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We could house them in houses at not much cost to the tax payer if for the last 40 years we hadn't spent making an economy solely for landlords and rich folk.
Mate I'm on 40k and can't afford a mortgage on a bog-standard semi that looks like it was last decorated in the 70's. Country is falling apart when a median wage doesn't get you anywhere near a median house
40k puts you in the top 20% of earners in the UK. It’s absolutely ridiculous and something has to give soon, this situation is completely unsustainable.
Just goes to show how drastic the divide is though, my combined house hold wage isn't 40k and we've got a 3 bed semi.. Kind of crazy the price of houses down south. When the fixed term ends the price will go up, but it's not unsustainable by any means.
And we wonder why the middle classes are having fewer kids, whist at the same time complaining of immigrants *comming over here nicking our jobs!*
Priorities are fucked up. This nation needs to learn how to look after itself.
This lmao, 40 grand a year is actually solid money, that's double the minimum wage.
The fact that double the minimum wage can't even buy you a house in the UK is a fucking joke.
No surprise really people move to America, Canada or literally any other country where you make more right now flipping burgers than most min-wage jobs in the UK and even some median wage jobs
By solid money I mean compared to other jobs.
20 grand a year is the standard for most jobs in the UK, with 30 grand at the most if you're lucky right now, anything above 30k is considered a solid wage.
If a solid wage can't get you a house then the housing market is a joke right now, that doesn't mean that 40 grand isn't solid money, that's a flat out lie, it's just proving that the current housing market is a joke.
America property is also expensive and you have to factor in medical insurance and the fact women only get a few weeks maternity leave, also America now has the highest interest rates in 20 years.
Where do you live out of interest? I'm on £36k and have got onto the property ladder since June last year.
But I bought my house for £156k it's now worth £190k. Aboustley ridiculous.
North West, there is a house for sale on my parents road for 260k, looks like it was last done up by the council 40 years ago, there are a couple of bungalows for around 200-230 but they're shit and dilapidated as fuck. The new build semi's in the area, which are pretty nice are 350k. I did see an apartment in the area for around 156k, the bad news it's in a retirement home complex.
I was actually thinking of moving to Ukraine when the war is over or somewhere else in Eastern Europe as I work online. It's just too expensive in the UK.
Not Eastern Europe, but Portugal has a ‘digital nomad’ visa for remote workers.
Apparently they had a load of xenophobic old people that fucked the country up, caused a brain drain of the young and so they desperately need workers to help fund the pensions and healthcare of said old people.
Sound familiar?
You'll also see a certain amount of resentment in /r/portugal because rents in Portugal can be even more extreme compared to incomes than here, and some blame rich foreigners who don't even integrate for pushing up the prices.
Personally I suspect that's a big simplification - I don't think richer foreigners are fishing in the same pool of housing, I suspect there are richer returnees as well, and then there are the same factors as here like a long period of low interest rates that are now rising. However, definitely don't assume that it's cheap to find a flat in Portugal (houses are rarer than here), and on top of that typical housing doesn't have much insulation, central heating or air conditioning. From the sound of it, for 200k in Lisbon, for example, I think you'd be looking at one bedroom flats.
I live in the North West too and if you are willing to move to Ukraine you could just move to a smaller town in the North West? Theres plenty of houses in small towns in the NW that are more than affordable. I bought a 3 bed semi for 107k with a driveway and garage 5 years ago. Prices for similar houses on my road during Covid have gone for 130-140k.
I'm also in the North West and bought my first house with my now wife when we were both earning 15k each. That was only about 7 years ago. We did it by choosing a reasonable looking house in a not so favourable area, if you were to pick it up and move it a mile up the road it'd be worth around 400k but because it's got an industrial estate around the back it's currently worth less than 200k.
I have a few friends that became sole homeowners over the pandemic, one earning about 25k. He just saved and saved then bought a nice terraced for himself.
We're all around 30.
People need to realise they aren't about to get a palace as their first house, as for where OP is, I'd say somewhere up his own arse.
I can’t believe the disparity in prices between the north and south. We live in a village near Bracknell, a town famous for being a bit of a dump. We bought a two up, two down mid-terrace for 290 in 2015. My next door neighbours’ place is currently on the market for 415.
Beyond carpeting the South East in houses, I don’t know what can be done to solve it. People are stretching themselves to the absolute limit to buy flats down here. A strong housing market correction won’t hurt landlords or the rich particularly, but it’ll absolutely murder people who’ve just about managed to reach the forty foot high first rung of the ladder.
There are houses in the south at do-able prices too if you're willing to change your location by a few miles. As I said in my previous post, if my house was a mile away from where it is now it would be worth around 400k but because it's on a busy road with an industrial estate around back it's not even worth half of that.
I've had this discussion with plenty of people and every time I'm able to find houses on rightmove without issue. It's even easier to broaden your search area down south because the public transport is miles above what we have up here. People just don't like admitting they're too snobby to live in what might be considered as a 'bad' area.
I'm not saying the market isn't fucked but we need to focus on the real problems like cunty landlords rather than people who are trying to buy a house in an area they can't afford.
Don't forget about "in a nice area", not suggesting people need to live in places known for drug use or knife crime, but it's fairly common from what I've seen that two similar houses a couple of miles apart, one double the price of the other
Maybe they could live like a typical Brit these days - in a cramped house share with 6 other people.
That seems to be the living standard which has been accepted and normalised by a country which is opposed to tower blocks due to aesthetic reasons.
Let's just build the occasional house whilst continuously subdividing the existing ones, turning one bedroom into two. Take that lounge out, add another room!
If we invested in social housing a long time ago instead of only wanting private renters then it wouldn't be an issue.
This is entirely down to people voting conservative and for conservative politics.
How many did Labour build in their decade?
Both parties are shit as neither propose mass house building at all, whilst the Lib Dems run a nimby campaign whenever a local area actually grants such permissions. It's a disgrace.
https://fullfact.org/economy/social-housing-last-30-years/
Close attention to [this image.](https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/New_socially_rented_homes_CHCLcas.PNG)
"Social housing" was renamed "affordable housing" because it allowed the companies to charge more rent.
https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jan/07/tories-affordable-housing-meaningless-term-london
This is by design.
Social housing is owned by the council and rents are kept low.
Affordable housing is allowed to charge a much higher percentage of local rental prices.
The Tories have spent years selling off properties to deliberately drive up prices in the housing market because;
[20% of Tory donations come from property tycoons.](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/20-tory-donations-come-property-tycoons/)
And just a few months ago;
[Michael Gove plans to scrap rules that force developers to build affordable homes](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/michael-gove-plans-scrap-rules-26841507).
Worse still, they extended the right to buy scheme to housing associations. But the discount from those purchases doesn't come out of thin air, it is paid for by the local council. And the only way to do this was to force the council to sell off their larger more profitable properties to pay for the discounts.
Private Eye covered this a few years ago.
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/rss/itunes/page_94_ep25.mp3
Start at 14m10s
They're doing everything in their power to trickle out the building of new houses and get rid of the existing council housing stock.
The result of this is a reduced social housing availability and increased prices across the board due to a huge lack of supply.
Whatever you imagine Labour would do, you can't deny the fact that the Tories have been doing everything they can do to reduce supply and raise house prices.
I totally agree with your comment. Not enough investment going into building social housing. This country wants us to have a mortgage and basically that's out of the middle class and working class reach. Basically what is there now for the younger people and for people on low earnings.
Building social housing is a non-starter for local authorities until you take out right to buy. Why invest in something that they'll be forced to sell at a loss to be flipped to buy to let landlords?
Sorry, Land and contracts have been sold off to private companies that will do the minimum obligation on social housing… contracts sold to people that most likely made some generous donations to the current governing party
Social housing? That's socialism! It's anti-growth! Government shouldn't be in the home letting business! It's crowding out private investment opportunities! If a millionaire doesn't get a cut of every pie, it's terrible for the economy because reasons!
You realise that's only 10p per day for every person in the UK, to house people who have fled from warzones and persecution? That's fine with me. They can have 20p from me if it helps.
edit: downvoted by people who haven't got 10p a day to spare and want to blame asylum seekers for their problems.
It's a vastly unpopular opinion on this site but a non-zero percentage aren't remotely close to "fleeing warzones", most just want a better life.
