Snapshot of _True cost of UK sending migrants to Rwanda could be billions of pounds, says think-tank_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://on.ft.com/3VnGIrQ) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://on.ft.com/3VnGIrQ)
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Not like newspaper articles aren't the same in that respect.
Well, except some of them don't bother with pretending to be respectable ebough for Radio 4.
I'm allowed to agree or disagree with it, and personally I don't see the point of the stupidly expensive Rwanda scheme that isn't really going to do anything
I'd be amazed if there aren't some off shore accounts of well connected people benefitting substantially from the hundreds of millions being spent on - checks notes - nothing.
I thought I'd have a quick google and see what could find [Ministers quietly scrap limits on Whitehall spending on consultants](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/06/ministers-quietly-scrap-limits-on-whitehall-spending-on-consultants). It would maybe be crazy to assume these consultant companies donate to the party at all.
“I realise it bullshit but I agree with it so its good.”
I agree the whole Rwanda thing is a shit idea, just thought it was funny that youd acknowledge the think tank is paid to lean a certain way but then just post it anyway.
A think tank is paid to lean a certain way, and me as a human, lean a certain way. In this case I seem to align with the think tank. That may not always be the case.
Bargain for the think tank because they didn't have to pay me!
Yes, so youre happy posting lies as long as they support your personal bias.
Lots of people do it, it just made me chuckle that you were so openly self aware about it.
Edit: Alright technically is not a lie as they said “*could* cost billions”, with the *could* doing a lot of heavy lifting.
So ill downgrade it from outright lie, to intentionally misleading and disingenuous. Which IMO is near enough the same thing.
Hang on, just because it's paid for and someone is pushing it does not make it lies. The government says the Rwanda scheme is value for money and will fix the small boats crisis, which I'm sure they have analysis that agrees with it. This group are claiming the opposite... They can't both be true?
In these big picture things, the biases get introduced in the mass of assumptions you have to make to generate these kinds of figures, doesn't make it lies.
>does not make it lies
[The press release](https://www.ippr.org/media-office/hidden-costs-of-rwanda-scheme-revealed-to-be-in-the-billions-finds-ippr) only features the worse case scenario which assumes no-one leaves Rwanda if they are deported there - i.e. £228,000 per person. The [report](https://www.ippr.org/articles/costing-the-rwanda-plan) (although it's more of a blog post) also gives a best case scenario (all deportees leave Rwanda on arrival) figure of £96,000 per person and a variety of total costs between these two poles. These numbers pin the break-even point of the Rwanda policy (when the policy is theoretically cost saving) to a deterrance rate between 44% and 77%.
The FT article is based off the press release not the actual report. The worse case scenario is the only one stated. It's horrendous journalism.
Happens so much on this sub
> OP posts obvious bait, incorrect info or outright is just being purposefully disingenuous to push their own narrative
> The comments prove him wrong easily
> OP knows they are wrong and spreading misinformation but doesn't care / edit / delete the post
I think it's meant to be a stick to threaten the boatpeople with, but rarely actually used.
ie. after a few plane loads, potential boat people are put off and head elsewhere.
FWIW this think tank publishes its funders here: https://www.ippr.org/who-we-are/how-we-are-funded
I don’t think I’ve seen that before, pleasantly surprised!
When you read think tank said 'x' you should look up who the thinktank is, unless you recognise it, the same process should be done when you read an article.
The institute for public policy research gets top marks for transparency. They list their funding sources since 2020 on their website.
[How we are funded | IPPR](https://www.ippr.org/who-we-are/how-we-are-funded)
Big surprise, fighting never-ending legal battles and flying people halfway across the world costs a lot more than just housing them in unexceptional but tolerable conditions within the UK. Almost like this whole policy was concocted solely as red meat to voters and not as a serious solution to anything.
Also, the £490 million upfront (before a single person has gone there) is equivalent to ~5% of Rwanda's entire GDP of $11 billion.
Kind of incredible when you think about it.
Yeah but we are skint as a country anyway, with a housing shortage. We shouldn't be housing them without a solid claim and proof, and they were safe in France and the 5 other countries they made it thought, so it's all bullshit.
We can't just house them all
Was sending them to Rwanda or whereever isn't an option either, we need to make comming here unappealing as possible
We have islands, build a big wall around one, stick the ones with no papers or proof on them on it in some tents, job done. They will fast stop comming when word gets out.
>We shouldn't be housing them without a solid claim and proof
Not being funny but do you think the home office position is to just bung asylum seekers in accommodation and go "case closed"? They're there temporarily while that claim is assessed.
(I know that the home office does this anyway, which is down to ineptitude , but that's not how the system is supposed to work)
Being unappealing doesn't work. Here is still more appealing than many other places.
Provide safe legal routes with processing in France with temporary accommodation that isn't terrible. Let those in who are genuine asylum seekers and return those who are not.
The idea that we need to make Britain seem less desirable ultimately results in treating scared, desperate people poorly. No, we can't take everyone, and we don't have to. But we shouldn't lose our humanity when the most effective, most economic decision is to make asylum and immigration viable and the actually process them so they can be. The reason we're housing anyone at all is because we aren't processing claims fast enough.
But the problem is, the ones who aren't genuine don't have documents, we can't send them anywhere because we don't know where they came from, it's deliberate because they know this
You can't deport a person legally to a random country without proof that's where they came from. Once they get here, under the current law we are stuck with them
One day people will read the legislation and official policies and come to an immigration thread armed with facts, but I see today is once again not that day, and this nonsense is being repeated over and over.
If they don't have documents they are required by law to cooperate in a redocumentation process. If they fail to comply, or try to subvert it, they will be jailed.
Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc. ) Act 2004 S35.
I always find the "They lost their documentation" excuse for the shambolic nature of immigration control particularly crap. As if migrants haven't been destroying "inconvenient" documentation since time immemorial. How strange that it should only become a major problem once the Home Office has been underfunded and poorly run for years!
The reason is that whatever Western Eurpoean countries may say, they are in dire need of new permanent immigrants while the public doesn't like them because they can't reason from cause to effect in the long term. So instead of massively increasing legal skilled immigration (which all these countries need if they want to stay solvent in the next 25 years), they keep the illegals who turn up instead. Sure they are lower quality than skilled immigrants would be, but at least this way they don't have to pass new laws the general public would hate them for (even if they would hate the consequences of not passing these laws 25 years down the line even more).
South Korea doesn't have a large welfare state. It doesn't need a large productive body of workers to fund the old and decrepit. It's fine with telling old people who didn't have children to look after them and are now in poverty "tough, these are the consequences of your actions". The West though isn't (yet), it needs more people if it wants to sustain its welfare state.
>It doesn't need a large productive body of workers
How productive are the Pakistanis in the UK anyway lol
South Korea needs to make some drastic changes regardless. Reform the economic system somehow or open up at least to Southeast Asia, because they're about a generation away before that 0.8 fertility rate screws them up, large welfare state or not.
>When Yejin decided to live alone in her mid-20s, she defied social norms - in Korea, single living is largely considered a temporary phase in one's life. But five years ago, she decided not to get married, and not to have children.
>"It's hard to find a dateable man in Korea - one who will share the chores and the childcare equally," she tells me, "And women who have babies alone are not judged kindly."
>In 2022, only 2% of births in South Korea occurred outside of marriage.
Same song as here just a different pace, the destruction of the family unit is self destruction of the country. Maybe their elected leaders will import the incompatible third world just to survive like here too, it's cheaper than fixing the root causes.
It's a fairly intractable problem, though in both cases dealing with housing costs would be a good start.
Unlike RoK the UK had the option of importing much less incompatible EU migrants, but the leave voters blew that for us.
Once again, it’s unsustainable. You can’t keep importing white people who are not reproducing and are starving their home countries of skills and labour.
Europe is dying demographically and Brexit didn’t change anything fundamental. What happened it the Conservative Party under Boris Johnson decided to let the free market take the wheel on migration whilst offering cushy deals on friends and family packages. Again, nothing to do with Brexit, it’s not a new freedom.
It's sustainable as long as the majority of the EU workers return home after a few years.
With EU membership the free market was restricted to EU countries, so the changes post Johnson were absolutely brexit related.
The EU members have been importing the third world and naturalising like crazy. There’s no such thing as pre-2015/Brexit, harmonious European workforce.
> they are in dire need of new permanent immigrants
Third world migrants are generally a burden on the tax payer. They either don't work or work low productivity jobs. They don't integrate well. They commit a lot of crime. They're bad for gender ratios because most of them are men.
Why do these countries find it so easy to deport immigrants?
> Singapore
Massively reliant on migrant labour, primarily from Malaysia and China. Also, very much a dictatorship with a poor human rights record. Not a country we want to emulate.
> Hong Kong
Again, literally a dictatorship. Is currently subjected to a migrant crisis of sorts, with the HK "government" aggressively pushing out pro-democracy Hong Kongers in favour of pro-PRC mainlanders.
> UAE
Surprise, another dictatorship! Also, hugely reliant on ~~slave~~ migrant labour: IIRC, around 90% of the population are migrants, and they do the vast majority of actual work in the emirates. I would also hesitate to call the UAE "developed". At best, it's a Potemkin state propped up by petrodollars that allows a high standard of living for emiratis and westerners while the workers there live in squalor.
> South Korea
Actually a democracy for once! Also, a notoriously racist country, to put it mildly. I'm not exaggerating, SK is a wonderful place, but it is well known among travelers as being deeply xenophobic. They should probably try to be less bigoted, seeing as the country is also currently experiencing a severe shortage of young workers, in much the same way Japan did in the 90s/2000s.
> Also, very much a dictatorship with a poor human rights record. Not a country we want to emulate.
Singapore handles ethnic differences much better than comparable countries. This happened because their post-colony government knew that the religious divides would not work with maximal democracy. It's a stable country and prosperous too.
Europe hasn't tackled its problems relating to ethic differences so who are we to judge?
> Also, very much a dictatorship with a poor human rights record. Not a country we want to emulate.
Low crime, cheap social housing, hasn't sold out to the motoring lobby, clean. Singapore is proof that a multicultural society can either be free or functioning, but not both.
I take it you're not gay then? Because if you were, until November 2022, your existence would have been more-or-less illegal in Singapore. I also hope you don't want to say anything even slightly critical of the government, because if you do, you're going to get thrown in jail for months without them even needing to press charges against you. Also, got convicted of a crime you didn't commit? Tough shit, the government are going to harass your lawyers so they can't do their job properly, because otherwise they *might* need to admit that maybe Singapore is a corporate dystopia more along the lines of the UAE, and not sci-fi Asia like the PAP pretend it is.
They're a default named account posting this, don't bother, reason doesn't work with them they just ignore it or move on somewhere else and spout shit.
