safe country regardless of where your friends or relatives live or what language they speak.
I guess countless wars and the world becoming uninhabitable in many areas is the cause for that. It's only going to get worse and western countries are largely to blame for a lot of that.
I'm not sure people like HB Fash appreciate how hostile UK laws are to migrants - including legal migrants - already. People come to work here, pay taxes, and still have to pay an extra levy to have the right to access healthcare. You have the grotesque situation of NHS workers keeping the NHS going with their own labour, paying taxes that go towards funding the NHS, but having to pay an extra fee that no British citizen has to pay. You have foreign students whose exorbitant fees are keeping the higher education sector afloat made to feel unwelcome through restrictions on their ability to work or to bring family members, resulting in an economically harmful brain drain of graduates who could be setting up businesses and powering our science after graduation. You have British people falling in love with foreigners and not being able to live together in this country unless they earn a sizeable salary (regardless of the skills and earning potential of their foreign spouse). We have thousands and thousands of asylum seekers languishing in squalid B&Bs without the right to work, living in limbo, dreaming of putting down roots and working hard but fearing deportation to a country where their life or liberty may be in danger. We have people in their sixties who came to the country as children, worked their whole lives, and now discover they are being hunted down under suspicion of not having the right to stay because no one ever told them they needed to fill in forms to get citizenship.
'Hostile environment' has been official UK Government immigration policy for years. Anyone who cares to look at what this means at the sharp end will never again truthfully claim we are soft on migration.
comment by HB Fash (U21935)
posted 9 minutes ago
comment by Trump 2024- Let's make America great again. (U9692)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by HB Fash (U21935)
posted 3 minutes ago
comment by Darren The String Fletcher (U10026)
posted 11 minutes ago
If we are not the first safe country then by and large they should not be given asylum.
———
This is dumb, the geography of the British Isles renders it nearly impossible to arrive at as the first safe country for the vast majority of asylum seekers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What's dumb is seeking safety and proceeding through countless safe countries to find a safe country
----------------------------------------------------------------------
One who speaks English, or has friends or relatives here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pretty sure you're supposed to seek asylum in the first safe country regardless of where your friends or relatives live or what language they speak.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Then you’d be wrong.
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 8 minutes ago
I'm not sure people like HB Fash appreciate how hostile UK laws are to migrants - including legal migrants - already. People come to work here, pay taxes, and still have to pay an extra levy to have the right to access healthcare. You have the grotesque situation of NHS workers keeping the NHS going with their own labour, paying taxes that go towards funding the NHS, but having to pay an extra fee that no British citizen has to pay. You have foreign students whose exorbitant fees are keeping the higher education sector afloat made to feel unwelcome through restrictions on their ability to work or to bring family members, resulting in an economically harmful brain drain of graduates who could be setting up businesses and powering our science after graduation. You have British people falling in love with foreigners and not being able to live together in this country unless they earn a sizeable salary (regardless of the skills and earning potential of their foreign spouse). We have thousands and thousands of asylum seekers languishing in squalid B&Bs without the right to work, living in limbo, dreaming of putting down roots and working hard but fearing deportation to a country where their life or liberty may be in danger. We have people in their sixties who came to the country as children, worked their whole lives, and now discover they are being hunted down under suspicion of not having the right to stay because no one ever told them they needed to fill in forms to get citizenship.
'Hostile environment' has been official UK Government immigration policy for years. Anyone who cares to look at what this means at the sharp end will never again truthfully claim we are soft on migration.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hostile compared to???
https://freemovement.org.uk/are-refugees-obliged-to-claim-asylum-in-the-first-safe-country-they-reach/#:~:text=So%2C%20to%20sum%20up%2C%20there,in%20the%20EU%20and%20beyond.
comment by Darren The String Fletcher (U10026)
posted 2 minutes ago
comment by HB Fash (U21935)
posted 9 minutes ago
comment by Trump 2024- Let's make America great again. (U9692)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by HB Fash (U21935)
posted 3 minutes ago
comment by Darren The String Fletcher (U10026)
posted 11 minutes ago
If we are not the first safe country then by and large they should not be given asylum.
———
This is dumb, the geography of the British Isles renders it nearly impossible to arrive at as the first safe country for the vast majority of asylum seekers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What's dumb is seeking safety and proceeding through countless safe countries to find a safe country
----------------------------------------------------------------------
One who speaks English, or has friends or relatives here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pretty sure you're supposed to seek asylum in the first safe country regardless of where your friends or relatives live or what language they speak.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Then you’d be wrong.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You learn something new every day.
Although
UK domestic law allows the government to refuse to consider an asylum application if it is judged that the person could have claimed asylum elsewhere.