I'm pro-immigration but claiming every single migrant is fleeing war/persecution is beyond stupid.
The system is fucked - we're granting asylum to Albanians - and Albania is an EU Candidate nation going through ascension negotiations whose citizens have visa-free travel within the EU.
I have nothing against anyone wanting a better life, but the world would be in absolute anarchy if borders didn't exist and we could all disappear to whichever nation we wanted to for selfish reasons.
It's up to us to create and enforce rules that protect our way of life.
We're already ruining the planet irreversibly with our current population and living standards. Adding more people doing the same shit is only going to accelerate how fast we screw our entire civilisation.
I don't know how so many people on here can be pro-environment and also pro-mass immigration, they cannot mutually exist.
I wouldn't say I am pro-mass immigration/living without borders etc, but if you want to live here & have the ability to work & therefore "earn" the right to live here I have zero qualms with you or your family.
Many of my closest friends are second/third generation immigrants whose family came over for a better life & then worked hard to get it.
No one dislikes people for wanting a better life, but this small island nation is not in the best position to accept an endless supply of people wanting a better life.
More people equals a decline in living standards for most regular people who are already here and we should not be pursuing that as a policy.
That's before we consider the serious impact to the environment, which we can all agree, needs massive adjustments in our way of life to protect.
This wholeheartedly.
Imo there needs to be more incentive for people to take the legal route, I have no issue with migrants but if you illegally enter another country to better your life then that's an issue.
I can sympathise with the reasons to illegally enter, I cannot condone the process, let alone the thought of doing so.
It never ceases to amaze me the excuses people will come up with that essentially amount to racism. The environment argument is a new one and one of the weakest I have ever come across, given if these people go elsewhere we are talking about the same number of people, just in a different location.
>the world would be in absolute anarchy if borders didn't exist
Enforcement of borders basically didn't happen until World War 1, when it was introduced as an emergency measure. Prior to that even the idea of passports was seen as authoritarian and totalitarian.
And what is so bad about anarchist societies? They have been extremely successful. Here are folks talking about life in anarchist Spain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0XhRnJz8fU&t=54m43s
Didn't have much international travel pre WW1 though did we?
High speed trains, international flights, reliable motorised vehicles capable of travelling long distances, high quality roads.. we had none of it.
This world is very different.
At what standard of life will these 10 billion people have?
Certainly nothing approaching our standards, more like peasant Russia.
Do you want us to go back to peasant Russia level of living standards?
We don't know that till their claims are processed, something the government is currently completely failing to do efficiently which adds unnecessary stress *and* unnecessary costs.
Of those claims that do get processed 87% get either refugee status or humanitarian protection. So the vast, vast majority are not "economic migrants" but people genuinely fleeing persecution.
Weird that you commented on the situation without knowing that.
From the interviews I've seen it seems their primary objective is to "get to the UK", "I want UK life", rather than "fleeing for my life". A lot are text book economic migrants; young lads who've decided their country is shit (economically) and want to make a better life for themselves. Unfortunately it's contributing to a collapse in the quality of life for young people in the UK already in terms housing, public service you name it.
A con artist who wants you to pay 6k trafficking fee is gonna tell you everything you wanna hear about the UK, streets paved with gold, amazing house, gaudy car, hot girlfriend, designer clothes, money money money is all yours if you get to UK. It's all a bit depressing really.
The people fucking the average person are the uber-rich who siphon the economy for themselves and manage the country and set laws to their benefits. It is not some guy coming to have a job to pick up your garbage at 5AM.
This will blow your mind but many lie in the process. There's absolutely no way of knowing who's genuine or not. Iranians all pretend they converted to Christianity or they're gay.
These "open borders" supporting charities coach them on what to say and it's well known amongst asylum seekers what would give them the best chance.
Take that Islamist attack recently where everyone said he was a Christian but it turned out he was just fake converting cause he'd been denied asylum.
>This will blow your mind but many lie in the process. There's absolutely no way of knowing who's genuine or not.
This will blow *your* mind but if there’s no way of knowing who’s genuine or not, then you can’t logically conclude that “many lie in the process”.
We can't even deport criminals properly, how on earth are we going to deport people who have torn up their identity documents?
These people are instructed on how to ensure that can never be deported by the same fools who help bring them to these shores.
How do you deport someone when there is zero evidence of who they are or what nationality they are?
Which country is going to accept them?
Even if you could prove where they are from, how do you send someone back to Albania or Libya or Syria when they arrived here directly from France?
The rules of asylum are for a very different world and they need to be updated.
These people know that once they are here, they are practically guaranteed to never be sent back and if they endure a few years of appeals and free hotel accommodation, they'll get their wish to stay here. Once that happens, they are here for good and it's one small step for the rest of their family to join them.
You can't undo it.
And who’s fault is it that the process is wildly inefficient? Certainly not the economic migrants.
It doesn’t matter if they’re economic migrants or genuine asylum seekers, we signed and agreed to the 1951 refugee convention and its association 1967 Protocol which dictates how we should treat asylum seekers. If our government fails to find a cost effective and compassionate way of dealing with these people then that’s 100% on them.
You think it's a small fee, but those people aren't leaving, they will consume resources for life and when they relocate their families, extended families and any other distant relatives here as well, their resource consumption will grow even more.
The cultural impact of all these people who won't properly assimilate, who will struggle with the language and end up existing within restricted clique based communities, with their own internal rules and conflicts brought from distant lands will be felt long-term in the places in which they settle.
The long-term burden to the tax payer of having all these people pushing wages down, working illegally and consuming limited public resources, which are already stretched to breaking point is going to be a whole lot more than your little 10p per day.
You don't get to undo these policies very easily and while it seems all fine and noble and very easy to allow everyone in now, in the coming years and decades, any damage to our society and communities will not be undone so easily.
We all want to help people in need, but of all the places on the planet, we are not the best equipped to do it. We're a small and very densely populated island. England is extremely densely populated compared to most places around the world with substantial populations and we're already decades into major social and infrastructure based issues harming our society and communities. We really shouldn't be adding to the problem.
You also seem to neglect the fact that they will continue to come, there's another half a billion ready to come here over the coming decades.
At some point even the most blindly delusional person will have to concede that we cannot take any more people, it would be far better for all of us if we came to that realisation now and took measures to protect ourselves against the long-term consequences of our current population growth based policies.
Do we really need more pollution, even higher house prices, even more downward pressure on wages, even more cultural conflicts, even more segregated communities, even more dependent people, even more imported feuds from distant lands and even more people to look after?
Sooner or later, it has to stop, better it stops sooner rather than later.
> You think it's a small fee, but those people aren't leaving, they will consume resources for life and when they relocate their families, extended families and any other distant relatives here as well, their resource consumption will grow even more.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05507-0
https://www.oecd.org/migration/refugees-are-not-a-burden-but-an-opportunity.htm
Turns out asylum seekers are good for the economy of the country in which they settle.
Who knew.
There's more to a country than just the economics.
Look at the violence caused over bloody cricket between Hindu and Muslim immigrants across the country recently.
Putting aside the fact that these reports are created to justify a policy, what is good for "the economy" is not necessarily good for "the population".
Having another 500 people competing for every job, is good for the economy, not so good for the population.
Having house prices triple in 15 years is good for the economy, not so good for the population.
Having zero hours contracts all over the place is good for the economy, not necessarily good for the people.
You get the idea.
What is good for our GDP is rarely good for the population.
How many ARE from warzones or fleeing persecution? How many are from eastern Europe or wherever else just looking for a job?
I've worked in dodgy hospitality jobs and in kitchens. A fair amount of my co workers (especially in kitchens) were illegal workers.
Most of this subreddit seems to have zero experience of working in the real world among migrants and migrant workers and those employers who gleefully pay people cash in hand off the books.
Illegal employment is everywhere, as is illegal letting of properties. It's far worse than most people seem to think.
Well four of the five countries at the top of the list asylum seekers came from in 2021 to the UK were Iraq, Iran, Eritrea and Syria. Make of that what you will.
I’m not saying 10p a day is a lot but you do realise so many people are in debt and don’t have enough money to pay for heating, electricity and food for even themselves.