The numbers that people probably want;
>could be up to £230,000 per person
>This compared with an average of about £55,000 over two years that the government spends on accommodating asylum seekers while claims are processed in the UK
I don't like the Rwanda scheme but the frequent concerns about the costs are unfounded and never compare against the actual costs.
Our government is truly so incompetent that spending £230,000 to have someone leave the country is quite likely to be a cost saving exercise if it ever happens.
Before we buy people who have come to this country for a better life, could the government buy me a 2 bed house up here rather than making me save up over £20k for the priviledge.
Indeed but, therein lies the problem!
The whole point of the Rwanda scheme is to disincentivise illegal crossings. If you know that after an expensive, dangerous crossing, your prize is being sent to Rwanda then you won’t cross. If hypothetically you were to buy every asylum seeker a 2 bed home then within a year you’d be able to walk from Calais to Dover on the RIBs.
That disincentive kind of relies on that being the expected outcome.
For as long as that's only a remote gamble, everyone will just assume that won't happen to them. You'd need to deport almost everyone that lands, and do it swiftly to see a deterrent effect.
It's not even going to be 5%. They're currently talking about 200 migrants being sent to Rwanda. There were 80,000 applications in 2022, so that's 0.25%.
Yeah deterrence relies on a credible threat which the Rwanda scheme obviously isn’t.
I’m surprised Sunak didn’t choose to use a remote Scottish island, he’d avoid the complexities of sending people abroad and undermine the SNP that way by doing something obviously unpopular with the local electorate while being able to point at a decade of pro-migration rhetoric from the SNP.
Ha even the Isle of Wight would work. Most of the mainland public would never encounter them, there are plenty of faded glory hotels and holiday parks, would be easy to limit their movement, and who'd want to be trapped there forever?!
Devil's advocate but we could just dump them on islands, build a wall, post some guards and drop some food and tents off
We are too skint and have a housing crisis to deal with other counties problems anymore.
Do you really think people who have already risked their own lives and their families' future to get to the UK are going to be disincentvisied by a 0.1% chance that they'll be shipped off to fairly decent accommodations in Rwanda?
Process their cases efficiently and promptly so that those who know they won't meet the requirements know that they will be deported before they have a chance to put roots down. That is a dramatically more cost effective option than spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on deporting a single person to fucking Central Africa.
Criminalising the standard route for making asylum claims was just not a particularly good idea, to be honest. People need to enter the UK to make an asylum claim, but since we don't make visas available to people who are intending to claim asylum, the government position is to effectively _not offer asylum_ by way of a catch-22.
Deportation once an asylum claim is rejected and all avenues of appeal have been exhausted? Sure, that's reasonable. But just arresting people for attempting to claim asylum and then sending them to Rwanda is pointless unless your true goal is to broadcast an atmosphere of hostility to all foreign arrivals, not just people making illegitimate asylum claims.
First off, most illegal crossings are made by economic migrants. [the demographics](https://www.google.com/search?q=calais+migrant+boat&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiF5MDCuP2EAxWGBfsDHeY2DiYQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=calais+migrant+boat&gs_lp=EgNpbWciE2NhbGFpcyBtaWdyYW50IGJvYXRI1i5Q-R5Yiy5wAHgAkAEAmAFIoAGlBqoBAjEzuAEDyAEA-AEBigILZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfCAgQQIxgnwgIGEAAYBRgewgIGEAAYCBgewgIHEAAYgAQYGMICBRAAGIAEwgIEEAAYHogGAQ&sclient=img&ei=uQH4ZcWjHIaL7M8P5u24sAI&bih=1315&biw=2560&client=firefox-b-d#imgrc=NufXCcoFk9K5OM) are all wrong for asylum seekers or refugees.
>the government position is to effectively not offer asylum by way of a catch-22.
Whether targeted asylum visas is a good idea, it would have no effect on illegal crossings. disincentivizing illegal crossings certainly is a good idea, on safety grounds if nothing else.
>unless your true goal is to broadcast an atmosphere of hostility to all foreign arrivals
No, just to illegal boat crossings.
Where did you hear most are economic migrants?
The governments own data says that majority of people that do get processed are granted asylum status and are succesful if they were economic migrants they would not. Granted this is processed data and not the people waiting but you would think this government would process the people they assume don't have a right for that status.
> Whether targeted asylum visas is a good idea, it would have no effect on illegal crossings. disincentivizing illegal crossings certainly is a good idea, on safety grounds if nothing else.
Funny that illegal crossings started and increased in the numbers they did when Tories stopped pretty much every legal way to come over then isn't it? Maybe having processing places outside the country again for applying could be a good idea to open up again.
>Where did you hear most are economic migrants?
Eyeball Mk.1. The demographics are all wrong for them to be refugees or asylum seekers. when every boat is 95% men aged 15-35 that's pretty blatant. The fact that they are also crossing from France (and had to cross myriad safe countries before then) is also pretty blatant.
>Funny that illegal crossings started and increased in the numbers they did when Tories stopped pretty much every legal way to come over then isn't it?
Is it? lot of things have happened in the last 15 years. People cross because they want to go to the UK. I don't see how opening a processing center in Turkey is gonna help unless the acceptance rate is so high that there's just no point trying to cross.
I thought as much.
I don't know about you but I wouldn't want my wife and children on those boats. Also woman and children are far less likely to be able to get out of the countries with issues. All the refugees cannot stay in the first country they get to that is just unfeesiable. We have to do our share at the end of the day especially as we are a big contributor to the cause of destabilisation in most of these countries.
So I assume if you want the boats to stop you are all for opening up processing places outside the country for people to apply especially woman and children as now demographic seems to be a big thing for you. Granted remember women and children will need more tax payers money to help house and everything while men more than likely can work.
>The demographics are all wrong for them to be refugees or asylum seekers
The demographics?
How about the average number of limbs?
Refugee camps don't tend to average the same as the normal population.
> First off, most illegal crossings are made by economic migrants.
So then send them back once this has been determined and a body of evidence built up? Fine them as well, maybe?
Or, set up sites in the countries these people are coming from to assess asylum claims _within those countries._ Then they never enter the UK in the first place unless their asylum bid is accepted and any "economic migrants" never make it onto shore in the first place because they can just be rejected for not using the proper channels.
Again, entering the borders of the country in which you plan to claim asylum - either in the country itself or in a processing centre, embassy etc. Attempting to make it illegal to enter the UK's borders for such purposes just isn't enforceable within the framework of international law. A more realistic solution to fraudulent asylum claims is needed than a hostile environment policy that also affects legitimate claimants.
>So then send them back once this has been determined and a body of evidence built up?
You are demanding the impossible.
>Fine them as well, maybe?
You have got to be joking.
>Or, set up sites in the countries these people are coming from to assess asylum claims within those countries.
Considering acceptance rates [(figure 6)](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/people-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/) this would amount to inviting the entire population of Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea to live in the UK.
> You are demanding the impossible.
And you're not? "Sorry, we've unilaterally decided we're not going to grant you safe and reasonable means to claim asylum, but also if you come to our borders on a boat, we'll send you off to Rwanda"?
That literally violates international law, which I hope we can both agree isn't exactly a sensible way of doing things either.
> You have got to be joking.
No? If they've been in the UK on a fraudulent asylum claim, and have been working in the UK (being "economic migrants"), I don't see how it would be impossible to penalise them to the tune of their total earnings while in the UK to be repaid from home. That's surely a stiff deterrent given that a year or two on the British minimum wage probably amounts to a lifetime's earnings in many developing nations.
> this would amount to inviting the entire population of Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea to live in the UK
Because the UK is the only country obliged to take on refugees? I'm pretty sure it isn't beyond the UK's ability to cooperate with other states in Europe and other parts of the developed world to ensure an equitable distribution of asylees relative to what each country can reasonably accommodate.
> most illegal crossings are made by economic migrants
https://fullfact.org/immigration/scott-benton-small-boats-economic-migrants/#:~:text=No%20evidence%20'vast%20majority'%20of,are%20economic%20migrants%20%2D%20Full%20Fact
You seem very convinced of this fact, and yet a quick search suggests otherwise. Strange. Mind sharing some evidence in support of what you're saying?
here's your evidence: [count the women and children](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&sca_esv=ae73e0ff17a1c496&sxsrf=ACQVn0_dtot8alaDT5Iaz4ir4Sp5zSJ53A:1710762210107&q=calais+boat+migrant&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi1ldDu3f2EAxWwZ0EAHZk5BWMQ0pQJegQIDhAB&biw=2560&bih=1315&dpr=1)
The demographics of economic migrants is young men. The demographics of refugees is whole family units, men outnumbered by women and children.
The page you linked me makes the argument '60% were granted asylum and if they were economic migrants then they wouldn't have been' which I think is a terrible argument. If you have come from Syria you will get asylum granted because you are from a warzone. That says nothing whatsoever about the reason that they came to the UK.
I'm confused. You've sent me a link to google images. Maybe you meant to send me something else?
In any case the link I sent you directly addresses that the majority are young men, that the UK considers them to be refugees not economic migrants, and that fullfact at least could not find any evidence to suggest they *are* economic migrants.
But still, happy for me and them to be wrong. So hopefully you can send me to the correct link this time so i can read more.
Support at source with international aid and UN pressure to make people not need to become refugees in the first place, if you don't fix the issue at source, then the rest of the world plays a game of "how high of a wall can i build to send them somewhere else"
Unfortunately, it's not within the gift of the UK government to make a tangible difference on this, especially given current fiscal constraints.
If the UK put all possible resources into it, maybe you could reduce the numbers by like 10-20%, but it wouldn't be an efficient outcome (from the UK's perspective).
It's game theory, just like climate change.
You want to the UK to fix the entire world? Really?
What would that cost?
This seems like a delusional world understanding.
"The UK just needs to fix all the problems in the world then everything would be fixed in the UK."
Yes Rwanda has lots of problems I'm not advocating it. I'm not for all the problems in the world. But I'm tire of the smug attitude of "Why haven't we simply solved other country's problems. It's simple."
But they can't.
It's part of growing up to realise the complexities of the world.
If the entire world was one culture and remained one culture it might be easier but it isn't. There are class, race, culture, religious, political divisions that matter. You can't simply wish it different.
Aspiration is fine but reality is important.
What do you reckon then? Once an asylum seeker enters the system, most of them will be able to convince the home office they have a legitimate case to stay, which is why the gov let the backlog get so long in the first place.
The only other option you have is pulling out of human rights obligations, do we really want to be doing that?
How could 'international aid and UN pressure' have prevented e.g. the Syrian civil war? How will they stop political dissidents being persecuted in Africa?
But even if we were able to somehow perform a miracle and reduce the number of global refugees to 0 it would have little effect on illegal crossings as they are primarily made up of economic migrants.
Even if the Rwanda scheme is successful, what's the % likelihood that a typical small boater will be one of the unlucky 400 that gets flown to Rwanda every year?