So doesn't bar you from claiming, just makes it more likely you aren't granted Asylum.
If we’re serious about lowering immigration
Just show videos to the rest of the world of U.K. coastal towns and all the boarded up high streets, rough sleepers, crackheads, spice zombies and Wetherspoons
That’s got to put a few million off
Immigration crisis solved.
https://youtu.be/QaQ5CFYKuQ4?si=oCTaor1fmz6aWbZM
1,200,000 people came in last year alone; this is simply unsustainable.
------------------------------------------------------
It's useful to put that number in context. First of all, half a million people left the country last year as well. Secondly, by far the largest two categories of migration are students (who are overwhelmingly coming to the UK on a temporary basis) and people with work visa (many of whom come to the UK temporarily). This is reflected in the high numbers of people also exiting the UK. Thirdly, numbers have spiked in part due to allowing many Ukrainians to come to the UK.
I would encourage anyone talking about the total numbers to ask which migrants in their proposed world of lower migration we should not be letting into the country. Do we want to refuse foreign students - and figure out a different way to keep our higher education sector afloat; and accept the reduction in economic activity, entrepreneurship, foreign investment, etc. that directly springs from these migrants? Do we want to drastically reduce the numbers of people entering the country legally to work in a sector that is unable to recruit enough workers? (As an employer, I can vouch for the fact that it's pretty tricky to employ a foreigner who lives abroad, so I'm assuming that visas are granted only where there's a compelling case that the business requires those skills and can't fill the position from the domestic workforce.) Are we saying that we shouldn't take in our fair share of refugees in a world our governments have done their fair share to destabilise?
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 2 minutes ago
1,200,000 people came in last year alone; this is simply unsustainable.
------------------------------------------------------
It's useful to put that number in context. First of all, half a million people left the country last year as well. Secondly, by far the largest two categories of migration are students (who are overwhelmingly coming to the UK on a temporary basis) and people with work visa (many of whom come to the UK temporarily). This is reflected in the high numbers of people also exiting the UK. Thirdly, numbers have spiked in part due to allowing many Ukrainians to come to the UK.
I would encourage anyone talking about the total numbers to ask which migrants in their proposed world of lower migration we should not be letting into the country. Do we want to refuse foreign students - and figure out a different way to keep our higher education sector afloat; and accept the reduction in economic activity, entrepreneurship, foreign investment, etc. that directly springs from these migrants? Do we want to drastically reduce the numbers of people entering the country legally to work in a sector that is unable to recruit enough workers? (As an employer, I can vouch for the fact that it's pretty tricky to employ a foreigner who lives abroad, so I'm assuming that visas are granted only where there's a compelling case that the business requires those skills and can't fill the position from the domestic workforce.) Are we saying that we shouldn't take in our fair share of refugees in a world our governments have done their fair share to destabilise?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The purpose of the people coming in is irrelevant when it’s at those levels.
Yes context is a net figure roughly 14 times what it used to be. 14 times….
Students, workers, asylum seekers, refugees - it doesn’t matter. Those numbers are unsustainable for our country. We would have to spend trillions to build up our infrastructure enough to sufficiently counter the increase in the population, money that we do not have and have not had for generations now.
As for how lower numbers of migration are to be implemented; plenty of countries employ a more ‘hostile’ and/or controlled system than we do. So we can look to their guidelines for guidance.
It’s not that tricky.
Hostile compared to???
------------------------------------------------------------
I don't follow your question. "Hostile environment" was a government slogan, which the Home Office really took to heart in terms of demeaning treatment of people going through the immigration system. Putting up mean bureaucratic and financial obstacles to people who legally apply to work; making it harder for those legally living in the UK to lead a dignified and integrated life; aggressively pursuing residents of the UK for decades who they suspected may not have the right to stay (leading to deportations of elderly black British citizens, the Windrush scandal, erroneous demands to leave the country sent to EU citizens who had secured the right to remain after Brexit); appalling treatment of asylum seekers, the majority of whom a system that is primed to treat applications with scepticism eventually accepts as genuinely fleeing danger.
I would say:
Points based system
Legal immigration only
Emphasis on skills when considering applications; doctors, nurses, surgeons, scientists etc etc all score higher
Illegal immigrants should be immediately deported and anyone crossing the channel illegally will not be escorted by us in into Dover and then put in a luxury hotel resulting in them ultimately staying
Set number granted per year, with no exceptions at all.
Also must be fluent in English, spoken and a decent standard of writing/reading English too.
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 3 minutes ago
Hostile compared to???