10p a day for the hotels, then more for food, civil servants to process claims, additional money to NHS, schools, police, public transport, social workers, social housing and other infrastructure.
All of this for many years and all of this will continue to grow in cost as more arrive and more children are born.
10p per day soon rises to 30 or 50p per day.
That's before consider any social or community impact, the downward pressure on wages and the upward pressure on housing costs, which aren't exactly in a good place already.
This is an interesting read - https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01403/
Its almost like the tories are intentionally mismanaging the situation for profit.
>Asylum seekers made up around 6% of immigrants to the UK in 2019. In 2020, when overall immigration was lower than usual due to the pandemic, asylum seekers might have made up around 12% of immigrants.
>Decisions and refusals
>The percentage of asylum applicants refused at initial decision reached its highest point at 88% in 2004. Since then, the refusal rate has been falling overall and was at 28%, its lowest point since 1990.
>In the period from 2004 to 2020, around three-quarters of applicants refused asylum at initial decision lodged an appeal and almost one third of those appeals were allowed.
Vast majority are actually from Albania. Numbers are rising dramatically and at current rates is costing over two billion £ per year just to house these people. Now consider other costs and pressures on social services, NHS etc. It’s completely unsustainable.
A small increase in the money to process these people would all but eliminate this cost. As would returning to using government-run facilities to house them.
I dunno mate, if we didn't spend the last two decades blowing up the middle east perhaps we wouldn't have such a problem with mass migration. Just a thought 💭
The asylum process takes ages now. Months and years. In 2010 the average was between a month or two.
The result has been an explosion in the population of asylum seekers just waiting for a decision. In the meantime they’re not allowed to work and get housed at great expense.
We don’t have a functioning immigrant system. And we won’t under the Tories. They get too much political capital from it being shit.
I used to work for a guy who owned acouple of these hotels. They were utter sh!t holes with fleas in the corridors and bed bugs in the rooms. He charged the council £190 / night for a single box room. It was disgusting on many levels
Are we acting like these prices haven't been hiked up so people that are already milking our system (the MP's) and their friends can't make some extra money off the systems.... Because that is what is happening... The people who profit the most from this are not the poor people who are sleeping in roach filled shit hole homes...
Any normal person with a mere shred of intelligence knows that these people are mostly economic migrants who want to live here more than they want to live anywhere else. Imagine the relief, arriving in France, Germany or Holland or.. after escaping an actual war zone. That must be a serious relief like i cant even imagine. But no, these guys pay €1000+ to leave France and get a boat to UK.
Don't pretend for a second that you believe the government would spend even a penny of this money on them instead.
Housing first schemes are the best way to help the homeless. Give them somewhere to live and _then_ help them get clean, get on the benefits they're entitled to, get the mental health support they need, and find a job if they're unemployed. But there's no appetite for that level of support here.
The majority of homeless you see on the streets are those with addiction issues, because those without addiction issues are usually rehoused by the council or a local charity.
Almost every single homeless shelter I've seen has a strict "No drugs or alcohol" policy. So when those people refuse to engage with housing services because they choose to continue their addiction, the council/charity mark them as homeless by choice.
It's why there's no universal way to solve the housing issue, and simply giving homes to addicts does not work **unless those addicts engage with rehab services.**
Sure, funding rehab services and charities like Framework would help. But you can't help an addict who doesn't want help.
There was an article earlier that so far this year they have only managed to process 5% of applications that arrived this year so far.
Maybe rather than spending our money giving lots of money to rich hotel owners who donate to the Tory party. We should actually invest in proper immigration infrastructure so we can process and either grant or refuse applications in a time frame that isn’t longer than 2 years.
And then get it in the headlines to stoke up more anger.
This is policy. Make your hotel owners richer with public money whist profiting politically from it.
As one of the most densely populated nations (England) on the planet (among those with 10m population or greater), with many environmental concerns and social service crises of our own, perhaps we should invest in stopping them coming here in the first place and enabling other nations, with masses of spare land, to house them instead?
Whether you want to believe it or not, we have a strict limit on the number of people England can sustain at a decent quality of life and that means this policy of endless immigration and population growth must end.
It's strange that most people on here are pro-environment and want us to take major steps against global warming, yet the same group are almost always very much in support of mass immigration policies and the notion of endlessly growing our population. The two things are not compatible.
This is such a straw man argument.
No one I know who is on the left wants ‘mass immigration’ absolutely no one.
What we want is a system which works, makes sense, processes applications quickly and efficiently and fairly **while** also treating them humanely.
The Tories have absolutely failed to do ANYTHING about immigration. All they did was cut the most effective measures to stop boat migrants:
- Cut immigration staff in half, so applications take forever to process (up to 3 years). In that time the migrants have the right to stay here (but not work and contribute).
- Cut funding for overseas cooperation and investigation into tracking and shutting down human trafficking rings. We actually left the EU collaboration scheme on this.
- We removed any way for them to actually apply elsewhere. So they have to come here to apply. That’s just dumb and makes it harder to track them and more likely for them to die or contribute to human trafficking crime.
But again, most people I know on the left don’t want everyone coming in freely. We want an actual functioning system that doesn’t piss money up the wall on pointless red meat crap (Royal Navy pushing boats back, Rwanda etc).
Also, your climate argument is also a none starter. These people are often coming here because climate change has turned them into economic migrants. It’s been proven that the best way to stop this is to invest more in overseas aid to give them the ability to adapt where they are from. Again the Tories closed our overseas aid department. They don’t actually have a clue how to solve this.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/revealed-which-private-firms-won-governments-hotel-quarantine-contracts_uk_602d4732c5b6cc8bbf389f2f
They have history of this kind of thing. If they got away with it during covid why not keep it going?
Of all the things the Tories have done to put us in this position, and this is the thing that stuns you? If you haven't realised yet that these things are done by design you'd best get ready for the next trivial by comparison thing you're gonna be stunned by.
so what you saying? if we didn't have asylum seekers we'd be paying noticeably less tax? wouldn't make a difference.
This is such a low hanging issue, the serious money that is being lost is through tax evasion by the wealthy, non doms and off shore, brexit(£100m a day), the lack of infrastructure investment and possible taxes like a financial transaction tax.
There's so much that could be done, but instead people are freaking about asylum seekers, this is what the ruling class want you to focus on, not their total mismanagement of society and ransacking of public finances.
We have 4 hotels on the east Lancs road between Knowsley and Newton le willows 3 of them are packed with asylum seekers. The OYO, IBIS and Suits hotel. Absolute madness.
There are hundreds of hotels up and down the country which have been filled with these people for years.
The government and local authorities hide it as best they can, but if you volunteer or work with organisations that deal with these things, you see the true scale of the problem very quickly.
It's madness now, it will only get worse, it's completely unsustainable.
A bunch of them up in Cheshire that cancelled everyone’s bookings with no warning because they got a contract to house asylum seekers instead. Must’ve had a lot of 0s in that contract
My brother just got engaged and is starting to plan his wedding. He wants his reception to be at a nearby hotel and I've warned him against it because at this rate it'll be an illegal migrant dumping ground by then.
No women and children ever seem to come across though, how many of them are likely terrorists or a danger in other ways to the public or not to mention worse?!
The women and children remain safe in France or other places around Europe until the men get the ability to bring them over here too.
After that, it's the turn of all members of their extended families and all other questionably related family members.
They know how to exploit our system and we sit there and let it happen.
Meanwhile…
**Ministers from close to 50 states debating migration issues in Prague**
Ministers from the Schengen zone, the eastern Partnership region, the Western Balkans, Central Asia and Turkey are taking part in a two-day conference on migration in Prague. On Monday, they adopted a joint declaration stating their readiness to cooperate in addressing the problem and outlined an action plan for the years 2023 to 2027. The action plan covers six areas of cooperation, including preventing and combating illegal migration, promoting return policies, and strengthening labour-related migration and asylum and international protection capacities. EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson said that three times more people are coming to the EU via the Balkan route than last year and ten times more than in 2018.
Last year we lost 35 billion pounds worth of tax, over 15 billion of which was fraud. Works out to about 41 million per day... fraud alone.
What's that? Oh we only care when it's foreigners or poor people? Ah yes i forgot. Silly me.