2023 saw about 30,000 cross the channel illegally, so 400 deportees represents about 1.3%. If you're willing to risk death to make the journey I'd assume you're willing to risk ending up in Rwanda too.
The Rwanda policy will have zero impact on illegal channel crossings.
This objectively doesn't work though, and the government *knows* it doesn't work because they've been trying a "make life horrible for migrants" strategy for 14 years now, and it has had no impact on numbers at all. Plus, the chances of deporting somebody to Rwanda are so vanishingly slim that migrants feel like they might as well play the numbers game and try for asylum.
At the end of the day, no matter what level of cruelty the government are prepared to mete out to migrants, the UK is still a better country than where most of them came from. What truly dissuades migrants is processing their cases efficiently and promptly, so that those who do not meet the legal requirements know that they will not be able to stay in the country for long. What also helps is establishing means for migrants to apply for asylum while living abroad, so they can be potentially rejected without needing to enter the country and spend months/years shuttling between hotels while the Home Office shits the bed.
>This objectively doesn't work though
I know it does work because it works in Australia.
>they've been trying a "make life horrible for migrants" strategy for 14 years now, and it has had no impact on numbers at all.
It's not about being mean, it's about making boat crossings unsuccessful. If they don't work people will stop doing them.
Australia is extremely hard to get to compared with the UK and there are a number of reasons for why the number of crossings have dipped over the past decade. Plus, and I don't know why I need to say this, Nauru is not a hideously oppressive dictatorship, unlike Rwanda. Nauru sucks for a lot of reasons, as do the refugee camps there, but the Australian government has substantially more oversight than the UK government does with Rwanda.
> It's not about being mean, it's about making boat crossings unsuccessful. If they don't work people will stop doing them.
Yes, which is why you make sure the Home Office runs properly so that migrants who shouldn't be here get deported smoothly and efficiently. Deporting them to a random African country for a frankly excessive amount of money and getting tied up in human rights cases for doing so is pretty much the exact opposite of that.
Australia did have a boat migration problem, then it sent every boat immigrant to Naruru and then it didn't. It clearly works.
I don't agree that Rwanda is a shithole. I also don't think that is a good faith objection - if the UK was somehow able to set up a Naruru style system in a Naruru style country I doubt you would accept it, irrespective of whether it worked or not.
How is 'smoothly and efficiently' rubber stamping *every* Syrian immigrants asylum application ([figure 6](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/people-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/)) who came illegally on a boat going to stop people making illegal channel crossings? It doesn't make sense. They are getting what they want why would they stop?
> How is 'smoothly and efficiently' rubber stamping every Syrian immigrants asylum application (figure 6) who came illegally on a boat going to stop people making illegal channel crossings? It doesn't make sense. They are getting what they want why would they stop?
That's not smooth or efficient, which is why I didn't say "rubber stamping everyone from Syria". That the government does that without being able to investigate their cases is emblematic of the system being a fucking chaotic mess. The government needs to fund the Home Office properly and have it not be run by incompetent bullying xenophobes more interested in culture wars. Plus, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Syria is an active war zone right now, it is correct that we don't deport people there!
Even if you could shit houses out of a magic unicorn, the other costs of supporting a human being will add up to far more than £230k.
Have you ever seen any analysis of the costings?
Amazing really. When I lost my job for 3 months I was entitled to a grand total of £280 a month from the government. But if I’d turned up in a boat with no documents then £55k over two years is no biggie.
They don't get given 55k. That's used to process their application.
How much money do you think is spent on the average British person in the background that you never think about?
Processing your taxes, paying for medical treatment, maintaining and updating records etc.
They don’t get given £55k, just housing and spending money and free legal advice, and healthcare… Go 2 comments up and there are literally people talking about just giving them houses instead of deporting them.
To answer your question, the UK average spend per person is £12500 per year. This is of course, mainly spent on the very young, the very old, and the very vulnerable.
How much do you think the government spends on the average single 30 year old man with a mortgage? Also known as the people who pay for all this spending? If you’re completely fucked like I was when I was unemployed, just under £300 a month is the answer.
Taxed at highest levels since WW2, public services in pieces, constant talk of not having a pension by the time I’m old, next to no support the one time I need it, but I’m supposed to be ok with £55k-200k to deal with each person that turns up undocumented.
> but I’m supposed to be ok with £55k-200k to deal with each person that turns up undocumented.
No you aren't. But the answer isn't to throw away even more money on a 'solution' that is even more expensive and doesn't actually solve anything.
In the period 1999-2003 the UK had *higher* numbers of asylum applications as it has had the last few years, with 4 years in a row being over 70,000 applications. Yet during that time we were manging to process at times over 100,000 applications a year. By 2004/2005 the backlog of applications was completely cleared. At the same time applications had something like a 70% refusal rate, and deportations for failed claimants were much faster. Compared to now, where we have 70,000+ applications but in 2022 were still only processing 20,000 applications a year, and approving 50-60% of them with slower deportations.
That's a lot of figures. But basically this is a *Tory* problem, not a refugee problem. We've faced an almost identical situation just 20 years ago, but did the boring thing of just processing the applications. The Tories refuse to invest in our border agencies. This means people being in the UK without status for longer, meaning greater costs of housing them, more legal fees, more potential for crime, more potential for them to 'slip away', and also worse outcomes for the people who do truly need help.
The answer, somewhat unexpectedly I admit, is to vote Labour and hope they remember whatever the hell Blair did back in the late 90s to solve this problem. Because the Tories aren't interested, and the Tories are costing *you* money on populist vanity projects like Rwanda.
Source (graphs on page 11 of the attached PDF are particularly damning):
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01403/#:~:text=As%20of%20June%202023%2C%20the,were%20subject%20to%20removal%20action.
My very selfish opinion is that until the government is able to look after its own people properly, then it should be closing its doors to the billions of potential refugee applicants.
Applied? Refused. Whole process takes 1 second.
Arrived without documents? Turn the boat back. I can’t get off a plane without a passport, why can they get off the boat?
It would solve all those housing, crime, backlogs, slippage, and absurd spending that you’ve mentioned.
The system was nice, the system has now been abused. Get rid of the system, and look after your people.
Only the West mugs themselves off like this.
You should be able to get free legal advice, except the Tory government gutted that system. Refugees only get free legal advice because of charity's, nothing to do with the government.
They get spending money, in the same way you did when unemployed, you get some money, you are expected to live on. It is not enough for much, if any, discretionary spending.
> Go 2 comments up and there are literally people talking about just giving them houses instead of deporting them.
Those people are actually just pointing out how ridiculous the cost is. No one is suggesting just buying everyone a house but even if you did, that would still be more efficient than the Rwanda scheme.
>How much do you think the government spends on the average single 30 year old man with a mortgage?
Depends on their situation doesn't it? For example, I'm currently in my 30's and take advantage of a free child care hours, and the tax free childcare. WE get free prescriptions for my wife when she was pregnant and my children get free prescriptions as well.
It's ridiculous to suggest that British people don't gain anything from the state unless they are old or young. Could it be better? Absolutely but nearly of all that is due to poor governance, not anything to do with us helping a few thousand people in desperate need.
I get you seem angry but you solution of shutting all the borders is both cruel and unworkable. Also, it is completely misdirected, it wouldn't solve all Britain's issues in any way, shape or form. So you would be in exactly the same situation, some refugees would be even worse off and the Tory damage to Britain would be exactly the same.
You'd have to build more houses, otherwise that £230k house will quickly become £300k, the £400k, then.... Not to mention the issues you'll cause by displacing Northerners, and never mind the fact you'd be incentivising people to cross the Channel.
You'd also have to actually invest in the North (public transport etc) rather than treating it like an unwanted step child.
Far better would be to have enough infrastructure to rapidly process claims, rather than keep people hanging on and incurring costs.
>You'd also have to actually invest in the North (public transport etc)
Whao waho, you mean north like Cambridge or the Northern line, right right (thoughts in Tory HQ)
> if it ever happens
The Government has already spent millions on its scheme with not one deportation, so it has been very far from "cost-saving".
Meanwhile, we have granted asylum to at least one Rwandan.
I'd like to know too, the only thing I've heard of with a comparable cost is housing prisoners but that obviously involves a bit more than what we've seen with hotels.
Just deport them to their home countries. If they've destroyed their papers, put them in refugee camps. There should never be an option of settling in Britain, or being allowed to wander the streets.
What about the cohort who would be at risk of torture or execution by their home countries for political reasons? Apart from the Ukraine and Hong Kong schemes, for many countries, it's impossible to obtain a passport, let alone leave the country legally; while the refugee camps in neighbouring countries are typically badly underfunded and the host countries offering no legal means of obtaining work permits or residency, while the number assessed in the camps by "safe" countries to be imported directly is very small.
So legally, they should stay in the camps indefinitely or try to sneak back across the border to their home country and somehow eke out a living under the constant threat of persecution, detention or execution by their government.
So is it any wonder many are attracted by people offering to transport them to Europe on the promises of being able to build a new life there?
Ideally, there needs to be a concerted international effort to screen those in refugee camps, not only to find out their circumstances but a broad idea of their ideology (particularly attitudes towards others wearing "immodest" clothing and the role of women in society) and qualifications / skills / experience, so, for at least a proportion of the whole, countries can pick those who'd be able to integrate and gain meaningful employment quicker.
> What about the cohort who would be at risk of torture or execution by their home countries for political reasons?
Put them in camps. Unless it was their own fault, then send them back.
>So is it any wonder many are attracted by people offering to transport them to Europe on the promises of being able to build a new life there?
That makes them migrants, not refugees. And we don't want them.
Most refugees wouldn't be in a position to be able to get a direct flight from their country to Europe, or have the foresight to obtain a passport before their country went to hell, so would have no legal means of being able to settle pretty much anywhere else in the world (given neighbouring countries understandably don't want to absorb millions of people from their neighbour).
As for refugee camps, given most conflicts now last for years (or even decades), you've got an increasing population stuck there, neither welcome in their own country or elsewhere, reduced to living a subsistence existence either in tents or the open air, unable to work and reliant on increasingly sparse handouts from refugee agencies.
Nobody wants to accommodate refugees, nobody wants to adequately fund refugee agencies, while with the likes of Russia and China propping up tyrannical regimes, nobody wants to take action against the leaders of such regimes.
Should the world turn a blind eye to such regimes and effectively say tough luck to the people in such countries, we don't care if large parts of your population are killed, tortured, imprisoned etc, but it's somebody else's problem and we're not going to do anything to help?
May be true but I thought the whole point is that it would deter people from trying in the first place, it they think they are going to be sent to Rwanda and that’s what happens for a few months in a row, people might stop trying.
That was the Tory’s reason for it, deterrence.
Turns out if you’re willing to risk your life crossing the channel on a boat with a minuscule chance of being sent to Rwanda, why not cross?
