Never drive faster than your Guardian Angel can fly!
It’s the law! The Cof E gets seats reserved for them in the House of Lords. The UK is one of the few countries where religious leaders have a reserved seat in the Government and there aren’t many higher than the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Bet they don’t get Sun Loungers reserved for them by the pool in Benidorm 
Here’s my source.
It is worth the challenge of course. And it’s also worth doing a ‘does it sound’ right check. The UK gets, currently, about 70,000 such migrants a year. The authorities are very slow at processing these - it seems to take 2-3 years for each claim. This would surely mean that there are no more than 200,000 in the process at any one time. Then we should add in Ukrainian and Hong Kong refugees. There are 200,000 Ukranian refugees in the UK - but the deal for Hong Kong refugees was that they were given settled status. They are not now refugees and have the right to live & work in the UK.
So I’ll accept that the UK number looks a bit low and perhaps, if we include Ukranians, the number is closer to 400,000. But I can’t see where you arrive at a 1.1 million number. Please share sources.
Now, its good to consider usable and uninhabitable land. Sweden for example is mostly forest and tundra. But might you also consider other factors in a countries suitability for taking in refugees? GDP and affordability for example. Or GDP per person. I think we can agree its complex and just population density is a poor single measure.
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I think you may have identified one of the major issues here. That and the UK’s reluctance to have all citizens issued with identity cards.
I’m up for ID cards Strath. I’ve let my passport run out. The cost of travel insurance for a bloke over seventy who has had two heart attacks and now fitted with an ICD is prohibitive. I’ve sent my driving licence back for renewal, and if it wasn’t for my bus pass (with a photo of me from years ago and looks nothing like me) I would have no photo ID at all. It’s a good job I didn’t have to vote at the recent local elections. Not that my vote would have made any difference anyway.
Sorry Strath, I thought I had posted the screenshot…
That’s ok they have a database on all of us now. They are going for facial recognition so ID cards would be preferable tbh. If you go through passport control and the software facial recognition doesn’t work you are taken to a side room and interrogated. Happened to me once and was very upsetting. Being questioned on whether you are who you say you are is not very nice.
Yes I know he did Annie, but they all have to be housed, fed, kids schooled, and receive medical help when required. And the amount they put back into society (taxes etc) is far less than what they take out. You can fill a country with workers (which would be a very optimistic view that they all would work) hoping that the economy will improve and expand, but there is a ‘cut off point’ which we reached back in the sixties. And with the lack of manufacturing and industry, we are not making nearly enough in taxes to maintain the standard of living that we have all come to expect. Hence a struggling NHS, overcrowded roads and schools, energy shortages, water supplies over subscribed to, and a national debt that will never be paid off. In fact, it’s only going to get worse.
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You could Welby right!
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You can’t measure value added just by looking at taxation OGF. Many of these people are fulfilling key services that keep Britain going. Whether they work in factories, the NHS or even clean toilets. These jobs need doing and our youth are not interested. If the NHS is struggling it’s because they are unable to recruit workers. If there are energy shortages then it’s down to our successive governments’ failures to set up nuclear power plants over the years. We have absolutely no excuse for water shortages, we do not live in an arid land. As to why sewage is being pumped into the seashores, who is to blame for that? All developed countries have a large national debt.
You don’t need to manufacture here to earn tax revenue on a business.
Thanks, it seems (as someone noted earlier) you and I were talking about two different things: migration and refugees / asylum seekers. Because Welby’s speech was about the proposals to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, I thought that this was the issue so many were getting agitated by. The figures for other countries, such as Turkey, were for refugees.
I’d better go, Justin case there is another pun …
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Legal migration and asylum seeker figures are often (conveniently) confused. They are now trying to close some legal migration routes. Apparently if you come here as a foreign student you can bring your family. Well it’s understandable that they might want to close that loophole. Do other countries allow this? It makes sense if key workers bring families but I don’t understand why a student would, or perhaps they allow this for medical students?
There are some dubious legal routes and, for sure, they should be limited as much as possible. But for me, its a strange line of thinking by this government that it is happy to spend tens millions, probably hundreds of millions, setting up and running this Rwanda plan. However, as you noted, it is also happy to leave the mechanisms for checking on illegal workers and all the rest you describe as very under-funded. Where are the regular checks or even raids on farms, restaurants or factories possibly employing illegal workers? This government has very unusual priorities.
Grand gestures of promised funding make political statements, but nobody cares about the detail because voters don’t see that. Plus the money often is only earmarked but remains unspent until the next administration makes it disappear, or as in the teacher’s pay dispute it’s not new money promised but existing budgets for other teaching costs are meant to be reduced (which is why that lot went on strike). Voters don’t see that because it’s in the detail. Or funding just doesn’t materialise because nobody knows how to obtain it or it’s just to difficult to obtain (e.g. the apprenticeship scheme is hugely administratively burdensome).
What is interesting is they are using a crab-like approach to instigating checks. E.g. they make landlords and employers liable if they house/employ illegal staff. They have put the onus on banks to check identity, greatly reduced the ability to use cash, facial recognition, now greater checks on legal status for access to healthcare. This is all under voter radar and is being introduced by stealth.
What I do not understand is 'why do the migrants want to get to the UK? They travel through Spain, France or Germany which are safe for them to stay in. There are also safe countries in Africa like Morocco.
I attempted to answer this early on in this thread. See below. A key factor is that under international law and refugee conventions there is no obligation on those seeking asylum to stop at the very first country they reach. This is important as it allows a spread of refugees across many countries and not placing all the burden on a few neighbouring countries.
From previous post:
“A common reason for a migrant to focus on a particular country is personal connection in some form. A typical example would be a family member already in that country. However another example might be some historic link, from empire days or from work or other connection.
Another common reason would be language. So French speaking Syrians might see France as a good option.
A final reason could be, this is a guess, that the UK does not have an identity card system. This is surely well known. Unlike almost every other country the UK does not oblige the carrying of identity at all times. This probably seems appealing as it enables work on the black, reduces the risk of being caught and of course reduces the risk of rapid deportation.”
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Good post Strath…And nobody got hurt…
It’s all about the ability to cook Curry, maybe?
We need to get better at it, if so