------------------------------------------------------------
I don't follow your question. "Hostile environment" was a government slogan, which the Home Office really took to heart in terms of demeaning treatment of people going through the immigration system. Putting up mean bureaucratic and financial obstacles to people who legally apply to work; making it harder for those legally living in the UK to lead a dignified and integrated life; aggressively pursuing residents of the UK for decades who they suspected may not have the right to stay (leading to deportations of elderly black British citizens, the Windrush scandal, erroneous demands to leave the country sent to EU citizens who had secured the right to remain after Brexit); appalling treatment of asylum seekers, the majority of whom a system that is primed to treat applications with scepticism eventually accepts as genuinely fleeing danger.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
'm not sure people like HB Fash appreciate how hostile UK laws are to migrants
Hostile compared to?
comment by Sat Nav (U18243)
posted 26 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 8 minutes ago
I'm not sure people like HB Fash appreciate how hostile UK laws are to migrants - including legal migrants - already. People come to work here, pay taxes, and still have to pay an extra levy to have the right to access healthcare. You have the grotesque situation of NHS workers keeping the NHS going with their own labour, paying taxes that go towards funding the NHS, but having to pay an extra fee that no British citizen has to pay. You have foreign students whose exorbitant fees are keeping the higher education sector afloat made to feel unwelcome through restrictions on their ability to work or to bring family members, resulting in an economically harmful brain drain of graduates who could be setting up businesses and powering our science after graduation. You have British people falling in love with foreigners and not being able to live together in this country unless they earn a sizeable salary (regardless of the skills and earning potential of their foreign spouse). We have thousands and thousands of asylum seekers languishing in squalid B&Bs without the right to work, living in limbo, dreaming of putting down roots and working hard but fearing deportation to a country where their life or liberty may be in danger. We have people in their sixties who came to the country as children, worked their whole lives, and now discover they are being hunted down under suspicion of not having the right to stay because no one ever told them they needed to fill in forms to get citizenship.
'Hostile environment' has been official UK Government immigration policy for years. Anyone who cares to look at what this means at the sharp end will never again truthfully claim we are soft on migration.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hostile compared to???
----------------------------------------------------------------------
As a bit of an abstract comparison, most new employees are not entitled to the benefits that other employees get until the have served a certain period of time, and that includes the NHS.
I do not think this is unreasonable or a hostile approach, but actually is fair to those existing employees who have earned the benefits through time served and also prevents exploitation.
It certainly used to be an issue where migrants would come here seeking to use our superior health service for example. When i lived in London my wife's hospital built a new maternity ward. By the time it was planned, built and open (late 00s) , it was already too small to serve the community and meet the demand and a large part of this was due to migration and healthcare 'tourists'
I am not sure how long people have to work for here before qualifying but I do not think it is hostile or unreasonable to expect some time to be served before being entitled to it, particularly where it prevents exploitation. Even private health insurance has a qualifying time before certain claims can be made.
comment by Sat Nav (U18243)
posted 1 minute ago
As for how lower numbers of migration are to be implemented; plenty of countries employ a more ‘hostile’ and/or controlled system than we do. So we can look to their guidelines for guidance.
It’s not that tricky.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not that simplistic. There's not a finite amount of money to go round. The majority categories within the net ~700k increase last year are economic contributors. The net impact of immigration is economically positive. They generate economic activity. They generate wealth.
I don't mean to glibly imply that there are no challenges involved in high migration, as the wealth generated by this workforce needs to be reinvested and there's a lag between investment and the appearance of the infrastructure (and this depends on having a government that is interested in long-term investment, which was a colossal failure of the Tory government). But a nuanced conversation has to be about how you match up the net economic boon of immigration (and the fundamental necessity of importing workers when we have a rapidly ageing economy) with the infrastructural challenges caused by population growth. And it's impossible to have an intelligent conversation when everything is framed by an idea of a zero sum game where the country is sharing out one cake which never grows or shrinks.
I think the issue is in this country is a some jobs are completely beneath Brits, I work in an airport. Probably the biggest hotbed in the country for immigrant workers.
I work in car rental. Out of a team of 100 people, about 10 of us were born in this country. We’ve got Eastern Europeans cleaning our cars, not one British employee, and the bus drivers are largely from India. Even my job which is pretty well paid if you hit the commission targets it’s full of Asian/Eastern Europe employees. Productivity in this country is just absolutely lax, people don’t want to get their hands dirty.
So what do we do going forwards? Continue to accept every Tom, Mick and Ali Akba from around the world onto this island and just accept that occasionally, some British people will get murdered? In all due to respect to immigrants, its not Italian, Latin, German students knifing kids and blowing up concerts is it? Its a particular demographic that poses the real threat and those people should not be allowed here.