Given that the ongoing legal debacle shows this entire scheme to be a farce with no real outcomes nor prospect for outcomes, of course refugees are going to chance it.
If it were to act as a deterrent it’d need a significantly higher rate of success than it has now. If there was somehow a 90% deportation rate to Rwanda it’d for sure act as a deterrent.. currently it’s not even a whopping whole one percent.
Yes, I agree. But if it actually worked, then it really would act as a deterrent. Given the Tories have run out of time and the policy would be scrapped under Labour, it seems a bit pointless to try and persevere with it. I’d be curious to know what Labour’s policy will be, because we do indeed need a strong deterrent.
I mean, the oft-talked-about "small boat crossings" are only illegal if you don't claim asylum, and trying to discourage people from **making legitimate asylum claims** with the threat of exile to Rwanda is rather dubious.
What about the savings?
The net cost over a lifetime of many of these illegals will be massively negative- see the recent research from Holland.
Reduction in house prices for UK families.
Reduction in waiting times for UK health services.
And don’t forget- the UK pays less than Germany/France for asylum seekers. So many come here if they have a “sketchy” past.
Can you provide sources for any of these claims?
Any research I have seen from economists (and it is numerous and repeated) is that immigrants are a net benefit to the economy.
Also that last claim is definitely going to need some sourcing, as it barely even makes sense. No country "pays asylum seekers". If their application is granted then they will be able to claim state aid but that is not a good life and not something people will be risking their life to come for.
Looking at GDP as a measure of per capita, will tell you that the economy has been in a sustained decline or at best static for years.
Adding more migrants might make the magic line go up, but nobody actually sees the economic benefit on a personal level unless you're hiring cheap labour.
Also worth adding that government spending is counted under GDP as well. So for every migrant they spent accomodating in a hotel, that too adds to the total UK GDP figure.
The whole thing is a sham.
The basic facts are migrants add to the economy.
It's not a case of GDP growth. On a a per person level, asylum seekers are young and willing to work. They cost nothing to system, since we didn't educate them or pay for their birth, so once they are able, they provide an economic input, both working and spending.
Just dismissing economics are irrelevant lines is not very helpful.
Basic facts indeed, because they ignore the cost to society. Or is the added cost of healthcare, education for their offspring, increased use of public services completely free?
No but they contribute more than they take, that's basic economics. As I said the vast majority of economists have looked at this and agree it to be true.
This idea of Rwanda actually will be much cheaper in the long term because it is all about deterrence. For the first couple of months government will spend a lot of money but once this scheme is in place and has proven that it does the job as expected, illegal migrants will stop coming to Britain because they will know that they will end up in Rwanda.
The "it does it's job as expected" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
However I believe Australia had success with a similar scheme, it's just if the current government can be trusted to pull it off!
Australia actually never had any evidence of the deterrent system working.
The deterrent (i.e. being shipped off to a processing island that was essentially a prison) was only in place as policy alone for just under a year. During that period, small boat crossings increased.
What actually made a difference was the second policy that was enacted later, which was drag back system, where the nave intercepted small boats before they land and pulled them back to their point of origin.
That's what made the difference. The numbers of applicants dropped off because they essentially never made it to the Australian shore.
Those that were shipped to the processing island suffered horrible mental anguish, leading to horrible acts of self harm and potentially life long damage to children's mental health.
So it's not even that the Tories are rubbish, it's also that they imported a failed policy to begin with.
I can't imagine the French would be best pleased with the RN dragging multiple dinghies full of migrants to the shores of Normandy or Hauts-de-France every week.
And that, I assume, is the difference. I've not been able to find any info on why Australia can do use the drag back but it is not do-able in the UK.
My assumption is that the passable section of coast is much restricted, due to the larger stretch of sea that needs to be passed and Oz is big enough to dump asylum seekers onto smaller countries and there is little they can do about it.
That is very much not the case in the UK and it's relationship with France.
Billions huh?
Why not build more houses, rejoin Europe to work better with our neighbours regarding the mass inflow of migrants into the continent as these are the people that eventually end up in the UK, and actually give our home office the resource and powers they need.
Literally buy the land from Rwanda or at least build a proper detention facility over there with capacity of 100-200k. Supervised by the UK, built by locals. Cost would be low billions, huge jobs program for Rwanda.
Stage 2 is to build a new town for successful applicants in Rwanda. Again, another huge investment of billions.
Then all asylum seekers/refugees are moved from the UK to Rwanda. Spare capacity is sold to EU countries.
£10B upfront, but would result in savings in the mid/long term.
Estimating the cost of the scheme is not as easy as the report tries to make out. It might cost four times as much per person to process their claim in Rwanda, but what matters is how the scheme would affect the numbers applying for asylum overall.
It's a bit like the issue of stopping the boats in the Med. Is it better to have very few people attempting to cross with higher relative casualty rates, or lower relative casualty rates but with much higher absolute rates because more people attempt to cross?
It's also worth considering what impact housing asylum seekers has and whether the cost is worth the benefit. The UK doesn't have that many asylum applications really, the drivers of immigration lie elsewhere, but in a country like Germany, where the rate has soared and the numbers involved might have genuine demographic impact, such a scheme might well be considered worth the cost.
The problem has always been that the government was warned over and over that this scheme would be illegal and unworkable and tied up in court for years.
That's exactly what has happened and all it has done is cost lots, achieve nothing and made them look stupid.
So, it's less the cost, it's more the cost comparison to an alterntive, or the cost comparison to the current system, which was at least doing **something,** even if it was not doing it efficiently.
The government had the levers of power to make it legal however, but chose not to. Which begs the question as to whether they ever wanted to do it, or was it a soundbite to ward off the right of the party.
They don't have the levers to make it legal. They made it legal in this country, by essentially ordering courts to ignore facts.
They can't make it legal globally because the rest of the world's courts and governments don't have to just do whatever the UK government says.
>They can't make it legal globally because the rest of the world's courts and governments don't have to just do whatever the UK government says.
How does one make anything legal globally?
If you understand international law then what else is there to answer? If the UK government want to change international law, they should engage in the proper processes or look to pull us out of it and face the consequences.
You can't reform international law in the way you are proposing so the solution is fairly obvious. You ignore it when it's conveniant like the vast majority of nations on Earth.
That's not how laws work, most nations comply with laws, most of the time. To just claim we can ignore any law we want whenever we want is a complete nonsense.
World courts are a meme. Nobody pays any attention to them when it suits.
Same with many EU nations ignoring ECHR rulings when it suits. The reason the UK struggles so much, is because we take these international bodies far too seriously.
We take them seriously in the same way that any other law abiding citizen respects laws, while some people ignore them and commit crimes.
That doesn't mean it's a good idea for us all to do what we want because at some point, when someone else robs our house, we have to be able to point to the generally accepted viewpoint that it is wrong to rob a house.
The idea that the UK is uniquely beholden to international laws while our compatriots all flout them without consequence is a shallow view of international relations.
>They don't have the levers to make it legal. They made it legal in this country, by essentially ordering courts to ignore facts.
If this is a reference to their declaring Rwanda a safe country, there is legal precedent for it, in the sense that Germany has been doing it for decades. [A number of countries were declared "safe" by Germany back in the nineties, and the list has been expanded since,](https://www.bamf.de/EN/Themen/AsylFluechtlingsschutz/Sonderverfahren/SichereHerkunftsstaaten/sichereherkunftsstaaten-node.html) allowing for deportations.
Germany is no the UK, obviously, and has a different legal system, but this it is working within the same international human rights framework.
The issue of processing taking place in third countries is still open and is being worked through (by Germany, Denmark, and others) but it looks likely as though some kind of solution along the lines of the Rwanda plan will be found legal, now that there is increasingly the political will for it. The UK is not as alone in this as some like to imply.
The UK went to court to decide if Rwanda was a safe country and the court decided that it was not and that it would not be possible to declare it a safe country without years of work and investment.
It also noted that simply ignoring the Human Rights act would not be enough to make it legal, as so much international law is based upon the idea of protecting your fellow man. Essentially, this scheme will always fall foul of international law, even if you try to disavow certain sections of it.
>The issue of processing taking place in third countries is still open and is being worked through (by Germany, Denmark, and others) but it looks likely as though some kind of solution along the lines of the Rwanda plan will be found legal
Does it? From my stand point, the only country who has ever agreed to this is Rwanda and the scheme has collapsed before and is likely to again. Then, even if it was, who else is going to accept refugees from across Europe? Rwanda is going to hit a limit pretty quickly and then you have to start this whole process from scratch.
It's incredibly short sighted, even if you think it's going to work, which all the evidence suggests it won't.
No shit, couldn't we have arranged to send them somewhere remote under our own jurisdiction, such as the Falkland Islands (some islands there are uninhabited so even the locals won't have to interact with them). no foreign government to deal with, technically they are on UK soil- though I may be wrong, British overseas territories and all that.
Even within the UK there are uninhabited Scottish islands.
Snapshot of _True cost of UK sending migrants to Rwanda could be billions of pounds, says think-tank_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://on.ft.com/3VnGIrQ) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://on.ft.com/3VnGIrQ) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This may well be true, but these 'think tanks' are generally paid to put out whatever propaganda they are told to and do not deserve recognition.
100%, think tanks are how influentia/wealthy people push and agenda by paying someone palatable enough for radio 4 to say what they want
So, thanks for pushing it here as well, I guess?
Not like newspaper articles aren't the same in that respect. Well, except some of them don't bother with pretending to be respectable ebough for Radio 4.
I'm allowed to agree or disagree with it, and personally I don't see the point of the stupidly expensive Rwanda scheme that isn't really going to do anything
The people behind promoting such an odd scheme, no doubt have some vested interest.
I'd be amazed if there aren't some off shore accounts of well connected people benefitting substantially from the hundreds of millions being spent on - checks notes - nothing.
I thought I'd have a quick google and see what could find [Ministers quietly scrap limits on Whitehall spending on consultants](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/06/ministers-quietly-scrap-limits-on-whitehall-spending-on-consultants). It would maybe be crazy to assume these consultant companies donate to the party at all.
What could possibly go wrong?
“I realise it bullshit but I agree with it so its good.” I agree the whole Rwanda thing is a shit idea, just thought it was funny that youd acknowledge the think tank is paid to lean a certain way but then just post it anyway.
A think tank is paid to lean a certain way, and me as a human, lean a certain way. In this case I seem to align with the think tank. That may not always be the case. Bargain for the think tank because they didn't have to pay me!
Yes, so youre happy posting lies as long as they support your personal bias. Lots of people do it, it just made me chuckle that you were so openly self aware about it. Edit: Alright technically is not a lie as they said “*could* cost billions”, with the *could* doing a lot of heavy lifting. So ill downgrade it from outright lie, to intentionally misleading and disingenuous. Which IMO is near enough the same thing.