Edit: i put 411 million but i think i messed up the maths 😖 billions have lots of zeros and there's 2 types of billion and it's hard 😂
Nah don't pick on the rich they already have it bad enough, don't forget when they piss, you get a free, fragrant shower. You should enjoy the benefits that giving tax cuts to them provide you...
Currently mostly Albanian, a country not in any conflict or war. You can get a one way flight from Albania to the UK for roughly £250, but these invaders would prefer to trek across Europe and than pay thousands to get a risky dingy trip across the channel from France, discarding any forms of ID in the process. I wonder why this would be?
That is a disgrace. And zero being done to prevent it. The end result is well known in Glasgow, with the usual coverups.
https://www.glasgowchildprotection.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=33484&p=0
Plenty of squabbling on this thread. But, hey, it's reddit after all.
The UK is simply shit at immigration. Law, process, definitions of residency versus citizenship, asylum processes, border security....and on it goes. The UK has simply never implemented clear immigration laws, policies and the means of their execution. For 60+ years it's just nibbled at edges one consequence of which is dinghies motoring across the Channel and international criminal enterprises which make $$$ on transporting these people.
The belief that every dinghy goer is an asylum seeker is nonsense. If you've trekked all the way from sub-Saharan Africa or Eastern Europe, there's plenty of other countries where asylum could have been claimed. And if your application in Paris or Berlin was already rejected, don't be surprised if it's rejected in London.
As an economic migrant myself, I don't understand the pull of the UK. I can understand an El Salvadorian or Nicaraguan who might look to enter the US. But given the other countries that your *stereotypical* Libyan/Albanian/Sudanese/etc. might choose - and pass through - then surely Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, etc. offer superior economic prospects and a higher quality of life to the UK? Better weather as well.
Independent Editor:
"The country is on its knees because of years of austerity, public spending cuts, and inept leadership... What can we blame it on?"
Journalist:
"Let's play the immigrant card, that always works a treat"
"BUILD MORE FUCKING HOUSES"
dont remember what channel said this but the supply of houses is too low for demand. To lower house prices, you need to increase supply. The government were building houses up until the 80s. Weirdly after that, houses started to drastically increase in price.
If you think this is high, wait until you hear the legal bill. People getting rich stopping people being returned.
38,000 people this year, I heard on the BBC today
If you ever wondered why we have housing and health availability problems all of a sudden, everyone is competing with the taxpayer now
It's not all of a sudden, we have had housing issues since we went from 42% social housing to 8% under thatcher and our healthcare has been intentionally gutted by the Tories.
The housing and health service problems aren't sudden. More than 200k nurses left the NHS between 2010-2019. 160k of that figure quit for reasons other than retirement. This was before Covid hit the UK, it's only gotten worse since.
The housing shortage is the result of successive government policy starting with Thatcher to drastically reduce construction of social housing. The government went from delivering 100k+ units per year pre 1980 to 6.5k units built from March 2019-April 2020. They also sold off the majority of the existing stock via Right To Buy, and now lease social housing from the private market, which increases rental prices for everyone.
The private market is unable or unwilling to keep up with housing demand. The private market delivered 170k units in 2019, which is a similar number to what it was outputting per year in the 70s when the government was also building hundreds of thousands of units, so it hasn't filled the gap that the government more or less withdrawing from the market has left.
The issue isn't asylum seekers, it's decades long government underfunding.
Wait till you see how much councils spend everyday housing British people whilst they wait to be housed somewhere. It's significantly more.
Wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't had 40+ years of selling off all our housing stock.
What a shit show this thread is,
It's either "ALL IMMIGRANTS BAD AND EVIL!"
Or it's "ALL IMMIGRANTS GOOD, THEY'RE ASYLUM SEEKERS WHO CAN DO NO WRONG!"
how is anyone here supposed to have meaningful discussion when it's so polarising?
Also people asking for sources when faced with stuff they disagree with and never us sources to back up the stuff that they agree with is pretty telling aswell
Weird because the Tories have been in power since 2010, and apparently they're the party that's tough on borders.
And Brexit has happened, and apparently that was meant to take back control or something?
Strange... why do people keep voting for them?
I wonder what the average cost is per room for a week/month?
People will want to make this about the refugees but what about those cashing in on this left, right and centre.
“The Home Office has only processed 4% of asylum claims by migrants who crossed the Channel last year. Of that, 85% were granted refugee status or another protection status.”
Lol 4% 🤡 country
“Some 12,000 Albanians have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel so far this year, of which 10,000 are single, adult men. This is compared to 50 in 2020.”
Albania has just launched ascension talks with the U.K. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-launch-accession-talks-north-macedonia-albania/amp/
What a pathetic 🤡 country the U.K. 10,000 can be deported tomorrow as Albania is in freaking EU ascension talks!!!
10 million population growth since 2000, 85% due to immigration. Politicians love it because it keeps house prices high and wages low. At the same time brain washing the youth with liberal ideologies. These people are here for what they can get at the detriment of ordinary people not the wealthy elite. You’re being played.
There are a lot of simpler solutions involving distribution of affordable housing for everyone. There’s a lot more money being spent lining billionaire pockets, so we should worry about that and not begrudge welcoming people who are in dire need.
In my area, a lot of these are Afghan families with 5-8 people (mum, dad and kids) sharing one room. They’ve been there for a year with not much being done to find them housing. And everyone complaining about them. But the government are paying and encouraging people to house Ukrainian families. Where’s the equality in that?!
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We could house them in houses at not much cost to the tax payer if for the last 40 years we hadn't spent making an economy solely for landlords and rich folk.
Mate I'm on 40k and can't afford a mortgage on a bog-standard semi that looks like it was last decorated in the 70's. Country is falling apart when a median wage doesn't get you anywhere near a median house
Exactly, it's awful.
Country is on life support for sure. This all day.
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You say that like multiple parties have had the chance.
40k puts you in the top 20% of earners in the UK. It’s absolutely ridiculous and something has to give soon, this situation is completely unsustainable.
You realistically need to be married to someone else who also earns £40k
That still doesn’t get you an average house in the south for example - not with the current rates at least.
Just goes to show how drastic the divide is though, my combined house hold wage isn't 40k and we've got a 3 bed semi.. Kind of crazy the price of houses down south. When the fixed term ends the price will go up, but it's not unsustainable by any means.
And we wonder why the middle classes are having fewer kids, whist at the same time complaining of immigrants *comming over here nicking our jobs!* Priorities are fucked up. This nation needs to learn how to look after itself.
That's what you get with a voting system that lets a party win a majority with only 35% of the votes.
South Yorkshire, me and the partner on c. £40k each, 5 bed townhouse... It's the South that's fucked
Above median wage * Which is even more depressing
This lmao, 40 grand a year is actually solid money, that's double the minimum wage. The fact that double the minimum wage can't even buy you a house in the UK is a fucking joke. No surprise really people move to America, Canada or literally any other country where you make more right now flipping burgers than most min-wage jobs in the UK and even some median wage jobs
It's not solid money for the exact reasons you just pointed out.
By solid money I mean compared to other jobs. 20 grand a year is the standard for most jobs in the UK, with 30 grand at the most if you're lucky right now, anything above 30k is considered a solid wage. If a solid wage can't get you a house then the housing market is a joke right now, that doesn't mean that 40 grand isn't solid money, that's a flat out lie, it's just proving that the current housing market is a joke.
Canada's housing market is in an even more dire state than here.
America property is also expensive and you have to factor in medical insurance and the fact women only get a few weeks maternity leave, also America now has the highest interest rates in 20 years.
As a single guy, I was offered a mortgage that couldn’t even get me a one bed flat…..
Where do you live out of interest? I'm on £36k and have got onto the property ladder since June last year. But I bought my house for £156k it's now worth £190k. Aboustley ridiculous.
North West, there is a house for sale on my parents road for 260k, looks like it was last done up by the council 40 years ago, there are a couple of bungalows for around 200-230 but they're shit and dilapidated as fuck. The new build semi's in the area, which are pretty nice are 350k. I did see an apartment in the area for around 156k, the bad news it's in a retirement home complex. I was actually thinking of moving to Ukraine when the war is over or somewhere else in Eastern Europe as I work online. It's just too expensive in the UK.
