I'm a bit hesitant to post this, but it comes from a place of genuine curiosity and of wanting a clearer understanding of the situation. Because trying to make sense of things through online resources feels like a minefield. My gut tells me that migration is a good thing, but I want some solid ammunition for when far-right idiots try to argue.
Firstly it seems like there is a large amount of conflation between 'immigration', 'illegal immigration' and 'asylum seekers'. As far as I understand it, asylum seekers are coming into this country legally in order to apply for asylum. However, a lot come in via small boats which is an illegal method of entry. It seems that there are very few legal ways to enter if you're an asylum seeker. Once you're here though, I think it's legal once you're going through the asylum process? Either way as far as I can tell, asylum seekers make for a small portion of the overall number of immigrants. But when you see people protesting, they mainly seem to be concerned by people coming in via boats. Surely it's fair greater number of legal migrants that are the ones more likely to put a strain on infrastructure?
And yes there definitely are strains on the NHS and other public services. The population is growing, and these services need to grow alongside that. But isn't it more sensible to say that the fault lies not with migrants, but the fact that these services are being mismanaged and underfunded?
I've also heard that the UK has an ageing population. Without immigration we soon won't have the workforce necessary to support the non-working portion of the population.
So is there actually an issue with immigration, or do the people that argue that case actually have it backwards? Is the problem actually our underfunded services, and the whole immigration rhetoric purely populist nonsense to get the far-right in power (who in turn, aim to give tax breaks to the rich and exacerbate the issue even further)?
And where exactly can I go to get factual information about this sort of thing?
At the moment, yes. I was shocked to find out that the enormous cost of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers was actually not made up by Farage - it is costing billions per year (though decreasing, according to the latest numbers) - about £2bn now.
At a time when we're facing fiscal difficulties (only partially self-imposed by the government) this is a lot. So that is one issue I think most people should agree on.
At the same time, these arrivals have increase dramatically - from near 0 in 2019 to 40-50,000 per year nowadays. These crossings are inherently dangerous and discouraging them will save lives.
One way to discourage them is simply to accept asylum applications from other countries. The UK has done this on a tiny scale for years, but because the scale is so small, it doesn't relieve any pressure on illegal crossings in order to seek asylum. The fear is that doing so at a large scale would result in a large burden on the state. I don't know if that fear is valid; you typically see statistics for the economic benefit of migration as a whole, which is swamped by legal migration. It would be reasonable to suspect that those seeking asylum are more likely to need more healthcare, to have fewer skills since there are no skills requirements, or to have dependents perhaps, which would change this equation.
Other ways are to make the crossing less likely to succeed: more enforcement in French waters (aka "smash the gangs", being pursued), physically preventing boats from making it to the UK (worked for Australia, but fraught with danger and difficulties); or to make the asylum process less likely to succeed: send asylum seekers somewhere else (Rwanda, France).
If we care more about the hotels, we need to reduce the backlog. We could do this by improving claims processing (will cost money, probably) or by cutting corners in claims processing (by making the standards stricter or looser so that it's easier to accept or reject someone quickly), but this will annoy people either way. It may be possible to make the case for it though, for example spinning a time limit on identifying where someone comes from as discouraging people who deliberately destroy documents. Whether that's actually a big thing though, I don't know (people do say it is though, so it might not matter for spin purposes).
If we care more about fundamental problems, the asylum system never contended with a scenario where such large numbers of people would be travelling such large distances to try to resettle. The fair way to address the problem is to come up with a formula that takes into account a country's wealth, population, landmass and assigns them a proportion of the world's refugees to accept each year. Instead, globally we rely on the luck of each country's location with respect to dangerous countries and the cost of getting places to apportion asylum seekers, which results in poor, small countries like Lebanon accepting millions, while much wealthier ones take far fewer. Though there's no regulation on it, the purpose of the international asylum system was not, I don't think, to let asylum seekers travel through many countries on the way to the one they prefer to seek refuge in. Given that every single person crossing by small boat is doing this, there is something to be said for trying to address the issue, but it won't get anywhere.
Part of the reason for the £2bn expenditure is that the hospitality business was in the shitter after Covid, and this was a quiet way of subisising it until their market recovered.
Another reason is that the way the Conservatives dealt with asylum seekers was by cutting the staff needed to adjudicate their claims, creating a massive backlog who are now parked in hotels and B&Bs. Just another stinking turd left for Labour to clean up. It has also meant asylum seekers being stuck in limbo, sometimes for years.
Also, the current claims adjudication process is arbitrary and vindictive: adjudicators will sometimes call the asylum-seeker a liar because of trivial inconsistencies in different versions of their accounts of events made over multiple years, or in some cases just because they don't think something sounds credible, but with no rattionale given for doubting it. "Well, he doesn't look 18." It's a brutal and dehumanising process. I have knowledge of a number of specific cases, and let's just say that some of the adjudicators seem to have taken their jobs because they're hate-filled xenophobes. A system of randomised peer review of decisions would halp, as would removal of the bad apple.
