Someone else’s work, but this is the situation in a nutshell.
Okay. Facts first. We need to separate immigration, refugees/asylum seekers and actual illegal migrants.
- The UK handles around 30-40k asylum claims a year
- By comparison France deals with about 80-100k and Germany well over 100k
- We're about 17th in the EU 27+ for per capita asylum claims
- Over 75% of asylum claims turn out to be valid
- Due to the Rwanda scheme we haven't been processing any claims for the past couple.of years
- As a result we have been putting people in unbooked hotels, disused military bases etc.
Because the Tories cut all services to the bone and the system cannot cope
While someone's asylum claim is being processed they get a bed, a roof over their head, a pittance to cover food and they cannot legally work
The whole small boats thing could have been prevented if we had opened up the safe asylum routes we promised or a processing centre in France which the French are more than happy for us to do.
So that's asylum seekers.
Basically asylum seekers hub bub is just political theatre.
While screaming about foreigners coming to the UK, the Tories offered British passports to 3 million Hong Kong Chinese
Okay, since Brexit the UK has been screaming for migrant workers. To the point that during the pandemic there was an exception made to fly in Eastern European workers to work on UK farms.
Lack of access to cheap seasonal labour from the EU is crippling UK fruit and veg farming.
Immigration is also vital for helping with the aging population. Something the German government worked out a while ago.
Much like the 50s + 60s windrush generation and the influx of the Asian community in the 60s + 70s. The influx of Eastern Europeans has been to fill a gap in the work force.
In rural areas this has been fruit pickers, in cities it's been builders, brickies, cleaners and other trades
A lot of the UK's lorry drivers were Eastern European and because (Unlike the EU).the UK hasn't spent the past decade building facilities and infrastructure for haulage. When COVID and Brexit hit all the lorry drivers were VERY happy to tell us to F off.
Now, I can understand some folks getting upset. Access to cheap European labour in the trades and jobs like merchant seamen, dockers etc keeps wages down. Which sucks double with an anti-Union government.
If you're in a small rural community, suddenly influxes of people with a different language and culture can feel really threatening and disruptive.
Where I am in Sheffield we have a big Czech Roma community. Across Europe they've been persecuted and it's taking them time to adjust. This can cause tensions with a fairly devout Muslim population but we're getting there.
The difference we have now is that. In the EU, a lot of the Polish, Czech and Slovenians would work in the UK for a few years. Make a few bob and then go back to the continent.
We now have more immigration from outside of the EU but without the flexibility the EU provided.
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All the fear about asylum seekers is BS. Much like the Southern border problem in the US it's fixable but the Far-Right don't want to actually fix it.
The UK actively needs immigration to deal with gaps in the workforce NHS, trades etc. and young foreign workers paying taxes etc helps with our aging population and pensions problems.
Yes, the system needs reform
Yes, it needs managing
As foreign workers affect wages for low paid jobs, can appear in large concentrations in small communities or end up a bit ghettoised there are serious cultural bridges that need to be crossed.
This is especially important for policing, education, social care etc.
eg the riot in Leeds a couple.of weeks ago resulted from Police and social services moving in as there had been reports of a small child being thrown out of a window.
However, it's a close knit Roma community seeing the authorities coming in to break-up a family.