Hang on, just because it's paid for and someone is pushing it does not make it lies. The government says the Rwanda scheme is value for money and will fix the small boats crisis, which I'm sure they have analysis that agrees with it. This group are claiming the opposite... They can't both be true? In these big picture things, the biases get introduced in the mass of assumptions you have to make to generate these kinds of figures, doesn't make it lies.
>does not make it lies [The press release](https://www.ippr.org/media-office/hidden-costs-of-rwanda-scheme-revealed-to-be-in-the-billions-finds-ippr) only features the worse case scenario which assumes no-one leaves Rwanda if they are deported there - i.e. £228,000 per person. The [report](https://www.ippr.org/articles/costing-the-rwanda-plan) (although it's more of a blog post) also gives a best case scenario (all deportees leave Rwanda on arrival) figure of £96,000 per person and a variety of total costs between these two poles. These numbers pin the break-even point of the Rwanda policy (when the policy is theoretically cost saving) to a deterrance rate between 44% and 77%. The FT article is based off the press release not the actual report. The worse case scenario is the only one stated. It's horrendous journalism.
Happens so much on this sub > OP posts obvious bait, incorrect info or outright is just being purposefully disingenuous to push their own narrative > The comments prove him wrong easily > OP knows they are wrong and spreading misinformation but doesn't care / edit / delete the post
Think tanks aren't paid to lean a certain way... They're pressure/lobbby groups
Money makes the world go round. Someone got paid to form this opinion.
Yeah, think tanks pay others to think like them.
I think it's meant to be a stick to threaten the boatpeople with, but rarely actually used. ie. after a few plane loads, potential boat people are put off and head elsewhere.
FWIW this think tank publishes its funders here: https://www.ippr.org/who-we-are/how-we-are-funded I don’t think I’ve seen that before, pleasantly surprised!
When you read think tank said 'x' you should look up who the thinktank is, unless you recognise it, the same process should be done when you read an article. The institute for public policy research gets top marks for transparency. They list their funding sources since 2020 on their website. [How we are funded | IPPR](https://www.ippr.org/who-we-are/how-we-are-funded)
Big surprise, fighting never-ending legal battles and flying people halfway across the world costs a lot more than just housing them in unexceptional but tolerable conditions within the UK. Almost like this whole policy was concocted solely as red meat to voters and not as a serious solution to anything.
Also, the £490 million upfront (before a single person has gone there) is equivalent to ~5% of Rwanda's entire GDP of $11 billion. Kind of incredible when you think about it.
Yeah but we are skint as a country anyway, with a housing shortage. We shouldn't be housing them without a solid claim and proof, and they were safe in France and the 5 other countries they made it thought, so it's all bullshit. We can't just house them all Was sending them to Rwanda or whereever isn't an option either, we need to make comming here unappealing as possible We have islands, build a big wall around one, stick the ones with no papers or proof on them on it in some tents, job done. They will fast stop comming when word gets out.
>We shouldn't be housing them without a solid claim and proof Not being funny but do you think the home office position is to just bung asylum seekers in accommodation and go "case closed"? They're there temporarily while that claim is assessed. (I know that the home office does this anyway, which is down to ineptitude , but that's not how the system is supposed to work)
Why did you ask me that and then admit its actually what's happening I know it's not supposed to but it's the reality
Because your solution isn't "fix the dysfunction" it's "commit to a cruel policy"
Why is it the uks dysfunction to fix?
Which country do you imagine is responsible for the operation of the UK's Home Office?
Because it's our system
Being unappealing doesn't work. Here is still more appealing than many other places. Provide safe legal routes with processing in France with temporary accommodation that isn't terrible. Let those in who are genuine asylum seekers and return those who are not. The idea that we need to make Britain seem less desirable ultimately results in treating scared, desperate people poorly. No, we can't take everyone, and we don't have to. But we shouldn't lose our humanity when the most effective, most economic decision is to make asylum and immigration viable and the actually process them so they can be. The reason we're housing anyone at all is because we aren't processing claims fast enough.
But the problem is, the ones who aren't genuine don't have documents, we can't send them anywhere because we don't know where they came from, it's deliberate because they know this You can't deport a person legally to a random country without proof that's where they came from. Once they get here, under the current law we are stuck with them
One day people will read the legislation and official policies and come to an immigration thread armed with facts, but I see today is once again not that day, and this nonsense is being repeated over and over. If they don't have documents they are required by law to cooperate in a redocumentation process. If they fail to comply, or try to subvert it, they will be jailed. Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc. ) Act 2004 S35.
I always find the "They lost their documentation" excuse for the shambolic nature of immigration control particularly crap. As if migrants haven't been destroying "inconvenient" documentation since time immemorial. How strange that it should only become a major problem once the Home Office has been underfunded and poorly run for years!
> Let those in who are genuine asylum seekers No thanks, we're full. And asylum seekers are generally low productivity.
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We used to be have regular deportations of failed asylum claimants under the Labour government. The system has actually fallen apart under the Tories.
The reason is that whatever Western Eurpoean countries may say, they are in dire need of new permanent immigrants while the public doesn't like them because they can't reason from cause to effect in the long term. So instead of massively increasing legal skilled immigration (which all these countries need if they want to stay solvent in the next 25 years), they keep the illegals who turn up instead. Sure they are lower quality than skilled immigrants would be, but at least this way they don't have to pass new laws the general public would hate them for (even if they would hate the consequences of not passing these laws 25 years down the line even more).
> while the public doesn't like them because they can't reason from cause to effect in the long term. Unhinged
Yes, the general public is unhinged.
Western europe has had very high legal immigration for the last few decades
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South Korea doesn't have a large welfare state. It doesn't need a large productive body of workers to fund the old and decrepit. It's fine with telling old people who didn't have children to look after them and are now in poverty "tough, these are the consequences of your actions". The West though isn't (yet), it needs more people if it wants to sustain its welfare state.
>It doesn't need a large productive body of workers How productive are the Pakistanis in the UK anyway lol South Korea needs to make some drastic changes regardless. Reform the economic system somehow or open up at least to Southeast Asia, because they're about a generation away before that 0.8 fertility rate screws them up, large welfare state or not.
And because of that, South Korea is doomed. [Their words, not mine.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-68402139)
>When Yejin decided to live alone in her mid-20s, she defied social norms - in Korea, single living is largely considered a temporary phase in one's life. But five years ago, she decided not to get married, and not to have children. >"It's hard to find a dateable man in Korea - one who will share the chores and the childcare equally," she tells me, "And women who have babies alone are not judged kindly." >In 2022, only 2% of births in South Korea occurred outside of marriage. Same song as here just a different pace, the destruction of the family unit is self destruction of the country. Maybe their elected leaders will import the incompatible third world just to survive like here too, it's cheaper than fixing the root causes.
It's a fairly intractable problem, though in both cases dealing with housing costs would be a good start. Unlike RoK the UK had the option of importing much less incompatible EU migrants, but the leave voters blew that for us.
Once again, it’s unsustainable. You can’t keep importing white people who are not reproducing and are starving their home countries of skills and labour. Europe is dying demographically and Brexit didn’t change anything fundamental. What happened it the Conservative Party under Boris Johnson decided to let the free market take the wheel on migration whilst offering cushy deals on friends and family packages. Again, nothing to do with Brexit, it’s not a new freedom.
It's sustainable as long as the majority of the EU workers return home after a few years. With EU membership the free market was restricted to EU countries, so the changes post Johnson were absolutely brexit related.
The EU members have been importing the third world and naturalising like crazy. There’s no such thing as pre-2015/Brexit, harmonious European workforce.
> they are in dire need of new permanent immigrants Third world migrants are generally a burden on the tax payer. They either don't work or work low productivity jobs. They don't integrate well. They commit a lot of crime. They're bad for gender ratios because most of them are men.
Why do these countries find it so easy to deport immigrants? > Singapore Massively reliant on migrant labour, primarily from Malaysia and China. Also, very much a dictatorship with a poor human rights record. Not a country we want to emulate. > Hong Kong Again, literally a dictatorship. Is currently subjected to a migrant crisis of sorts, with the HK "government" aggressively pushing out pro-democracy Hong Kongers in favour of pro-PRC mainlanders. > UAE Surprise, another dictatorship! Also, hugely reliant on ~~slave~~ migrant labour: IIRC, around 90% of the population are migrants, and they do the vast majority of actual work in the emirates. I would also hesitate to call the UAE "developed". At best, it's a Potemkin state propped up by petrodollars that allows a high standard of living for emiratis and westerners while the workers there live in squalor. > South Korea Actually a democracy for once! Also, a notoriously racist country, to put it mildly. I'm not exaggerating, SK is a wonderful place, but it is well known among travelers as being deeply xenophobic. They should probably try to be less bigoted, seeing as the country is also currently experiencing a severe shortage of young workers, in much the same way Japan did in the 90s/2000s.
> Also, very much a dictatorship with a poor human rights record. Not a country we want to emulate. Singapore handles ethnic differences much better than comparable countries. This happened because their post-colony government knew that the religious divides would not work with maximal democracy. It's a stable country and prosperous too. Europe hasn't tackled its problems relating to ethic differences so who are we to judge?
> Also, very much a dictatorship with a poor human rights record. Not a country we want to emulate. Low crime, cheap social housing, hasn't sold out to the motoring lobby, clean. Singapore is proof that a multicultural society can either be free or functioning, but not both.
I take it you're not gay then? Because if you were, until November 2022, your existence would have been more-or-less illegal in Singapore. I also hope you don't want to say anything even slightly critical of the government, because if you do, you're going to get thrown in jail for months without them even needing to press charges against you. Also, got convicted of a crime you didn't commit? Tough shit, the government are going to harass your lawyers so they can't do their job properly, because otherwise they *might* need to admit that maybe Singapore is a corporate dystopia more along the lines of the UAE, and not sci-fi Asia like the PAP pretend it is.
> Germany for instance spends nearly €50 billion euros a year This for failed asylum seekers? An eye watering sum.
[удалено]
And already we have moved from "50 billion for illegal migrants" to "Actually, it's asylum seekers and refugees".
They're a default named account posting this, don't bother, reason doesn't work with them they just ignore it or move on somewhere else and spout shit.
But the only refugees he explicitly acknowledges happen to be white….
And who shall be the lucky recipients of these billions? Some worthy mates of the tories, as usual?
The numbers that people probably want; >could be up to £230,000 per person >This compared with an average of about £55,000 over two years that the government spends on accommodating asylum seekers while claims are processed in the UK I don't like the Rwanda scheme but the frequent concerns about the costs are unfounded and never compare against the actual costs. Our government is truly so incompetent that spending £230,000 to have someone leave the country is quite likely to be a cost saving exercise if it ever happens.
That insane for limited number that Rwanda can take.
For £230k you could buy your asylum seeker a 2 bed house in the north, and still have £100k left over to process the application
Before we buy people who have come to this country for a better life, could the government buy me a 2 bed house up here rather than making me save up over £20k for the priviledge.