Points system
English speaking
Skills based recruitment
No freeloaders, offenders deported back to there home country.
comment by Busby (U19985)
posted 1 hour, 13 minutes ago
comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 1 minute ago
How many were accepted in the UK?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"There were 67,337 asylum applications (relating to 84,425 people) in the UK in the year ending December 2023. A total of 49,862 people were granted protection in the year ending December 2023 as a result of an asylum claim"
Circa 75%
----------------------------------------------------------------------
And iirc c. 50% of the rejected get through on appeal?
comment by Shaun M - supercalifragilisticOrtaisatrocious (U9955)
posted 9 seconds ago
So what do we do going forwards? Continue to accept every Tom, Mick and Ali Akba from around the world onto this island and just accept that occasionally, some British people will get murdered? In all due to respect to immigrants, its not Italian, Latin, German students knifing kids and blowing up concerts is it? Its a particular demographic that poses the real threat and those people should not be allowed here.
Points system
English speaking
Skills based recruitment
No freeloaders, offenders deported back to there home country.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
All sounds great in theory but having granted asylum UK have just admitted that their home country is not safe so we have to deal with it - no other cant is then taking them on and it would be against their human rights to send them back though your argument has some merit - 10-20 year probation.
comment by Busby (U19985)
posted 1 hour, 10 minutes ago
comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 1 minute ago
How many were accepted in the UK?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"There were 67,337 asylum applications (relating to 84,425 people) in the UK in the year ending December 2023. A total of 49,862 people were granted protection in the year ending December 2023 as a result of an asylum claim"
Circa 75%
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hold on.
The first figure is asylum applications lodged in 2023. The second figure is applications granted in 2023. But not all of those granted (or rejected) last year were lodged last year, so it isn’t as simple as dividing one figure by the other.
Last time I checked, there were circa 120,000 people waiting for their applications to be determined. Thanks to the Tories purposefully slowing down the processing of asylum applications, some of those people have been waiting a very long time for a determination.
And the point isn’t trying to compete with other nations to approve the smallest proportion of applications; it’s to determine applications correctly (i.e. ensuring that people in legitimate need are rightly protected and we meet our obligations under international law).
The UK and EU will also see refugees from different countries and with different circumstances claiming asylum, so there’s a degree of apples and oranges at play.
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 12 minutes ago
comment by Sat Nav (U18243)
posted 1 minute ago
As for how lower numbers of migration are to be implemented; plenty of countries employ a more ‘hostile’ and/or controlled system than we do. So we can look to their guidelines for guidance.
It’s not that tricky.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not that simplistic. There's not a finite amount of money to go round. The majority categories within the net ~700k increase last year are economic contributors. The net impact of immigration is economically positive. They generate economic activity. They generate wealth.
I don't mean to glibly imply that there are no challenges involved in high migration, as the wealth generated by this workforce needs to be reinvested and there's a lag between investment and the appearance of the infrastructure (and this depends on having a government that is interested in long-term investment, which was a colossal failure of the Tory government). But a nuanced conversation has to be about how you match up the net economic boon of immigration (and the fundamental necessity of importing workers when we have a rapidly ageing economy) with the infrastructural challenges caused by population growth. And it's impossible to have an intelligent conversation when everything is framed by an idea of a zero sum game where the country is sharing out one cake which never grows or shrinks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
There’s not a finite amount of money to go round? Is that a typo? Because without disastrous consequences, there certainly is a finite amount of money to go round.
Net positive on migration economically is not something that I am contending, hence only referring to infrastructure and housing for that matter.
High immigration numbers being a positive economically is exactly why recent governments since 1997 have allowed such high numbers. It makes the economy look better than it is. GDP looks good, GDP per capita looks somewhat different.
comment by Busby (U19985)
posted 1 hour, 27 minutes ago
comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 1 minute ago
How many were accepted in the UK?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"There were 67,337 asylum applications (relating to 84,425 people) in the UK in the year ending December 2023. A total of 49,862 people were granted protection in the year ending December 2023 as a result of an asylum claim"
Circa 75%
----------------------------------------------------------------------
So we have accepted more than Germany in terms of numbers despite having 5 times fewer applications? Apparently the number of asylum seeker applicatiions we accepted last year saw an increase of 247%.
Sign in if you want to comment
Immigration
Page 2 of 11
6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Trump 2024- Let's make America great again. (U9692)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by HB Fash (U21935)
posted 3 minutes ago
comment by Darren The String Fletcher (U10026)
posted 11 minutes ago
If we are not the first safe country then by and large they should not be given asylum.
