Yes. So where will it come from? The UK. Try selling that pup to the Manx population while telling them it will consist of Albanians, Syrians, Afghans, Somalis, Eritreans, Vietnamese, Bangladeshis etc. If Tynwald was serious, you could start with a safe haven for the 20-30,000 healthy young men who invade us from those places via France each year, problem sorted for the UK and IoM simultaneously!! A bit of joined-up thinking eh choppers?
Oh, hang on a minute....
But as previously discussed and evidenced, the overwhelming majority of immigration to the UK is legal, the 'small boats' people make up a tiny percentage of the total, so relative to our overall population we'd be processing a couple of hundred asylum seekers, tops. Not 20,000 or 30,000.
Hang on let me actually do the sums rather than base this on dunover's histrionics, I'd have thought you'd be a man of stats dunover, what with you being a keen slotter like myself.
UK population is 67 million, in 2023 there were 84,425 asylum applications received:
So that's 0.126% of the total UK population.
IOM population is 84,500.
0.126% of 84,500 is 106.
So relative to the UK's population, the IOM would have processed 106 claims in 2023.
The reason the problem has become visible in the UK is that the Tories deliberately 'kettled' asylum seekers in hotels and suchlike, essentially stopped processing their applications, and turned it into a poisoned debate that has toxified politics in the UK and as we've seen over the last week, empowered far-right thugs across the country to think that their time has come.
(The Tories also, of course, essentially cut off all legal means of seeking asylum in the UK, to weaponize the issue via small boats, and giving that noxious wankpuffin Farage something to point at whilst huffing and puffing about how terrible it all is.)
Immigration to the IOM is very diverse, we're seeing people from all over the world come to live here, and make their home here, either bringing their families with them or starting a family here - walking down Douglas high street today I noted how there's a far wider variety of folks around than when I first moved here in 1996, and I think that's great.
I stick by my contention that the single biggest problems that the UK has are poverty and inequality, as the wealthy minority scoop up more and more of the wealth and assets of the country. A government that either can't/won't spend on its population, leaving that population in increasingly dire straits in greater numbers than ever, provides fertile ground for the politics of hate, division and 'othering' to flourish.
New Labour weren't amazing on this in some regards TBH, they sort of covered up the problem by spending a lot of money on lifting a lot of people up out of the bottom, but did nothing to stop the people at the top snaffling up more and more, when the Tories came into power in 2010, years of austerity presented a brutal new reality for a lot of people, which led into Brexit, which led into the ruinous Johnson years, and now Labour are left picking up the pieces.
New Labour did a lot of really good stuff though, and a lot of excellent work on reducing poverty, improving the NHS, societal support services etc.
As a single example, let's not forget that in 2010, the vast majority of people in the UK could get a GP's appointment within 48 hours, after 14 years of Tory rule that's more like 2-3 weeks. That's the failure point, a government that chronically underfunded the health service, and then to deflect blame says it's all the fault of the immigrants.
A happy and healthy population that enjoys a decent standard of living doesn't go out and riot. The problem is not immigrants, the problem is 14 years of total Tory failure.
Like O'Brien, much of this I love immigrants (unless you are one) is for show, but we have to suffer the consequences/costs for this virtue signalling.
100 percent!
who knows 