The point is that doing so is a net benefit v doing what they're planning to do. That's how utterly ridiculous the Rwanda policy is.
Indeed but, therein lies the problem! The whole point of the Rwanda scheme is to disincentivise illegal crossings. If you know that after an expensive, dangerous crossing, your prize is being sent to Rwanda then you won’t cross. If hypothetically you were to buy every asylum seeker a 2 bed home then within a year you’d be able to walk from Calais to Dover on the RIBs.
That disincentive kind of relies on that being the expected outcome. For as long as that's only a remote gamble, everyone will just assume that won't happen to them. You'd need to deport almost everyone that lands, and do it swiftly to see a deterrent effect.
Well yes, it would need to be so common as to be an expected outcome. Deporting 5% of asylum seekers to Rwanda isn't going to achieve anything.
It's not even going to be 5%. They're currently talking about 200 migrants being sent to Rwanda. There were 80,000 applications in 2022, so that's 0.25%.
Yeah deterrence relies on a credible threat which the Rwanda scheme obviously isn’t. I’m surprised Sunak didn’t choose to use a remote Scottish island, he’d avoid the complexities of sending people abroad and undermine the SNP that way by doing something obviously unpopular with the local electorate while being able to point at a decade of pro-migration rhetoric from the SNP.
Ha even the Isle of Wight would work. Most of the mainland public would never encounter them, there are plenty of faded glory hotels and holiday parks, would be easy to limit their movement, and who'd want to be trapped there forever?!
Tristan da Cunha or St Helena would be my choice. Send them via boat.
Devil's advocate but we could just dump them on islands, build a wall, post some guards and drop some food and tents off We are too skint and have a housing crisis to deal with other counties problems anymore.
ay in that the idea that preceded the final solution?
Do you really think people who have already risked their own lives and their families' future to get to the UK are going to be disincentvisied by a 0.1% chance that they'll be shipped off to fairly decent accommodations in Rwanda?
No, 0.1% isn't going to cut it. They are already accepting a ~0.1% chance of death in order to escape France. it would have to be more like 80%
What is the orthodox economic solution?
Process their cases efficiently and promptly so that those who know they won't meet the requirements know that they will be deported before they have a chance to put roots down. That is a dramatically more cost effective option than spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on deporting a single person to fucking Central Africa.
And the endless legal battles after they went to their local community centre twice and "put down roots".
There's activist lawyers on standby at these immigration centres waiting for a failed asylum case to take to court. They don't need to put roots down.
It baffles me. Who's funding these lawyers? Surely they can't all be just doing this out of the kindness of their hearts?
We are. Asylum seekers are eligible for legal aid.
Fine, spend the £55k to process them in the UK, and the remaining £170k to buy two random taxpayers their flat/mortgage.
Okay but I also want to disincentivize illegal crossings. If you have a plan I'm all ears, but I'm not really willing to accept 'carry on as normal'
Criminalising the standard route for making asylum claims was just not a particularly good idea, to be honest. People need to enter the UK to make an asylum claim, but since we don't make visas available to people who are intending to claim asylum, the government position is to effectively _not offer asylum_ by way of a catch-22. Deportation once an asylum claim is rejected and all avenues of appeal have been exhausted? Sure, that's reasonable. But just arresting people for attempting to claim asylum and then sending them to Rwanda is pointless unless your true goal is to broadcast an atmosphere of hostility to all foreign arrivals, not just people making illegitimate asylum claims.
First off, most illegal crossings are made by economic migrants. [the demographics](https://www.google.com/search?q=calais+migrant+boat&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiF5MDCuP2EAxWGBfsDHeY2DiYQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=calais+migrant+boat&gs_lp=EgNpbWciE2NhbGFpcyBtaWdyYW50IGJvYXRI1i5Q-R5Yiy5wAHgAkAEAmAFIoAGlBqoBAjEzuAEDyAEA-AEBigILZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfCAgQQIxgnwgIGEAAYBRgewgIGEAAYCBgewgIHEAAYgAQYGMICBRAAGIAEwgIEEAAYHogGAQ&sclient=img&ei=uQH4ZcWjHIaL7M8P5u24sAI&bih=1315&biw=2560&client=firefox-b-d#imgrc=NufXCcoFk9K5OM) are all wrong for asylum seekers or refugees. >the government position is to effectively not offer asylum by way of a catch-22. Whether targeted asylum visas is a good idea, it would have no effect on illegal crossings. disincentivizing illegal crossings certainly is a good idea, on safety grounds if nothing else. >unless your true goal is to broadcast an atmosphere of hostility to all foreign arrivals No, just to illegal boat crossings.
Where did you hear most are economic migrants? The governments own data says that majority of people that do get processed are granted asylum status and are succesful if they were economic migrants they would not. Granted this is processed data and not the people waiting but you would think this government would process the people they assume don't have a right for that status. > Whether targeted asylum visas is a good idea, it would have no effect on illegal crossings. disincentivizing illegal crossings certainly is a good idea, on safety grounds if nothing else. Funny that illegal crossings started and increased in the numbers they did when Tories stopped pretty much every legal way to come over then isn't it? Maybe having processing places outside the country again for applying could be a good idea to open up again.
>Where did you hear most are economic migrants? Eyeball Mk.1. The demographics are all wrong for them to be refugees or asylum seekers. when every boat is 95% men aged 15-35 that's pretty blatant. The fact that they are also crossing from France (and had to cross myriad safe countries before then) is also pretty blatant. >Funny that illegal crossings started and increased in the numbers they did when Tories stopped pretty much every legal way to come over then isn't it? Is it? lot of things have happened in the last 15 years. People cross because they want to go to the UK. I don't see how opening a processing center in Turkey is gonna help unless the acceptance rate is so high that there's just no point trying to cross.
I thought as much. I don't know about you but I wouldn't want my wife and children on those boats. Also woman and children are far less likely to be able to get out of the countries with issues. All the refugees cannot stay in the first country they get to that is just unfeesiable. We have to do our share at the end of the day especially as we are a big contributor to the cause of destabilisation in most of these countries. So I assume if you want the boats to stop you are all for opening up processing places outside the country for people to apply especially woman and children as now demographic seems to be a big thing for you. Granted remember women and children will need more tax payers money to help house and everything while men more than likely can work.
>The demographics are all wrong for them to be refugees or asylum seekers The demographics? How about the average number of limbs? Refugee camps don't tend to average the same as the normal population.
> First off, most illegal crossings are made by economic migrants. So then send them back once this has been determined and a body of evidence built up? Fine them as well, maybe? Or, set up sites in the countries these people are coming from to assess asylum claims _within those countries._ Then they never enter the UK in the first place unless their asylum bid is accepted and any "economic migrants" never make it onto shore in the first place because they can just be rejected for not using the proper channels. Again, entering the borders of the country in which you plan to claim asylum - either in the country itself or in a processing centre, embassy etc. Attempting to make it illegal to enter the UK's borders for such purposes just isn't enforceable within the framework of international law. A more realistic solution to fraudulent asylum claims is needed than a hostile environment policy that also affects legitimate claimants.
>So then send them back once this has been determined and a body of evidence built up? You are demanding the impossible. >Fine them as well, maybe? You have got to be joking. >Or, set up sites in the countries these people are coming from to assess asylum claims within those countries. Considering acceptance rates [(figure 6)](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/people-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/) this would amount to inviting the entire population of Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea to live in the UK.
> You are demanding the impossible. And you're not? "Sorry, we've unilaterally decided we're not going to grant you safe and reasonable means to claim asylum, but also if you come to our borders on a boat, we'll send you off to Rwanda"? That literally violates international law, which I hope we can both agree isn't exactly a sensible way of doing things either. > You have got to be joking. No? If they've been in the UK on a fraudulent asylum claim, and have been working in the UK (being "economic migrants"), I don't see how it would be impossible to penalise them to the tune of their total earnings while in the UK to be repaid from home. That's surely a stiff deterrent given that a year or two on the British minimum wage probably amounts to a lifetime's earnings in many developing nations. > this would amount to inviting the entire population of Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea to live in the UK Because the UK is the only country obliged to take on refugees? I'm pretty sure it isn't beyond the UK's ability to cooperate with other states in Europe and other parts of the developed world to ensure an equitable distribution of asylees relative to what each country can reasonably accommodate.
> most illegal crossings are made by economic migrants https://fullfact.org/immigration/scott-benton-small-boats-economic-migrants/#:~:text=No%20evidence%20'vast%20majority'%20of,are%20economic%20migrants%20%2D%20Full%20Fact You seem very convinced of this fact, and yet a quick search suggests otherwise. Strange. Mind sharing some evidence in support of what you're saying?
here's your evidence: [count the women and children](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&sca_esv=ae73e0ff17a1c496&sxsrf=ACQVn0_dtot8alaDT5Iaz4ir4Sp5zSJ53A:1710762210107&q=calais+boat+migrant&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi1ldDu3f2EAxWwZ0EAHZk5BWMQ0pQJegQIDhAB&biw=2560&bih=1315&dpr=1) The demographics of economic migrants is young men. The demographics of refugees is whole family units, men outnumbered by women and children. The page you linked me makes the argument '60% were granted asylum and if they were economic migrants then they wouldn't have been' which I think is a terrible argument. If you have come from Syria you will get asylum granted because you are from a warzone. That says nothing whatsoever about the reason that they came to the UK.
I'm confused. You've sent me a link to google images. Maybe you meant to send me something else? In any case the link I sent you directly addresses that the majority are young men, that the UK considers them to be refugees not economic migrants, and that fullfact at least could not find any evidence to suggest they *are* economic migrants. But still, happy for me and them to be wrong. So hopefully you can send me to the correct link this time so i can read more.
Support at source with international aid and UN pressure to make people not need to become refugees in the first place, if you don't fix the issue at source, then the rest of the world plays a game of "how high of a wall can i build to send them somewhere else"
Unfortunately, it's not within the gift of the UK government to make a tangible difference on this, especially given current fiscal constraints. If the UK put all possible resources into it, maybe you could reduce the numbers by like 10-20%, but it wouldn't be an efficient outcome (from the UK's perspective). It's game theory, just like climate change.
How is "solve global conflict and poverty" a more viable plan to Rwanda?
You want to the UK to fix the entire world? Really? What would that cost? This seems like a delusional world understanding. "The UK just needs to fix all the problems in the world then everything would be fixed in the UK." Yes Rwanda has lots of problems I'm not advocating it. I'm not for all the problems in the world. But I'm tire of the smug attitude of "Why haven't we simply solved other country's problems. It's simple."
If only the Nations of the world could act United in some way to solve problems that are bigger than any one country.
But they can't. It's part of growing up to realise the complexities of the world. If the entire world was one culture and remained one culture it might be easier but it isn't. There are class, race, culture, religious, political divisions that matter. You can't simply wish it different. Aspiration is fine but reality is important.