———
This is dumb, the geography of the British Isles renders it nearly impossible to arrive at as the first safe country for the vast majority of asylum seekers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What's dumb is seeking safety and proceeding through countless safe countries to find a safe country
----------------------------------------------------------------------
One who speaks English, or has friends or relatives here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pretty sure you're supposed to seek asylum in the first safe country regardless of where your friends or relatives live or what language they speak.
posted on 30/7/24
I guess countless wars and the world becoming uninhabitable in many areas is the cause for that. It's only going to get worse and western countries are largely to blame for a lot of that.
posted on 30/7/24
I'm not sure people like HB Fash appreciate how hostile UK laws are to migrants - including legal migrants - already. People come to work here, pay taxes, and still have to pay an extra levy to have the right to access healthcare. You have the grotesque situation of NHS workers keeping the NHS going with their own labour, paying taxes that go towards funding the NHS, but having to pay an extra fee that no British citizen has to pay. You have foreign students whose exorbitant fees are keeping the higher education sector afloat made to feel unwelcome through restrictions on their ability to work or to bring family members, resulting in an economically harmful brain drain of graduates who could be setting up businesses and powering our science after graduation. You have British people falling in love with foreigners and not being able to live together in this country unless they earn a sizeable salary (regardless of the skills and earning potential of their foreign spouse). We have thousands and thousands of asylum seekers languishing in squalid B&Bs without the right to work, living in limbo, dreaming of putting down roots and working hard but fearing deportation to a country where their life or liberty may be in danger. We have people in their sixties who came to the country as children, worked their whole lives, and now discover they are being hunted down under suspicion of not having the right to stay because no one ever told them they needed to fill in forms to get citizenship.
'Hostile environment' has been official UK Government immigration policy for years. Anyone who cares to look at what this means at the sharp end will never again truthfully claim we are soft on migration.
posted on 30/7/24
comment by HB Fash (U21935)
posted 9 minutes ago
comment by Trump 2024- Let's make America great again. (U9692)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by HB Fash (U21935)
posted 3 minutes ago
comment by Darren The String Fletcher (U10026)
posted 11 minutes ago
If we are not the first safe country then by and large they should not be given asylum.
———
This is dumb, the geography of the British Isles renders it nearly impossible to arrive at as the first safe country for the vast majority of asylum seekers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What's dumb is seeking safety and proceeding through countless safe countries to find a safe country
----------------------------------------------------------------------
One who speaks English, or has friends or relatives here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pretty sure you're supposed to seek asylum in the first safe country regardless of where your friends or relatives live or what language they speak.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Then you’d be wrong.
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 8 minutes ago
I'm not sure people like HB Fash appreciate how hostile UK laws are to migrants - including legal migrants - already. People come to work here, pay taxes, and still have to pay an extra levy to have the right to access healthcare. You have the grotesque situation of NHS workers keeping the NHS going with their own labour, paying taxes that go towards funding the NHS, but having to pay an extra fee that no British citizen has to pay. You have foreign students whose exorbitant fees are keeping the higher education sector afloat made to feel unwelcome through restrictions on their ability to work or to bring family members, resulting in an economically harmful brain drain of graduates who could be setting up businesses and powering our science after graduation. You have British people falling in love with foreigners and not being able to live together in this country unless they earn a sizeable salary (regardless of the skills and earning potential of their foreign spouse). We have thousands and thousands of asylum seekers languishing in squalid B&Bs without the right to work, living in limbo, dreaming of putting down roots and working hard but fearing deportation to a country where their life or liberty may be in danger. We have people in their sixties who came to the country as children, worked their whole lives, and now discover they are being hunted down under suspicion of not having the right to stay because no one ever told them they needed to fill in forms to get citizenship.
'Hostile environment' has been official UK Government immigration policy for years. Anyone who cares to look at what this means at the sharp end will never again truthfully claim we are soft on migration.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hostile compared to???
posted on 30/7/24
https://freemovement.org.uk/are-refugees-obliged-to-claim-asylum-in-the-first-safe-country-they-reach/#:~:text=So%2C%20to%20sum%20up%2C%20there,in%20the%20EU%20and%20beyond.
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Darren The String Fletcher (U10026)
posted 2 minutes ago
comment by HB Fash (U21935)
posted 9 minutes ago
comment by Trump 2024- Let's make America great again. (U9692)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by HB Fash (U21935)
posted 3 minutes ago
comment by Darren The String Fletcher (U10026)
posted 11 minutes ago
If we are not the first safe country then by and large they should not be given asylum.
———
This is dumb, the geography of the British Isles renders it nearly impossible to arrive at as the first safe country for the vast majority of asylum seekers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What's dumb is seeking safety and proceeding through countless safe countries to find a safe country
----------------------------------------------------------------------
One who speaks English, or has friends or relatives here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pretty sure you're supposed to seek asylum in the first safe country regardless of where your friends or relatives live or what language they speak.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Then you’d be wrong.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You learn something new every day.