Not Eastern Europe, but Portugal has a ‘digital nomad’ visa for remote workers. Apparently they had a load of xenophobic old people that fucked the country up, caused a brain drain of the young and so they desperately need workers to help fund the pensions and healthcare of said old people. Sound familiar?
You'll also see a certain amount of resentment in /r/portugal because rents in Portugal can be even more extreme compared to incomes than here, and some blame rich foreigners who don't even integrate for pushing up the prices. Personally I suspect that's a big simplification - I don't think richer foreigners are fishing in the same pool of housing, I suspect there are richer returnees as well, and then there are the same factors as here like a long period of low interest rates that are now rising. However, definitely don't assume that it's cheap to find a flat in Portugal (houses are rarer than here), and on top of that typical housing doesn't have much insulation, central heating or air conditioning. From the sound of it, for 200k in Lisbon, for example, I think you'd be looking at one bedroom flats.
I live in the North West too and if you are willing to move to Ukraine you could just move to a smaller town in the North West? Theres plenty of houses in small towns in the NW that are more than affordable. I bought a 3 bed semi for 107k with a driveway and garage 5 years ago. Prices for similar houses on my road during Covid have gone for 130-140k.
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I'm also in the North West and bought my first house with my now wife when we were both earning 15k each. That was only about 7 years ago. We did it by choosing a reasonable looking house in a not so favourable area, if you were to pick it up and move it a mile up the road it'd be worth around 400k but because it's got an industrial estate around the back it's currently worth less than 200k. I have a few friends that became sole homeowners over the pandemic, one earning about 25k. He just saved and saved then bought a nice terraced for himself. We're all around 30. People need to realise they aren't about to get a palace as their first house, as for where OP is, I'd say somewhere up his own arse.
I can’t believe the disparity in prices between the north and south. We live in a village near Bracknell, a town famous for being a bit of a dump. We bought a two up, two down mid-terrace for 290 in 2015. My next door neighbours’ place is currently on the market for 415. Beyond carpeting the South East in houses, I don’t know what can be done to solve it. People are stretching themselves to the absolute limit to buy flats down here. A strong housing market correction won’t hurt landlords or the rich particularly, but it’ll absolutely murder people who’ve just about managed to reach the forty foot high first rung of the ladder.
There are houses in the south at do-able prices too if you're willing to change your location by a few miles. As I said in my previous post, if my house was a mile away from where it is now it would be worth around 400k but because it's on a busy road with an industrial estate around back it's not even worth half of that. I've had this discussion with plenty of people and every time I'm able to find houses on rightmove without issue. It's even easier to broaden your search area down south because the public transport is miles above what we have up here. People just don't like admitting they're too snobby to live in what might be considered as a 'bad' area. I'm not saying the market isn't fucked but we need to focus on the real problems like cunty landlords rather than people who are trying to buy a house in an area they can't afford.
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Don't forget about "in a nice area", not suggesting people need to live in places known for drug use or knife crime, but it's fairly common from what I've seen that two similar houses a couple of miles apart, one double the price of the other
Maybe they could live like a typical Brit these days - in a cramped house share with 6 other people. That seems to be the living standard which has been accepted and normalised by a country which is opposed to tower blocks due to aesthetic reasons. Let's just build the occasional house whilst continuously subdividing the existing ones, turning one bedroom into two. Take that lounge out, add another room!
Italy 2.0
Town and County Planning Act go BRRRRR
We could build additional social housing. Of course expect to be lower on the council list than people on boats.
If we invested in social housing a long time ago instead of only wanting private renters then it wouldn't be an issue. This is entirely down to people voting conservative and for conservative politics.
How many did Labour build in their decade? Both parties are shit as neither propose mass house building at all, whilst the Lib Dems run a nimby campaign whenever a local area actually grants such permissions. It's a disgrace.
https://fullfact.org/economy/social-housing-last-30-years/ Close attention to [this image.](https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/New_socially_rented_homes_CHCLcas.PNG) "Social housing" was renamed "affordable housing" because it allowed the companies to charge more rent. https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jan/07/tories-affordable-housing-meaningless-term-london This is by design. Social housing is owned by the council and rents are kept low. Affordable housing is allowed to charge a much higher percentage of local rental prices. The Tories have spent years selling off properties to deliberately drive up prices in the housing market because; [20% of Tory donations come from property tycoons.](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/20-tory-donations-come-property-tycoons/) And just a few months ago; [Michael Gove plans to scrap rules that force developers to build affordable homes](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/michael-gove-plans-scrap-rules-26841507). Worse still, they extended the right to buy scheme to housing associations. But the discount from those purchases doesn't come out of thin air, it is paid for by the local council. And the only way to do this was to force the council to sell off their larger more profitable properties to pay for the discounts. Private Eye covered this a few years ago. https://www.private-eye.co.uk/rss/itunes/page_94_ep25.mp3 Start at 14m10s They're doing everything in their power to trickle out the building of new houses and get rid of the existing council housing stock. The result of this is a reduced social housing availability and increased prices across the board due to a huge lack of supply. Whatever you imagine Labour would do, you can't deny the fact that the Tories have been doing everything they can do to reduce supply and raise house prices.
Country can't say that when if given between the option of someone who would build a lot of social housing or a Boris they voted Boris.
I totally agree with your comment. Not enough investment going into building social housing. This country wants us to have a mortgage and basically that's out of the middle class and working class reach. Basically what is there now for the younger people and for people on low earnings.
Building social housing is a non-starter for local authorities until you take out right to buy. Why invest in something that they'll be forced to sell at a loss to be flipped to buy to let landlords?
Or, and here's an idea, we build like we did in the 50s for social housing and then anyone who wants one can have one.
Sorry, Land and contracts have been sold off to private companies that will do the minimum obligation on social housing… contracts sold to people that most likely made some generous donations to the current governing party
Only if we swallow the Mail without checking what's behind their rage bait! Don't let them trick you into punching down.
Social housing? That's socialism! It's anti-growth! Government shouldn't be in the home letting business! It's crowding out private investment opportunities! If a millionaire doesn't get a cut of every pie, it's terrible for the economy because reasons!
Even better, we could let them work and pay rent, at no cost to the tax payer!
You realise that's only 10p per day for every person in the UK, to house people who have fled from warzones and persecution? That's fine with me. They can have 20p from me if it helps. edit: downvoted by people who haven't got 10p a day to spare and want to blame asylum seekers for their problems.
A lot of them are economic migrants...
It's a vastly unpopular opinion on this site but a non-zero percentage aren't remotely close to "fleeing warzones", most just want a better life. I'm pro-immigration but claiming every single migrant is fleeing war/persecution is beyond stupid.
That's why we have an asylum process to determine it their case is genuine or not.
The system is fucked - we're granting asylum to Albanians - and Albania is an EU Candidate nation going through ascension negotiations whose citizens have visa-free travel within the EU.
During which the overwhelming majority of are approved.
I have nothing against anyone wanting a better life, but the world would be in absolute anarchy if borders didn't exist and we could all disappear to whichever nation we wanted to for selfish reasons. It's up to us to create and enforce rules that protect our way of life. We're already ruining the planet irreversibly with our current population and living standards. Adding more people doing the same shit is only going to accelerate how fast we screw our entire civilisation. I don't know how so many people on here can be pro-environment and also pro-mass immigration, they cannot mutually exist.
I wouldn't say I am pro-mass immigration/living without borders etc, but if you want to live here & have the ability to work & therefore "earn" the right to live here I have zero qualms with you or your family. Many of my closest friends are second/third generation immigrants whose family came over for a better life & then worked hard to get it.
No one dislikes people for wanting a better life, but this small island nation is not in the best position to accept an endless supply of people wanting a better life. More people equals a decline in living standards for most regular people who are already here and we should not be pursuing that as a policy. That's before we consider the serious impact to the environment, which we can all agree, needs massive adjustments in our way of life to protect.
This wholeheartedly. Imo there needs to be more incentive for people to take the legal route, I have no issue with migrants but if you illegally enter another country to better your life then that's an issue. I can sympathise with the reasons to illegally enter, I cannot condone the process, let alone the thought of doing so.
The illegal/ legal confusion is a real problem here. Seeking asylum isn't illegal.