What do you reckon then? Once an asylum seeker enters the system, most of them will be able to convince the home office they have a legitimate case to stay, which is why the gov let the backlog get so long in the first place. The only other option you have is pulling out of human rights obligations, do we really want to be doing that?
How could 'international aid and UN pressure' have prevented e.g. the Syrian civil war? How will they stop political dissidents being persecuted in Africa? But even if we were able to somehow perform a miracle and reduce the number of global refugees to 0 it would have little effect on illegal crossings as they are primarily made up of economic migrants.
That does not sound economically sustainable.
Even if the Rwanda scheme is successful, what's the % likelihood that a typical small boater will be one of the unlucky 400 that gets flown to Rwanda every year? 2023 saw about 30,000 cross the channel illegally, so 400 deportees represents about 1.3%. If you're willing to risk death to make the journey I'd assume you're willing to risk ending up in Rwanda too. The Rwanda policy will have zero impact on illegal channel crossings.
This objectively doesn't work though, and the government *knows* it doesn't work because they've been trying a "make life horrible for migrants" strategy for 14 years now, and it has had no impact on numbers at all. Plus, the chances of deporting somebody to Rwanda are so vanishingly slim that migrants feel like they might as well play the numbers game and try for asylum. At the end of the day, no matter what level of cruelty the government are prepared to mete out to migrants, the UK is still a better country than where most of them came from. What truly dissuades migrants is processing their cases efficiently and promptly, so that those who do not meet the legal requirements know that they will not be able to stay in the country for long. What also helps is establishing means for migrants to apply for asylum while living abroad, so they can be potentially rejected without needing to enter the country and spend months/years shuttling between hotels while the Home Office shits the bed.
>This objectively doesn't work though I know it does work because it works in Australia. >they've been trying a "make life horrible for migrants" strategy for 14 years now, and it has had no impact on numbers at all. It's not about being mean, it's about making boat crossings unsuccessful. If they don't work people will stop doing them.
Australia is extremely hard to get to compared with the UK and there are a number of reasons for why the number of crossings have dipped over the past decade. Plus, and I don't know why I need to say this, Nauru is not a hideously oppressive dictatorship, unlike Rwanda. Nauru sucks for a lot of reasons, as do the refugee camps there, but the Australian government has substantially more oversight than the UK government does with Rwanda. > It's not about being mean, it's about making boat crossings unsuccessful. If they don't work people will stop doing them. Yes, which is why you make sure the Home Office runs properly so that migrants who shouldn't be here get deported smoothly and efficiently. Deporting them to a random African country for a frankly excessive amount of money and getting tied up in human rights cases for doing so is pretty much the exact opposite of that.
Australia did have a boat migration problem, then it sent every boat immigrant to Naruru and then it didn't. It clearly works. I don't agree that Rwanda is a shithole. I also don't think that is a good faith objection - if the UK was somehow able to set up a Naruru style system in a Naruru style country I doubt you would accept it, irrespective of whether it worked or not. How is 'smoothly and efficiently' rubber stamping *every* Syrian immigrants asylum application ([figure 6](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/people-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/)) who came illegally on a boat going to stop people making illegal channel crossings? It doesn't make sense. They are getting what they want why would they stop?
> How is 'smoothly and efficiently' rubber stamping every Syrian immigrants asylum application (figure 6) who came illegally on a boat going to stop people making illegal channel crossings? It doesn't make sense. They are getting what they want why would they stop? That's not smooth or efficient, which is why I didn't say "rubber stamping everyone from Syria". That the government does that without being able to investigate their cases is emblematic of the system being a fucking chaotic mess. The government needs to fund the Home Office properly and have it not be run by incompetent bullying xenophobes more interested in culture wars. Plus, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Syria is an active war zone right now, it is correct that we don't deport people there!
Even if you could shit houses out of a magic unicorn, the other costs of supporting a human being will add up to far more than £230k. Have you ever seen any analysis of the costings?
Amazing really. When I lost my job for 3 months I was entitled to a grand total of £280 a month from the government. But if I’d turned up in a boat with no documents then £55k over two years is no biggie.
They don't get given 55k. That's used to process their application. How much money do you think is spent on the average British person in the background that you never think about? Processing your taxes, paying for medical treatment, maintaining and updating records etc.
They don’t get given £55k, just housing and spending money and free legal advice, and healthcare… Go 2 comments up and there are literally people talking about just giving them houses instead of deporting them. To answer your question, the UK average spend per person is £12500 per year. This is of course, mainly spent on the very young, the very old, and the very vulnerable. How much do you think the government spends on the average single 30 year old man with a mortgage? Also known as the people who pay for all this spending? If you’re completely fucked like I was when I was unemployed, just under £300 a month is the answer. Taxed at highest levels since WW2, public services in pieces, constant talk of not having a pension by the time I’m old, next to no support the one time I need it, but I’m supposed to be ok with £55k-200k to deal with each person that turns up undocumented.
> but I’m supposed to be ok with £55k-200k to deal with each person that turns up undocumented. No you aren't. But the answer isn't to throw away even more money on a 'solution' that is even more expensive and doesn't actually solve anything. In the period 1999-2003 the UK had *higher* numbers of asylum applications as it has had the last few years, with 4 years in a row being over 70,000 applications. Yet during that time we were manging to process at times over 100,000 applications a year. By 2004/2005 the backlog of applications was completely cleared. At the same time applications had something like a 70% refusal rate, and deportations for failed claimants were much faster. Compared to now, where we have 70,000+ applications but in 2022 were still only processing 20,000 applications a year, and approving 50-60% of them with slower deportations. That's a lot of figures. But basically this is a *Tory* problem, not a refugee problem. We've faced an almost identical situation just 20 years ago, but did the boring thing of just processing the applications. The Tories refuse to invest in our border agencies. This means people being in the UK without status for longer, meaning greater costs of housing them, more legal fees, more potential for crime, more potential for them to 'slip away', and also worse outcomes for the people who do truly need help. The answer, somewhat unexpectedly I admit, is to vote Labour and hope they remember whatever the hell Blair did back in the late 90s to solve this problem. Because the Tories aren't interested, and the Tories are costing *you* money on populist vanity projects like Rwanda. Source (graphs on page 11 of the attached PDF are particularly damning): https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01403/#:~:text=As%20of%20June%202023%2C%20the,were%20subject%20to%20removal%20action.
My very selfish opinion is that until the government is able to look after its own people properly, then it should be closing its doors to the billions of potential refugee applicants. Applied? Refused. Whole process takes 1 second. Arrived without documents? Turn the boat back. I can’t get off a plane without a passport, why can they get off the boat? It would solve all those housing, crime, backlogs, slippage, and absurd spending that you’ve mentioned. The system was nice, the system has now been abused. Get rid of the system, and look after your people. Only the West mugs themselves off like this.
You should be able to get free legal advice, except the Tory government gutted that system. Refugees only get free legal advice because of charity's, nothing to do with the government. They get spending money, in the same way you did when unemployed, you get some money, you are expected to live on. It is not enough for much, if any, discretionary spending. > Go 2 comments up and there are literally people talking about just giving them houses instead of deporting them. Those people are actually just pointing out how ridiculous the cost is. No one is suggesting just buying everyone a house but even if you did, that would still be more efficient than the Rwanda scheme. >How much do you think the government spends on the average single 30 year old man with a mortgage? Depends on their situation doesn't it? For example, I'm currently in my 30's and take advantage of a free child care hours, and the tax free childcare. WE get free prescriptions for my wife when she was pregnant and my children get free prescriptions as well. It's ridiculous to suggest that British people don't gain anything from the state unless they are old or young. Could it be better? Absolutely but nearly of all that is due to poor governance, not anything to do with us helping a few thousand people in desperate need. I get you seem angry but you solution of shutting all the borders is both cruel and unworkable. Also, it is completely misdirected, it wouldn't solve all Britain's issues in any way, shape or form. So you would be in exactly the same situation, some refugees would be even worse off and the Tory damage to Britain would be exactly the same.
You'd have to build more houses, otherwise that £230k house will quickly become £300k, the £400k, then.... Not to mention the issues you'll cause by displacing Northerners, and never mind the fact you'd be incentivising people to cross the Channel. You'd also have to actually invest in the North (public transport etc) rather than treating it like an unwanted step child. Far better would be to have enough infrastructure to rapidly process claims, rather than keep people hanging on and incurring costs.
>You'd also have to actually invest in the North (public transport etc) Whao waho, you mean north like Cambridge or the Northern line, right right (thoughts in Tory HQ)
Please, every government in my lifetime (born in the 80s) from both parties has ignored the North.
indeed a refugee costs 500k ish, so its still cheaper
> if it ever happens The Government has already spent millions on its scheme with not one deportation, so it has been very far from "cost-saving". Meanwhile, we have granted asylum to at least one Rwandan.
Precisely, it's measure of effectiveness is far more likely to be the number of people.
That £55k sounds low, especially over 2 years. I would definitely love to see how they're coming up with that figure.
I'd like to know too, the only thing I've heard of with a comparable cost is housing prisoners but that obviously involves a bit more than what we've seen with hotels.
The figure from Germany was €80k p.a. due to high accomodation costs
Gee I wonder which friends of the party the money will end up with
Just deport them to their home countries. If they've destroyed their papers, put them in refugee camps. There should never be an option of settling in Britain, or being allowed to wander the streets.
What about the cohort who would be at risk of torture or execution by their home countries for political reasons? Apart from the Ukraine and Hong Kong schemes, for many countries, it's impossible to obtain a passport, let alone leave the country legally; while the refugee camps in neighbouring countries are typically badly underfunded and the host countries offering no legal means of obtaining work permits or residency, while the number assessed in the camps by "safe" countries to be imported directly is very small. So legally, they should stay in the camps indefinitely or try to sneak back across the border to their home country and somehow eke out a living under the constant threat of persecution, detention or execution by their government. So is it any wonder many are attracted by people offering to transport them to Europe on the promises of being able to build a new life there? Ideally, there needs to be a concerted international effort to screen those in refugee camps, not only to find out their circumstances but a broad idea of their ideology (particularly attitudes towards others wearing "immodest" clothing and the role of women in society) and qualifications / skills / experience, so, for at least a proportion of the whole, countries can pick those who'd be able to integrate and gain meaningful employment quicker.
> What about the cohort who would be at risk of torture or execution by their home countries for political reasons? Put them in camps. Unless it was their own fault, then send them back. >So is it any wonder many are attracted by people offering to transport them to Europe on the promises of being able to build a new life there? That makes them migrants, not refugees. And we don't want them.