Although
UK domestic law allows the government to refuse to consider an asylum application if it is judged that the person could have claimed asylum elsewhere.
So doesn't bar you from claiming, just makes it more likely you aren't granted Asylum.
posted on 30/7/24
If we’re serious about lowering immigration
Just show videos to the rest of the world of U.K. coastal towns and all the boarded up high streets, rough sleepers, crackheads, spice zombies and Wetherspoons
That’s got to put a few million off
posted on 30/7/24
Immigration crisis solved.
https://youtu.be/QaQ5CFYKuQ4?si=oCTaor1fmz6aWbZM
posted on 30/7/24
1,200,000 people came in last year alone; this is simply unsustainable.
------------------------------------------------------
It's useful to put that number in context. First of all, half a million people left the country last year as well. Secondly, by far the largest two categories of migration are students (who are overwhelmingly coming to the UK on a temporary basis) and people with work visa (many of whom come to the UK temporarily). This is reflected in the high numbers of people also exiting the UK. Thirdly, numbers have spiked in part due to allowing many Ukrainians to come to the UK.
I would encourage anyone talking about the total numbers to ask which migrants in their proposed world of lower migration we should not be letting into the country. Do we want to refuse foreign students - and figure out a different way to keep our higher education sector afloat; and accept the reduction in economic activity, entrepreneurship, foreign investment, etc. that directly springs from these migrants? Do we want to drastically reduce the numbers of people entering the country legally to work in a sector that is unable to recruit enough workers? (As an employer, I can vouch for the fact that it's pretty tricky to employ a foreigner who lives abroad, so I'm assuming that visas are granted only where there's a compelling case that the business requires those skills and can't fill the position from the domestic workforce.) Are we saying that we shouldn't take in our fair share of refugees in a world our governments have done their fair share to destabilise?
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 2 minutes ago
1,200,000 people came in last year alone; this is simply unsustainable.
------------------------------------------------------
It's useful to put that number in context. First of all, half a million people left the country last year as well. Secondly, by far the largest two categories of migration are students (who are overwhelmingly coming to the UK on a temporary basis) and people with work visa (many of whom come to the UK temporarily). This is reflected in the high numbers of people also exiting the UK. Thirdly, numbers have spiked in part due to allowing many Ukrainians to come to the UK.
I would encourage anyone talking about the total numbers to ask which migrants in their proposed world of lower migration we should not be letting into the country. Do we want to refuse foreign students - and figure out a different way to keep our higher education sector afloat; and accept the reduction in economic activity, entrepreneurship, foreign investment, etc. that directly springs from these migrants? Do we want to drastically reduce the numbers of people entering the country legally to work in a sector that is unable to recruit enough workers? (As an employer, I can vouch for the fact that it's pretty tricky to employ a foreigner who lives abroad, so I'm assuming that visas are granted only where there's a compelling case that the business requires those skills and can't fill the position from the domestic workforce.) Are we saying that we shouldn't take in our fair share of refugees in a world our governments have done their fair share to destabilise?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The purpose of the people coming in is irrelevant when it’s at those levels.
Yes context is a net figure roughly 14 times what it used to be. 14 times….
Students, workers, asylum seekers, refugees - it doesn’t matter. Those numbers are unsustainable for our country. We would have to spend trillions to build up our infrastructure enough to sufficiently counter the increase in the population, money that we do not have and have not had for generations now.
posted on 30/7/24
As for how lower numbers of migration are to be implemented; plenty of countries employ a more ‘hostile’ and/or controlled system than we do. So we can look to their guidelines for guidance.
It’s not that tricky.
posted on 30/7/24
Hostile compared to???
------------------------------------------------------------
I don't follow your question. "Hostile environment" was a government slogan, which the Home Office really took to heart in terms of demeaning treatment of people going through the immigration system. Putting up mean bureaucratic and financial obstacles to people who legally apply to work; making it harder for those legally living in the UK to lead a dignified and integrated life; aggressively pursuing residents of the UK for decades who they suspected may not have the right to stay (leading to deportations of elderly black British citizens, the Windrush scandal, erroneous demands to leave the country sent to EU citizens who had secured the right to remain after Brexit); appalling treatment of asylum seekers, the majority of whom a system that is primed to treat applications with scepticism eventually accepts as genuinely fleeing danger.
posted on 30/7/24
I would say:
Points based system
Legal immigration only
Emphasis on skills when considering applications; doctors, nurses, surgeons, scientists etc etc all score higher
Illegal immigrants should be immediately deported and anyone crossing the channel illegally will not be escorted by us in into Dover and then put in a luxury hotel resulting in them ultimately staying
Set number granted per year, with no exceptions at all.
posted on 30/7/24
Also must be fluent in English, spoken and a decent standard of writing/reading English too.