I do agree that, at least, countries like Lebanon should be getting foreign aid to assist in their housing all those Syrian refugees. But it's wrong-headed and malicious to tell people running for their lives that they've run too far or crossed too many borders when seeking safety. And it's even more malicious to assume that most asylum-seekers are cunning con artists playing the system. There are some of those, but the brutality and insanity in Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan and other places is utterly horrendous, and millions of people have been displaced. They don't deserve to be further punished to appease a few loud-mouthed racists in the countries they've fled to.
I don't disagree with your overall message.
However, I find it very hard to evaluate to what extent the asylum checks are working when really all we have are success rate statistics (which could mean they're largely deserving, or we have a too-lenient system. How to judge?) and anecdotal statements about the destruction of documents, and inconsistent stories (e.g. those who failed to be granted asylum in the UK presenting somewhere else with a different nationality).
But I can't see how you're in any different position in terms of information, and so you seem to be discarding the anecdotes and undeniable incentive to lie to believe the claimants. If it's "malicious to assume that most asylum-seekers are cunning con artists playing the system" because we don't have good evidence of that, is it not equally credulous to assume that most asylum seekers are who they say they are?
It's on the basis of that uncertainty that I'm open to seeing the rules changed.
This is what really annoys me; that it's so hard to find actual data on this kind of stuff. We're forced to rely on anecdotes. But I'd bet that the vast majority of people making these life-threatening journeys are legitimate asylum seekers rather than opportunists.
It seems that if the system had the funding it needed, we wouldn't have a backlog stuck in hotels and would thus save money overall. I don't think any attempt to stop boat crossings is really going to work - they'll just find other ways to cross. Perhaps the only real solution is to provide safe, legal routes. But that seems impossible in the current climate.
AFAIK, immigration is a huge economic benefit as long as they quickly become citizens.
Immigrants skew young and unskilled. Read: working/childbearing age, and low wage, which is usually what advanced economies (like the UK) are in most desperate need of. Young people need dramatically less costly healthcare too.
It also staves off the existential issue of an aging population from low birthrates in places like the UK, and a bigger economy with more people is generally good.
One perpetual problem is culture clash, otherwise known as bigotry, but this is not really economic, fixes itself in a generation or two, and makes me so frustrated I don't even want to talk about it...
Anyway, the real problems arise when the path to citizenship becomes logjammed, never fixed, and you end up with a massive pile of illegal immigrants stuck in limbo, and draining systems like you described. The US is perhaps the best example of this: we have a boatload of land, a (formerly) immigration agreeable culture, tons of things for them to do, yet its freaking impossible to become a citizen?
Why?
Because one party's extreme is full xenophobe. The other's extreme is totally okay with absolutely massive amounts of resident illegals draining the country. And some in the middle are totally okay with the pseudo indentured servitude of being illegal.
The end result is we never passed laws to fix our immigration system (with our best shot missed during Obama's presidency), and it tore the country apart:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_reform_in_the_United_States
TL;DR: Don't be the US. Streamline the naturalization pipe, and vote anyone who stalls that the f out. Or you will become MAGA rednecks, too.
Bigotry doesn't fix itself in a generation or two. And even if it did, that's too long to wait.
Trump's nativist bullshit is an exact echo of the Know Nothings in the late 1800s to early 1900s, and the rantings of the Klan in that period. It doesn't get better unless those scumbags face consequences.
There is evidence that in the UK migration, while an overall economic boon, somewhat depressed the wages of the poorest. (Because they are generally competing for the same low wage jobs). In the UK I don't think this has anything to do with citizenship - one of the problems post-Brexit was the large numbers of settled EU citizens who suddenly had to provide documentary evidence of their right to be in the UK and then, often, naturalise. That shows that all these people who were prior to that contributing a lot to society were doing so without being citizens.
But we are talking about refugees and I don't think the economic argument can be extended: how many have severe health problems (mental or physical) due to maltreatment in their home countries?
Calling culture clash "bigotry" is obviously wrong. I lived, for a relatively short amount of time, in another country with a culture similar to my own and a language which I spoke (not natively), and still the experience of being somewhere where I just wasn't quite at home, wasn't able to fully express myself, and was liable to be accidentally excluded, was very tiring. A base level of discomfort with change and difference isn't something we can moralise out of humanity. You might not experience it, you might not think we should cater to it, but you should at least have enough empathy to understand someone who finds the experience of significant social change uncomfortable. As such, bigotry should be reserved for those people who don't merely feel uncomfortable with such things but who harbour actual negative opinions, or take actual negative actions, against the people who represent that change.