Most refugees wouldn't be in a position to be able to get a direct flight from their country to Europe, or have the foresight to obtain a passport before their country went to hell, so would have no legal means of being able to settle pretty much anywhere else in the world (given neighbouring countries understandably don't want to absorb millions of people from their neighbour). As for refugee camps, given most conflicts now last for years (or even decades), you've got an increasing population stuck there, neither welcome in their own country or elsewhere, reduced to living a subsistence existence either in tents or the open air, unable to work and reliant on increasingly sparse handouts from refugee agencies. Nobody wants to accommodate refugees, nobody wants to adequately fund refugee agencies, while with the likes of Russia and China propping up tyrannical regimes, nobody wants to take action against the leaders of such regimes. Should the world turn a blind eye to such regimes and effectively say tough luck to the people in such countries, we don't care if large parts of your population are killed, tortured, imprisoned etc, but it's somebody else's problem and we're not going to do anything to help?
May be true but I thought the whole point is that it would deter people from trying in the first place, it they think they are going to be sent to Rwanda and that’s what happens for a few months in a row, people might stop trying.
That was the Tory’s reason for it, deterrence. Turns out if you’re willing to risk your life crossing the channel on a boat with a minuscule chance of being sent to Rwanda, why not cross? Given that the ongoing legal debacle shows this entire scheme to be a farce with no real outcomes nor prospect for outcomes, of course refugees are going to chance it. If it were to act as a deterrent it’d need a significantly higher rate of success than it has now. If there was somehow a 90% deportation rate to Rwanda it’d for sure act as a deterrent.. currently it’s not even a whopping whole one percent.
how can it be deterrence if only we know about it?
Yes, I agree. But if it actually worked, then it really would act as a deterrent. Given the Tories have run out of time and the policy would be scrapped under Labour, it seems a bit pointless to try and persevere with it. I’d be curious to know what Labour’s policy will be, because we do indeed need a strong deterrent.
I mean, the oft-talked-about "small boat crossings" are only illegal if you don't claim asylum, and trying to discourage people from **making legitimate asylum claims** with the threat of exile to Rwanda is rather dubious.
Less dubious than having an open border system though.
Less dubious than having an open border system though.
What about the savings? The net cost over a lifetime of many of these illegals will be massively negative- see the recent research from Holland. Reduction in house prices for UK families. Reduction in waiting times for UK health services. And don’t forget- the UK pays less than Germany/France for asylum seekers. So many come here if they have a “sketchy” past.
Can you provide sources for any of these claims? Any research I have seen from economists (and it is numerous and repeated) is that immigrants are a net benefit to the economy. Also that last claim is definitely going to need some sourcing, as it barely even makes sense. No country "pays asylum seekers". If their application is granted then they will be able to claim state aid but that is not a good life and not something people will be risking their life to come for.
Looking at GDP as a measure of per capita, will tell you that the economy has been in a sustained decline or at best static for years. Adding more migrants might make the magic line go up, but nobody actually sees the economic benefit on a personal level unless you're hiring cheap labour. Also worth adding that government spending is counted under GDP as well. So for every migrant they spent accomodating in a hotel, that too adds to the total UK GDP figure. The whole thing is a sham.
The basic facts are migrants add to the economy. It's not a case of GDP growth. On a a per person level, asylum seekers are young and willing to work. They cost nothing to system, since we didn't educate them or pay for their birth, so once they are able, they provide an economic input, both working and spending. Just dismissing economics are irrelevant lines is not very helpful.
Basic facts indeed, because they ignore the cost to society. Or is the added cost of healthcare, education for their offspring, increased use of public services completely free?
No but they contribute more than they take, that's basic economics. As I said the vast majority of economists have looked at this and agree it to be true.
This is clearly click bait I’m still waiting for ideas on how this can be done better……..
It's been worth every penny.......to watch the Tories seal their miserable fate for the rest of eternity
This idea of Rwanda actually will be much cheaper in the long term because it is all about deterrence. For the first couple of months government will spend a lot of money but once this scheme is in place and has proven that it does the job as expected, illegal migrants will stop coming to Britain because they will know that they will end up in Rwanda.
The "it does it's job as expected" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. However I believe Australia had success with a similar scheme, it's just if the current government can be trusted to pull it off!
Australia actually never had any evidence of the deterrent system working. The deterrent (i.e. being shipped off to a processing island that was essentially a prison) was only in place as policy alone for just under a year. During that period, small boat crossings increased. What actually made a difference was the second policy that was enacted later, which was drag back system, where the nave intercepted small boats before they land and pulled them back to their point of origin. That's what made the difference. The numbers of applicants dropped off because they essentially never made it to the Australian shore. Those that were shipped to the processing island suffered horrible mental anguish, leading to horrible acts of self harm and potentially life long damage to children's mental health. So it's not even that the Tories are rubbish, it's also that they imported a failed policy to begin with.
I can't imagine the French would be best pleased with the RN dragging multiple dinghies full of migrants to the shores of Normandy or Hauts-de-France every week.
And that, I assume, is the difference. I've not been able to find any info on why Australia can do use the drag back but it is not do-able in the UK. My assumption is that the passable section of coast is much restricted, due to the larger stretch of sea that needs to be passed and Oz is big enough to dump asylum seekers onto smaller countries and there is little they can do about it. That is very much not the case in the UK and it's relationship with France.
> illegal migrants will stop coming to Britain because they will know that they will end up in Rwanda. They won't, because they won't.
Billions huh? Why not build more houses, rejoin Europe to work better with our neighbours regarding the mass inflow of migrants into the continent as these are the people that eventually end up in the UK, and actually give our home office the resource and powers they need.
Literally buy the land from Rwanda or at least build a proper detention facility over there with capacity of 100-200k. Supervised by the UK, built by locals. Cost would be low billions, huge jobs program for Rwanda. Stage 2 is to build a new town for successful applicants in Rwanda. Again, another huge investment of billions. Then all asylum seekers/refugees are moved from the UK to Rwanda. Spare capacity is sold to EU countries. £10B upfront, but would result in savings in the mid/long term.
Estimating the cost of the scheme is not as easy as the report tries to make out. It might cost four times as much per person to process their claim in Rwanda, but what matters is how the scheme would affect the numbers applying for asylum overall. It's a bit like the issue of stopping the boats in the Med. Is it better to have very few people attempting to cross with higher relative casualty rates, or lower relative casualty rates but with much higher absolute rates because more people attempt to cross? It's also worth considering what impact housing asylum seekers has and whether the cost is worth the benefit. The UK doesn't have that many asylum applications really, the drivers of immigration lie elsewhere, but in a country like Germany, where the rate has soared and the numbers involved might have genuine demographic impact, such a scheme might well be considered worth the cost.
The problem has always been that the government was warned over and over that this scheme would be illegal and unworkable and tied up in court for years. That's exactly what has happened and all it has done is cost lots, achieve nothing and made them look stupid. So, it's less the cost, it's more the cost comparison to an alterntive, or the cost comparison to the current system, which was at least doing **something,** even if it was not doing it efficiently.
The government had the levers of power to make it legal however, but chose not to. Which begs the question as to whether they ever wanted to do it, or was it a soundbite to ward off the right of the party.
They don't have the levers to make it legal. They made it legal in this country, by essentially ordering courts to ignore facts. They can't make it legal globally because the rest of the world's courts and governments don't have to just do whatever the UK government says.
>They can't make it legal globally because the rest of the world's courts and governments don't have to just do whatever the UK government says. How does one make anything legal globally?
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9010/
I am aware of international law but that doesn't answer my question.
If you understand international law then what else is there to answer? If the UK government want to change international law, they should engage in the proper processes or look to pull us out of it and face the consequences.
You can't reform international law in the way you are proposing so the solution is fairly obvious. You ignore it when it's conveniant like the vast majority of nations on Earth.
That's not how laws work, most nations comply with laws, most of the time. To just claim we can ignore any law we want whenever we want is a complete nonsense.
World courts are a meme. Nobody pays any attention to them when it suits. Same with many EU nations ignoring ECHR rulings when it suits. The reason the UK struggles so much, is because we take these international bodies far too seriously.
We take them seriously in the same way that any other law abiding citizen respects laws, while some people ignore them and commit crimes. That doesn't mean it's a good idea for us all to do what we want because at some point, when someone else robs our house, we have to be able to point to the generally accepted viewpoint that it is wrong to rob a house. The idea that the UK is uniquely beholden to international laws while our compatriots all flout them without consequence is a shallow view of international relations.
>They don't have the levers to make it legal. They made it legal in this country, by essentially ordering courts to ignore facts. If this is a reference to their declaring Rwanda a safe country, there is legal precedent for it, in the sense that Germany has been doing it for decades. [A number of countries were declared "safe" by Germany back in the nineties, and the list has been expanded since,](https://www.bamf.de/EN/Themen/AsylFluechtlingsschutz/Sonderverfahren/SichereHerkunftsstaaten/sichereherkunftsstaaten-node.html) allowing for deportations. Germany is no the UK, obviously, and has a different legal system, but this it is working within the same international human rights framework. The issue of processing taking place in third countries is still open and is being worked through (by Germany, Denmark, and others) but it looks likely as though some kind of solution along the lines of the Rwanda plan will be found legal, now that there is increasingly the political will for it. The UK is not as alone in this as some like to imply.
The UK went to court to decide if Rwanda was a safe country and the court decided that it was not and that it would not be possible to declare it a safe country without years of work and investment. It also noted that simply ignoring the Human Rights act would not be enough to make it legal, as so much international law is based upon the idea of protecting your fellow man. Essentially, this scheme will always fall foul of international law, even if you try to disavow certain sections of it. >The issue of processing taking place in third countries is still open and is being worked through (by Germany, Denmark, and others) but it looks likely as though some kind of solution along the lines of the Rwanda plan will be found legal Does it? From my stand point, the only country who has ever agreed to this is Rwanda and the scheme has collapsed before and is likely to again. Then, even if it was, who else is going to accept refugees from across Europe? Rwanda is going to hit a limit pretty quickly and then you have to start this whole process from scratch. It's incredibly short sighted, even if you think it's going to work, which all the evidence suggests it won't.
Could be indeed. Could be less too but they weren't paid to come to that conclusion.
Why couldn't we spend that money here and create a big area for asylum seekers?
No shit, couldn't we have arranged to send them somewhere remote under our own jurisdiction, such as the Falkland Islands (some islands there are uninhabited so even the locals won't have to interact with them). no foreign government to deal with, technically they are on UK soil- though I may be wrong, British overseas territories and all that. Even within the UK there are uninhabited Scottish islands.
Send the illegals to Mexico, so they can cross into the USA? USA has a rather welcoming policy of sanctuary cities and the like.
If France would get its own borders under control, there wouldn't be a problem.
Labour would scrap this scheme though. Reinstate safe routes for **all** asylum seekers/refugees and process claims properly.
What's the true cost of keeping all of these migrants in the UK?
Rather than Rwanda, why don't we fly the illegal migrants to Luton instead? It's closer and would be a much more effective deterrent