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 3 minutes ago
Hostile compared to???
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I don't follow your question. "Hostile environment" was a government slogan, which the Home Office really took to heart in terms of demeaning treatment of people going through the immigration system. Putting up mean bureaucratic and financial obstacles to people who legally apply to work; making it harder for those legally living in the UK to lead a dignified and integrated life; aggressively pursuing residents of the UK for decades who they suspected may not have the right to stay (leading to deportations of elderly black British citizens, the Windrush scandal, erroneous demands to leave the country sent to EU citizens who had secured the right to remain after Brexit); appalling treatment of asylum seekers, the majority of whom a system that is primed to treat applications with scepticism eventually accepts as genuinely fleeing danger.
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'm not sure people like HB Fash appreciate how hostile UK laws are to migrants
Hostile compared to?
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Sat Nav (U18243)
posted 26 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 8 minutes ago
I'm not sure people like HB Fash appreciate how hostile UK laws are to migrants - including legal migrants - already. People come to work here, pay taxes, and still have to pay an extra levy to have the right to access healthcare. You have the grotesque situation of NHS workers keeping the NHS going with their own labour, paying taxes that go towards funding the NHS, but having to pay an extra fee that no British citizen has to pay. You have foreign students whose exorbitant fees are keeping the higher education sector afloat made to feel unwelcome through restrictions on their ability to work or to bring family members, resulting in an economically harmful brain drain of graduates who could be setting up businesses and powering our science after graduation. You have British people falling in love with foreigners and not being able to live together in this country unless they earn a sizeable salary (regardless of the skills and earning potential of their foreign spouse). We have thousands and thousands of asylum seekers languishing in squalid B&Bs without the right to work, living in limbo, dreaming of putting down roots and working hard but fearing deportation to a country where their life or liberty may be in danger. We have people in their sixties who came to the country as children, worked their whole lives, and now discover they are being hunted down under suspicion of not having the right to stay because no one ever told them they needed to fill in forms to get citizenship.
'Hostile environment' has been official UK Government immigration policy for years. Anyone who cares to look at what this means at the sharp end will never again truthfully claim we are soft on migration.
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Hostile compared to???
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As a bit of an abstract comparison, most new employees are not entitled to the benefits that other employees get until the have served a certain period of time, and that includes the NHS.
I do not think this is unreasonable or a hostile approach, but actually is fair to those existing employees who have earned the benefits through time served and also prevents exploitation.
It certainly used to be an issue where migrants would come here seeking to use our superior health service for example. When i lived in London my wife's hospital built a new maternity ward. By the time it was planned, built and open (late 00s) , it was already too small to serve the community and meet the demand and a large part of this was due to migration and healthcare 'tourists'
I am not sure how long people have to work for here before qualifying but I do not think it is hostile or unreasonable to expect some time to be served before being entitled to it, particularly where it prevents exploitation. Even private health insurance has a qualifying time before certain claims can be made.
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Sat Nav (U18243)
posted 1 minute ago
As for how lower numbers of migration are to be implemented; plenty of countries employ a more ‘hostile’ and/or controlled system than we do. So we can look to their guidelines for guidance.
It’s not that tricky.
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It's not that simplistic. There's not a finite amount of money to go round. The majority categories within the net ~700k increase last year are economic contributors. The net impact of immigration is economically positive. They generate economic activity. They generate wealth.
I don't mean to glibly imply that there are no challenges involved in high migration, as the wealth generated by this workforce needs to be reinvested and there's a lag between investment and the appearance of the infrastructure (and this depends on having a government that is interested in long-term investment, which was a colossal failure of the Tory government). But a nuanced conversation has to be about how you match up the net economic boon of immigration (and the fundamental necessity of importing workers when we have a rapidly ageing economy) with the infrastructural challenges caused by population growth. And it's impossible to have an intelligent conversation when everything is framed by an idea of a zero sum game where the country is sharing out one cake which never grows or shrinks.
posted on 30/7/24
I think the issue is in this country is a some jobs are completely beneath Brits, I work in an airport. Probably the biggest hotbed in the country for immigrant workers.