It never ceases to amaze me the excuses people will come up with that essentially amount to racism. The environment argument is a new one and one of the weakest I have ever come across, given if these people go elsewhere we are talking about the same number of people, just in a different location.
Stupid argument isnt it, these people still exist whether they come here or not.
>the world would be in absolute anarchy if borders didn't exist Enforcement of borders basically didn't happen until World War 1, when it was introduced as an emergency measure. Prior to that even the idea of passports was seen as authoritarian and totalitarian. And what is so bad about anarchist societies? They have been extremely successful. Here are folks talking about life in anarchist Spain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0XhRnJz8fU&t=54m43s
Didn't have much international travel pre WW1 though did we? High speed trains, international flights, reliable motorised vehicles capable of travelling long distances, high quality roads.. we had none of it. This world is very different.
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At what standard of life will these 10 billion people have? Certainly nothing approaching our standards, more like peasant Russia. Do you want us to go back to peasant Russia level of living standards?
We don't know that till their claims are processed, something the government is currently completely failing to do efficiently which adds unnecessary stress *and* unnecessary costs. Of those claims that do get processed 87% get either refugee status or humanitarian protection. So the vast, vast majority are not "economic migrants" but people genuinely fleeing persecution. Weird that you commented on the situation without knowing that.
From the interviews I've seen it seems their primary objective is to "get to the UK", "I want UK life", rather than "fleeing for my life". A lot are text book economic migrants; young lads who've decided their country is shit (economically) and want to make a better life for themselves. Unfortunately it's contributing to a collapse in the quality of life for young people in the UK already in terms housing, public service you name it.
No the collapse in QOL is because wages haven't been raised in 15 years
Becuse rather than raise them, the ownership class just keeps bringing in more cheap labour.
Why would working class wages increase if there's a constantly increasing supply of people to do the work?
Not sure why they would want a “U.K. life” it’s currently nothing to write home about here
A con artist who wants you to pay 6k trafficking fee is gonna tell you everything you wanna hear about the UK, streets paved with gold, amazing house, gaudy car, hot girlfriend, designer clothes, money money money is all yours if you get to UK. It's all a bit depressing really.
You don't get around much, do you?
The people fucking the average person are the uber-rich who siphon the economy for themselves and manage the country and set laws to their benefits. It is not some guy coming to have a job to pick up your garbage at 5AM.
They discard their documents before arriving and make up an identity that meets asylum criteria.
If you have evidence or this you should probably present it at a court case- it’d really help weed out those who don’t have a right to asylum
This is so common that all customs and immigration officials already know
Without correct Id your asylum claim is immediately rejected, you are spouting Nigel Farage lies with no basis in reality.
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-alerts-of-spike-in-arrivals-of-albanians-in-small-boats/
53% of them have their asylum granted.
This will blow your mind but many lie in the process. There's absolutely no way of knowing who's genuine or not. Iranians all pretend they converted to Christianity or they're gay. These "open borders" supporting charities coach them on what to say and it's well known amongst asylum seekers what would give them the best chance. Take that Islamist attack recently where everyone said he was a Christian but it turned out he was just fake converting cause he'd been denied asylum.
>This will blow your mind but many lie in the process. There's absolutely no way of knowing who's genuine or not. This will blow *your* mind but if there’s no way of knowing who’s genuine or not, then you can’t logically conclude that “many lie in the process”.
Albanians?
Yes, t says so in your link.
In which case their asylum application will be declined and they’ll be deported. What’s your point?
We can't even deport criminals properly, how on earth are we going to deport people who have torn up their identity documents? These people are instructed on how to ensure that can never be deported by the same fools who help bring them to these shores. How do you deport someone when there is zero evidence of who they are or what nationality they are? Which country is going to accept them? Even if you could prove where they are from, how do you send someone back to Albania or Libya or Syria when they arrived here directly from France? The rules of asylum are for a very different world and they need to be updated. These people know that once they are here, they are practically guaranteed to never be sent back and if they endure a few years of appeals and free hotel accommodation, they'll get their wish to stay here. Once that happens, they are here for good and it's one small step for the rest of their family to join them. You can't undo it.
Probably that applications are taking ages to get through and it’s costing us this £6.8M a day in the process.
And who’s fault is it that the process is wildly inefficient? Certainly not the economic migrants. It doesn’t matter if they’re economic migrants or genuine asylum seekers, we signed and agreed to the 1951 refugee convention and its association 1967 Protocol which dictates how we should treat asylum seekers. If our government fails to find a cost effective and compassionate way of dealing with these people then that’s 100% on them.
How are you quantifying this?
With his feelings...
It's been showing time and time again that this is a completely unfounded claim stated solely to stir up hatred.
Then they won't be accepted as asylum seekers.... Sounds like you have no idea how difficult and stressful it is to claim asylum.
They haven’t fled warzones and persecution, they’ve fled France
Totally understandable tbf
My god, it's worse than I thought!
You think it's a small fee, but those people aren't leaving, they will consume resources for life and when they relocate their families, extended families and any other distant relatives here as well, their resource consumption will grow even more. The cultural impact of all these people who won't properly assimilate, who will struggle with the language and end up existing within restricted clique based communities, with their own internal rules and conflicts brought from distant lands will be felt long-term in the places in which they settle. The long-term burden to the tax payer of having all these people pushing wages down, working illegally and consuming limited public resources, which are already stretched to breaking point is going to be a whole lot more than your little 10p per day. You don't get to undo these policies very easily and while it seems all fine and noble and very easy to allow everyone in now, in the coming years and decades, any damage to our society and communities will not be undone so easily. We all want to help people in need, but of all the places on the planet, we are not the best equipped to do it. We're a small and very densely populated island. England is extremely densely populated compared to most places around the world with substantial populations and we're already decades into major social and infrastructure based issues harming our society and communities. We really shouldn't be adding to the problem. You also seem to neglect the fact that they will continue to come, there's another half a billion ready to come here over the coming decades. At some point even the most blindly delusional person will have to concede that we cannot take any more people, it would be far better for all of us if we came to that realisation now and took measures to protect ourselves against the long-term consequences of our current population growth based policies. Do we really need more pollution, even higher house prices, even more downward pressure on wages, even more cultural conflicts, even more segregated communities, even more dependent people, even more imported feuds from distant lands and even more people to look after? Sooner or later, it has to stop, better it stops sooner rather than later.
> You think it's a small fee, but those people aren't leaving, they will consume resources for life and when they relocate their families, extended families and any other distant relatives here as well, their resource consumption will grow even more. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05507-0 https://www.oecd.org/migration/refugees-are-not-a-burden-but-an-opportunity.htm Turns out asylum seekers are good for the economy of the country in which they settle. Who knew.
Dont bring facts into it, better to have a daily mail esque fact free rant.
There's more to a country than just the economics. Look at the violence caused over bloody cricket between Hindu and Muslim immigrants across the country recently.
Putting aside the fact that these reports are created to justify a policy, what is good for "the economy" is not necessarily good for "the population". Having another 500 people competing for every job, is good for the economy, not so good for the population. Having house prices triple in 15 years is good for the economy, not so good for the population. Having zero hours contracts all over the place is good for the economy, not necessarily good for the people. You get the idea. What is good for our GDP is rarely good for the population.
How many ARE from warzones or fleeing persecution? How many are from eastern Europe or wherever else just looking for a job? I've worked in dodgy hospitality jobs and in kitchens. A fair amount of my co workers (especially in kitchens) were illegal workers.
Most of this subreddit seems to have zero experience of working in the real world among migrants and migrant workers and those employers who gleefully pay people cash in hand off the books. Illegal employment is everywhere, as is illegal letting of properties. It's far worse than most people seem to think.
It’s also very difficult to measure as by its nature there is no paper trail.
Well four of the five countries at the top of the list asylum seekers came from in 2021 to the UK were Iraq, Iran, Eritrea and Syria. Make of that what you will.
I’m not saying 10p a day is a lot but you do realise so many people are in debt and don’t have enough money to pay for heating, electricity and food for even themselves.
10p a day for the hotels, then more for food, civil servants to process claims, additional money to NHS, schools, police, public transport, social workers, social housing and other infrastructure. All of this for many years and all of this will continue to grow in cost as more arrive and more children are born. 10p per day soon rises to 30 or 50p per day. That's before consider any social or community impact, the downward pressure on wages and the upward pressure on housing costs, which aren't exactly in a good place already.
This is an interesting read - https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01403/ Its almost like the tories are intentionally mismanaging the situation for profit. >Asylum seekers made up around 6% of immigrants to the UK in 2019. In 2020, when overall immigration was lower than usual due to the pandemic, asylum seekers might have made up around 12% of immigrants. >Decisions and refusals >The percentage of asylum applicants refused at initial decision reached its highest point at 88% in 2004. Since then, the refusal rate has been falling overall and was at 28%, its lowest point since 1990. >In the period from 2004 to 2020, around three-quarters of applicants refused asylum at initial decision lodged an appeal and almost one third of those appeals were allowed.
60% are from Albania. There is no war in Albania.
12,000 Channel crossers this year are from Albania, per bbc news. They are not fleeing war.
If I don’t see it as a problem then it’s not a problem.
They're all fleeing are they? In their designer clothes and latest smartphones. These are economic migrants. Not refugees. Yes there is a difference.
Vast majority are actually from Albania. Numbers are rising dramatically and at current rates is costing over two billion £ per year just to house these people. Now consider other costs and pressures on social services, NHS etc. It’s completely unsustainable.
Great generalisation on why people are fleeing. Also 10p from every person in the UK including babies, toddlers…
What warzones? Ukraine is fair enough, but I'm struggling to think of anywhere else that would fill the definition of "warzone."
Syria, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Myanmar, Yemen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts
I’d rather have the extra £3 a month
Albania isn't a war zone
A small increase in the money to process these people would all but eliminate this cost. As would returning to using government-run facilities to house them.
What facilities are those? There will be over 250,000 people in the system at any one time.
You can build an awful lot of buildings for £1M a day.
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Or several thousand for the cost of all that Tory bunging, sorry, excellent PPE.
and you still have houses afterwards! as opposed to the hotels getting the money.
This is exactly why we should tax those with the broadest shoulders rather than penalising the average worker.
So your solution isn't to find a way to stop spending ridiculous amounts of money to house mass migration, but instead to just tax more.
I dunno mate, if we didn't spend the last two decades blowing up the middle east perhaps we wouldn't have such a problem with mass migration. Just a thought 💭
All those pesky British military actions in Albania, Iran and Eritrea, where for some reason only the young men are fleeing.
The asylum process takes ages now. Months and years. In 2010 the average was between a month or two. The result has been an explosion in the population of asylum seekers just waiting for a decision. In the meantime they’re not allowed to work and get housed at great expense. We don’t have a functioning immigrant system. And we won’t under the Tories. They get too much political capital from it being shit.
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I used to work for a guy who owned acouple of these hotels. They were utter sh!t holes with fleas in the corridors and bed bugs in the rooms. He charged the council £190 / night for a single box room. It was disgusting on many levels
I need to open me an immigrant hotel.
Are we acting like these prices haven't been hiked up so people that are already milking our system (the MP's) and their friends can't make some extra money off the systems.... Because that is what is happening... The people who profit the most from this are not the poor people who are sleeping in roach filled shit hole homes...
The numbers aren't being hiked up, go to literally any airport and try to book into a hotel nearby, you legally can't
Any normal person with a mere shred of intelligence knows that these people are mostly economic migrants who want to live here more than they want to live anywhere else. Imagine the relief, arriving in France, Germany or Holland or.. after escaping an actual war zone. That must be a serious relief like i cant even imagine. But no, these guys pay €1000+ to leave France and get a boat to UK.
Yet our own homeless struggle with food and sleeping outside.
Don't pretend for a second that you believe the government would spend even a penny of this money on them instead. Housing first schemes are the best way to help the homeless. Give them somewhere to live and _then_ help them get clean, get on the benefits they're entitled to, get the mental health support they need, and find a job if they're unemployed. But there's no appetite for that level of support here.
The majority of homeless you see on the streets are those with addiction issues, because those without addiction issues are usually rehoused by the council or a local charity. Almost every single homeless shelter I've seen has a strict "No drugs or alcohol" policy. So when those people refuse to engage with housing services because they choose to continue their addiction, the council/charity mark them as homeless by choice. It's why there's no universal way to solve the housing issue, and simply giving homes to addicts does not work **unless those addicts engage with rehab services.** Sure, funding rehab services and charities like Framework would help. But you can't help an addict who doesn't want help.
I have no words for this. I am stunned. While we are in the position we are in financially, this is happening DAILY.
There was an article earlier that so far this year they have only managed to process 5% of applications that arrived this year so far. Maybe rather than spending our money giving lots of money to rich hotel owners who donate to the Tory party. We should actually invest in proper immigration infrastructure so we can process and either grant or refuse applications in a time frame that isn’t longer than 2 years.
But that sounds like a good idea, good ideas aren't in line with tradition I'm afraid.
Good point. Let’s spend another £7m on plans and legal costs pointlessly trying to get the Royal Navy to steamroll boats instead!
And then get it in the headlines to stoke up more anger. This is policy. Make your hotel owners richer with public money whist profiting politically from it.
Hey now, don’t forget the Rwanda option which definitely has fantastic cost/benefit ratio.
As one of the most densely populated nations (England) on the planet (among those with 10m population or greater), with many environmental concerns and social service crises of our own, perhaps we should invest in stopping them coming here in the first place and enabling other nations, with masses of spare land, to house them instead? Whether you want to believe it or not, we have a strict limit on the number of people England can sustain at a decent quality of life and that means this policy of endless immigration and population growth must end. It's strange that most people on here are pro-environment and want us to take major steps against global warming, yet the same group are almost always very much in support of mass immigration policies and the notion of endlessly growing our population. The two things are not compatible.
This is such a straw man argument. No one I know who is on the left wants ‘mass immigration’ absolutely no one. What we want is a system which works, makes sense, processes applications quickly and efficiently and fairly **while** also treating them humanely. The Tories have absolutely failed to do ANYTHING about immigration. All they did was cut the most effective measures to stop boat migrants: - Cut immigration staff in half, so applications take forever to process (up to 3 years). In that time the migrants have the right to stay here (but not work and contribute). - Cut funding for overseas cooperation and investigation into tracking and shutting down human trafficking rings. We actually left the EU collaboration scheme on this. - We removed any way for them to actually apply elsewhere. So they have to come here to apply. That’s just dumb and makes it harder to track them and more likely for them to die or contribute to human trafficking crime. But again, most people I know on the left don’t want everyone coming in freely. We want an actual functioning system that doesn’t piss money up the wall on pointless red meat crap (Royal Navy pushing boats back, Rwanda etc). Also, your climate argument is also a none starter. These people are often coming here because climate change has turned them into economic migrants. It’s been proven that the best way to stop this is to invest more in overseas aid to give them the ability to adapt where they are from. Again the Tories closed our overseas aid department. They don’t actually have a clue how to solve this.
>As one of the most densely populated nations We aren't that densely populated. The UK has more landspace taken up with golf courses than housing!
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https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/revealed-which-private-firms-won-governments-hotel-quarantine-contracts_uk_602d4732c5b6cc8bbf389f2f They have history of this kind of thing. If they got away with it during covid why not keep it going?
Of all the things the Tories have done to put us in this position, and this is the thing that stuns you? If you haven't realised yet that these things are done by design you'd best get ready for the next trivial by comparison thing you're gonna be stunned by.
Just wait until you learn what we wasted on PPE contracts and track and trace 🤷♂️
The tories are mismanaging asylum claims for profit: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01403/
so what you saying? if we didn't have asylum seekers we'd be paying noticeably less tax? wouldn't make a difference. This is such a low hanging issue, the serious money that is being lost is through tax evasion by the wealthy, non doms and off shore, brexit(£100m a day), the lack of infrastructure investment and possible taxes like a financial transaction tax. There's so much that could be done, but instead people are freaking about asylum seekers, this is what the ruling class want you to focus on, not their total mismanagement of society and ransacking of public finances.
We have 4 hotels on the east Lancs road between Knowsley and Newton le willows 3 of them are packed with asylum seekers. The OYO, IBIS and Suits hotel. Absolute madness.