I work in car rental. Out of a team of 100 people, about 10 of us were born in this country. We’ve got Eastern Europeans cleaning our cars, not one British employee, and the bus drivers are largely from India. Even my job which is pretty well paid if you hit the commission targets it’s full of Asian/Eastern Europe employees. Productivity in this country is just absolutely lax, people don’t want to get their hands dirty.
posted on 30/7/24
So what do we do going forwards? Continue to accept every Tom, Mick and Ali Akba from around the world onto this island and just accept that occasionally, some British people will get murdered? In all due to respect to immigrants, its not Italian, Latin, German students knifing kids and blowing up concerts is it? Its a particular demographic that poses the real threat and those people should not be allowed here.
Points system
English speaking
Skills based recruitment
No freeloaders, offenders deported back to there home country.
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Busby (U19985)
posted 1 hour, 13 minutes ago
comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 1 minute ago
How many were accepted in the UK?
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"There were 67,337 asylum applications (relating to 84,425 people) in the UK in the year ending December 2023. A total of 49,862 people were granted protection in the year ending December 2023 as a result of an asylum claim"
Circa 75%
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And iirc c. 50% of the rejected get through on appeal?
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Shaun M - supercalifragilisticOrtaisatrocious (U9955)
posted 9 seconds ago
So what do we do going forwards? Continue to accept every Tom, Mick and Ali Akba from around the world onto this island and just accept that occasionally, some British people will get murdered? In all due to respect to immigrants, its not Italian, Latin, German students knifing kids and blowing up concerts is it? Its a particular demographic that poses the real threat and those people should not be allowed here.
Points system
English speaking
Skills based recruitment
No freeloaders, offenders deported back to there home country.
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All sounds great in theory but having granted asylum UK have just admitted that their home country is not safe so we have to deal with it - no other cant is then taking them on and it would be against their human rights to send them back though your argument has some merit - 10-20 year probation.
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Busby (U19985)
posted 1 hour, 10 minutes ago
comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 1 minute ago
How many were accepted in the UK?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"There were 67,337 asylum applications (relating to 84,425 people) in the UK in the year ending December 2023. A total of 49,862 people were granted protection in the year ending December 2023 as a result of an asylum claim"
Circa 75%
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Hold on.
The first figure is asylum applications lodged in 2023. The second figure is applications granted in 2023. But not all of those granted (or rejected) last year were lodged last year, so it isn’t as simple as dividing one figure by the other.
Last time I checked, there were circa 120,000 people waiting for their applications to be determined. Thanks to the Tories purposefully slowing down the processing of asylum applications, some of those people have been waiting a very long time for a determination.
And the point isn’t trying to compete with other nations to approve the smallest proportion of applications; it’s to determine applications correctly (i.e. ensuring that people in legitimate need are rightly protected and we meet our obligations under international law).
The UK and EU will also see refugees from different countries and with different circumstances claiming asylum, so there’s a degree of apples and oranges at play.
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 12 minutes ago
comment by Sat Nav (U18243)
posted 1 minute ago
As for how lower numbers of migration are to be implemented; plenty of countries employ a more ‘hostile’ and/or controlled system than we do. So we can look to their guidelines for guidance.
It’s not that tricky.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not that simplistic. There's not a finite amount of money to go round. The majority categories within the net ~700k increase last year are economic contributors. The net impact of immigration is economically positive. They generate economic activity. They generate wealth.
I don't mean to glibly imply that there are no challenges involved in high migration, as the wealth generated by this workforce needs to be reinvested and there's a lag between investment and the appearance of the infrastructure (and this depends on having a government that is interested in long-term investment, which was a colossal failure of the Tory government). But a nuanced conversation has to be about how you match up the net economic boon of immigration (and the fundamental necessity of importing workers when we have a rapidly ageing economy) with the infrastructural challenges caused by population growth. And it's impossible to have an intelligent conversation when everything is framed by an idea of a zero sum game where the country is sharing out one cake which never grows or shrinks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
There’s not a finite amount of money to go round? Is that a typo? Because without disastrous consequences, there certainly is a finite amount of money to go round.
Net positive on migration economically is not something that I am contending, hence only referring to infrastructure and housing for that matter.
High immigration numbers being a positive economically is exactly why recent governments since 1997 have allowed such high numbers. It makes the economy look better than it is. GDP looks good, GDP per capita looks somewhat different.
posted on 30/7/24
comment by Busby (U19985)
posted 1 hour, 27 minutes ago
comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 1 minute ago
How many were accepted in the UK?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"There were 67,337 asylum applications (relating to 84,425 people) in the UK in the year ending December 2023. A total of 49,862 people were granted protection in the year ending December 2023 as a result of an asylum claim"
Circa 75%
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So we have accepted more than Germany in terms of numbers despite having 5 times fewer applications? Apparently the number of asylum seeker applicatiions we accepted last year saw an increase of 247%.
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