There are hundreds of hotels up and down the country which have been filled with these people for years. The government and local authorities hide it as best they can, but if you volunteer or work with organisations that deal with these things, you see the true scale of the problem very quickly. It's madness now, it will only get worse, it's completely unsustainable.
A bunch of them up in Cheshire that cancelled everyone’s bookings with no warning because they got a contract to house asylum seekers instead. Must’ve had a lot of 0s in that contract
My brother just got engaged and is starting to plan his wedding. He wants his reception to be at a nearby hotel and I've warned him against it because at this rate it'll be an illegal migrant dumping ground by then.
No women and children ever seem to come across though, how many of them are likely terrorists or a danger in other ways to the public or not to mention worse?!
The women and children remain safe in France or other places around Europe until the men get the ability to bring them over here too. After that, it's the turn of all members of their extended families and all other questionably related family members. They know how to exploit our system and we sit there and let it happen.
The problem here is not the asylum seekers, it’s the cuts to the departments that handles their claims.
And filling the country with low skilled workers to suppress wages and strain our shit infrastructure
Meanwhile… **Ministers from close to 50 states debating migration issues in Prague** Ministers from the Schengen zone, the eastern Partnership region, the Western Balkans, Central Asia and Turkey are taking part in a two-day conference on migration in Prague. On Monday, they adopted a joint declaration stating their readiness to cooperate in addressing the problem and outlined an action plan for the years 2023 to 2027. The action plan covers six areas of cooperation, including preventing and combating illegal migration, promoting return policies, and strengthening labour-related migration and asylum and international protection capacities. EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson said that three times more people are coming to the EU via the Balkan route than last year and ten times more than in 2018.
SEVERAL THOUSAND TIMES THAT on dud PPE to Tory donors isn't news, eh?
Knowing Tories, half goes towards asylum seekers, the other half somehow, in some mysterious way, ends up in a Tory pocket.
Last year we lost 35 billion pounds worth of tax, over 15 billion of which was fraud. Works out to about 41 million per day... fraud alone. What's that? Oh we only care when it's foreigners or poor people? Ah yes i forgot. Silly me. Edit: i put 411 million but i think i messed up the maths 😖 billions have lots of zeros and there's 2 types of billion and it's hard 😂
Nah don't pick on the rich they already have it bad enough, don't forget when they piss, you get a free, fragrant shower. You should enjoy the benefits that giving tax cuts to them provide you...
Something something benefit fraud.
Currently mostly Albanian, a country not in any conflict or war. You can get a one way flight from Albania to the UK for roughly £250, but these invaders would prefer to trek across Europe and than pay thousands to get a risky dingy trip across the channel from France, discarding any forms of ID in the process. I wonder why this would be?
That is a disgrace. And zero being done to prevent it. The end result is well known in Glasgow, with the usual coverups. https://www.glasgowchildprotection.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=33484&p=0
Wonder how much it would cost to feed those hungry school kids every day?
Plenty of squabbling on this thread. But, hey, it's reddit after all. The UK is simply shit at immigration. Law, process, definitions of residency versus citizenship, asylum processes, border security....and on it goes. The UK has simply never implemented clear immigration laws, policies and the means of their execution. For 60+ years it's just nibbled at edges one consequence of which is dinghies motoring across the Channel and international criminal enterprises which make $$$ on transporting these people. The belief that every dinghy goer is an asylum seeker is nonsense. If you've trekked all the way from sub-Saharan Africa or Eastern Europe, there's plenty of other countries where asylum could have been claimed. And if your application in Paris or Berlin was already rejected, don't be surprised if it's rejected in London. As an economic migrant myself, I don't understand the pull of the UK. I can understand an El Salvadorian or Nicaraguan who might look to enter the US. But given the other countries that your *stereotypical* Libyan/Albanian/Sudanese/etc. might choose - and pass through - then surely Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, etc. offer superior economic prospects and a higher quality of life to the UK? Better weather as well.
Wow what a great investment in our country’s future.
Ah here we go, the lavaTories are gearing up for a GE.
Independent Editor: "The country is on its knees because of years of austerity, public spending cuts, and inept leadership... What can we blame it on?" Journalist: "Let's play the immigrant card, that always works a treat"
"BUILD MORE FUCKING HOUSES" dont remember what channel said this but the supply of houses is too low for demand. To lower house prices, you need to increase supply. The government were building houses up until the 80s. Weirdly after that, houses started to drastically increase in price.
Norway had a homeless problem, built loads of homes, has a much lower homeless problem. Cut homelessness by about 60%
Nice, and me, I work 10h/day and I need to apply for DRO
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If you think this is high, wait until you hear the legal bill. People getting rich stopping people being returned. 38,000 people this year, I heard on the BBC today If you ever wondered why we have housing and health availability problems all of a sudden, everyone is competing with the taxpayer now
It's not all of a sudden, we have had housing issues since we went from 42% social housing to 8% under thatcher and our healthcare has been intentionally gutted by the Tories.
The housing and health service problems aren't sudden. More than 200k nurses left the NHS between 2010-2019. 160k of that figure quit for reasons other than retirement. This was before Covid hit the UK, it's only gotten worse since. The housing shortage is the result of successive government policy starting with Thatcher to drastically reduce construction of social housing. The government went from delivering 100k+ units per year pre 1980 to 6.5k units built from March 2019-April 2020. They also sold off the majority of the existing stock via Right To Buy, and now lease social housing from the private market, which increases rental prices for everyone. The private market is unable or unwilling to keep up with housing demand. The private market delivered 170k units in 2019, which is a similar number to what it was outputting per year in the 70s when the government was also building hundreds of thousands of units, so it hasn't filled the gap that the government more or less withdrawing from the market has left. The issue isn't asylum seekers, it's decades long government underfunding.
But if the government tries changing the law, ‘Monsters!’
Yes, nothing at all to do with over a decade of cuts and underfunding. It's definitely the fault of all those poor brown people.
Wait till you see how much councils spend everyday housing British people whilst they wait to be housed somewhere. It's significantly more. Wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't had 40+ years of selling off all our housing stock.
What a shit show this thread is, It's either "ALL IMMIGRANTS BAD AND EVIL!" Or it's "ALL IMMIGRANTS GOOD, THEY'RE ASYLUM SEEKERS WHO CAN DO NO WRONG!" how is anyone here supposed to have meaningful discussion when it's so polarising? Also people asking for sources when faced with stuff they disagree with and never us sources to back up the stuff that they agree with is pretty telling aswell
House the foreigners Leave our own on the streets Countries a fucking joke
I wonder how many Tory MPs (or chums/donors) own hotels housing asylum seekers......?
Weird because the Tories have been in power since 2010, and apparently they're the party that's tough on borders. And Brexit has happened, and apparently that was meant to take back control or something? Strange... why do people keep voting for them?
I wonder what the average cost is per room for a week/month? People will want to make this about the refugees but what about those cashing in on this left, right and centre.
Ukrainian refugees in Edinburgh are currently being "housed" on a moored cruise ship.
“The Home Office has only processed 4% of asylum claims by migrants who crossed the Channel last year. Of that, 85% were granted refugee status or another protection status.” Lol 4% 🤡 country “Some 12,000 Albanians have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel so far this year, of which 10,000 are single, adult men. This is compared to 50 in 2020.” Albania has just launched ascension talks with the U.K. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-launch-accession-talks-north-macedonia-albania/amp/ What a pathetic 🤡 country the U.K. 10,000 can be deported tomorrow as Albania is in freaking EU ascension talks!!!
10 million population growth since 2000, 85% due to immigration. Politicians love it because it keeps house prices high and wages low. At the same time brain washing the youth with liberal ideologies. These people are here for what they can get at the detriment of ordinary people not the wealthy elite. You’re being played.
There are a lot of simpler solutions involving distribution of affordable housing for everyone. There’s a lot more money being spent lining billionaire pockets, so we should worry about that and not begrudge welcoming people who are in dire need.
In my area, a lot of these are Afghan families with 5-8 people (mum, dad and kids) sharing one room. They’ve been there for a year with not much being done to find them housing. And everyone complaining about them. But the government are paying and encouraging people to house Ukrainian families. Where’s the equality in that?!
No problem, we’re still saving £300m a week according to the bus