Winston, Denmark and the UK are members of the European Union. “Danish refugees in London” makes as much sense as “Cornish refugees in Exeter”. Your point appears to pertain to tax harmonisation far more than immigration, but I repeat: if you’re young, enterpising and able to work then welcome to Britain. (Incidentally, unless your flat shows Countdown every afternoon then my pensioners will most certainly not want to come, and the EU also has rules about shipping livestock.)
NightUK, do you believe the US has less immigration?? You will be sorely disappointed if so, since the US has a cultural diversity which makes the UK look exclusively Anglo-Saxon by comparison.
Hmm… lesse, legitimate cases of asylum seekers (note these are ones that I am familiar with)…
1970s. Ugandan Asians, thrown out of a country they’d made their home, worked hard to establish themselves in because of the colour of their skin. Many came to the UK as refugees, or asylum seekers, if that term is better for you. They worked hard to establish themselves in this country. They did not sponge off the government, and made damned sure that every penny they spent was their own, earnt legitimately.
1990s Afghanistanis. Born, brought up in Afghanistan. Spent their entire lives in Afghanistan. Then, some jumped up bunch of religous extremists gain power, and anyone with an ounce of deceny or liberalism in them lives in fear of their lives. I personally know many of these people, who had to flee their homes, their businesses, their lives, because someone said that they weren’t “proper” Muslims, and therefore must die.
So, to answer your question, YES, yes yes, a million times yes. So long as they are true asylum seekers, which a lot of them are. Have you been to their home countries? Do you know what problems they’re facing? Can you understand what kind of state one must be in to leave everything to get to safety?
I have the misfortune to live amongst the most unpleasant economic migrants that there are. Bar none.
These bloody Africans have wrecked their own country, and have come over here to take our jobs and live in our houses. They get in on bogus student visas, and have a network of shyster solicitors to enable them to stay in the country by bending our rules.
They stick together in close knit communities and make no attempt to integrate with the local population.
However I suspect that these white South Effrikans aren’t quite what people mean when they talk about economic refugees.
NightUK, Why go here with your question. As I see it you expressed you are unconcerned with your political situation so you shouldn’t even voice your question here until you take a stand in your own community.
Until you become a member of your community and take an active part in how its governed I don’t see you as having a voice on this issue. Grow a spine and live up to your civic responsibilities!
To SentientMeat - I know the US is a lot worse, hence why I feel our country should not be subjected to similar problems.
Owlstretchingtime - I have spent time in Kenya and seen the lifestyles of African’s, I made friends with a worker at a complex, he took me into the outskirts of Mombasa to an orphanage with children riddled with aids. They only looked after the boys as they can be providers and was told not to ask where they girls were taken. The boys were never to leave the orphanage other than to work and slept sometimes 5 in a single bed. In the centre of Mombasa the children beg for money, not for food but so they can buy glue to sniff.
I don’t feel that these people should be left to continue these lifestyles and die. I feel these people should be helped to change, not only with money but with physical help. Their government didn’t help as I’m sure you are all aware. Not 3 miles a way a whole village was burnt because they voted against the previously elected president.
Back to our A.S problem. Yes maybe I’m being selfish or stubborn but I feel maybe they do need help and sometimes home’d but just not in England thank you.
You misunderstand what I was trying to say, I think
My point is that the white south Effrikans that live in my area conform exactly to the scaremongering image of the anti-asylum mobs. However no one ever says that they are a problem - because they are white.
If I were you, NightUK, I’d take a good look around you, and at the people who populate this board. They are intelligent, articulate, tolerant and diverse.
My mother was one of these “who needed help, and to be homed”, which the British government did. But, my mother has put as much, if not more back into this country, as have many many refugees.
You’ll find yourself getting short shrift here, and at any UKDopeFest, should you have the nerve to turn up.
Absolutely! Agree completely. How can you expect sympathy when you can’t even be bothered to vote once every four years? Get off the couch already!
Could you elaborate on how you reached that conclusion? Specifically which racist remarks NightUK has written.
Well, no one except you of course.
So fast on them guns, so fast. You are absolutely certain it has everything to do with race. Couldn’t by any chance have anything to do with culture or religion or language or education or family and roots or etc.?
Closely knit bunch, eh? Won’t let in any of them outsiders that don’t march lock and step under the party line - sounds a bit like NightUK to me. But wait! Now that I have taken up the banner of the righteous would that by any chance mean I could hope to land a hot English maiden doperess at one of them DopeFests? I promise I won’t harass her or anything!
Not quite. But I know, I for one, if NightUK’s views in this thread are anything to go by, will not want to share the same space with him. Nothing personal, I just have an intense dislike for people who think that all refugees aren’t really refugees and shouldn’t be allowed in the country.
:rolleyes: doesn’t express it nearly well enough. I don’t want this to turn messy, but when someone says
then I tend to think that yes you are being selfish, yes you are being stubborn, and quite frankly you sound like some of the people who I unfortunately knew as a young girl. The kind who’s chase you down the street with sticks, whipping the back of your legs as you were trying to do your paper round, to earn spending money, so that your parents, who worked for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, in factories, to clothe, feed, and save up for your education, didn’t have to dish out money so that you could by a new book or something like that.
I work in a housing project which houses many asylum seekers, around 35% at the moment. The other residents are at least honest about the sources of their frustrations - that the asylum seekers are coming over here, taking ‘their’ housing, ‘their’ benefits, ‘their’ jobs. They complain that the asylum seekers are living a better lifestyle on ‘our’ money; that they have TVs, sometimes drive cars, that they were better clothes. They ignore the fact that the vast majority of the asylum seekers are muslim and therefore teetotal and unlikely to spend their benefits on booze or drugs (unlike the rest of the hostel). We get a lot of “I’m not a racialist(sic), but”-type remarks. The people complaining, especially about the benefits, are not willing to consider that most asylum seekers in the UK are forced into a position where they have to claim benefits and not work, as they are forced into emergency housing which is generally around five times (no exaggeration) that of average rents.
I take offence to anyone in this country claiming that anything is ‘theirs’ or ‘ours’. Not only that most of us will have originated from immigrant stock at one time or another, that we have inherited this country and made it our own, but also that it is ignoring that Britain has always relied on a fluid and expanding cultural mix. We are a small country, our only historically valuable commodity is our culture; a mix of tradition and new influences. A country the size of the UK would find it difficult if not impossible to prevent our culture from stagnating without outside influences coming into our culture and ‘refreshing the mix’. Immigrants from the Carribean in the 50’s faced a truly horrifying level of fear and mistrust from the neighbourhoods they settled into; these days, the only way Britain can still struggle through as any kind of force in the music industry is by playing off the styles created by the grandkids of those who immigrated then. We’re a dead-enough duck already as far as world culture is concerned: we need the fresh blood imigration provides to this country.
Yes, it is happening fast enough to panic communities into feeling ‘forced aside by an invading force’. Yes, it would probably work easier for everyone if the process slowed down. But the country has got through situations more fractious than this before, and benefitted from the process. The large incoming Irish population during the potato famine has added a rich cultural flavour to Liverpool’s modern identity. I live in Bristol where the summer’s Carribean street carnival draws crowds from hundreds of miles away. We’re infinitely better off enriching our culture in this manner, and I simply can’t see how this will not continue to be so.
My ancestors came here as Vikings. ‘We’ve’ probably been here longer than many of the people’s in this thread. Do I feel it’s more my country than anyone else’s, or that I have more of a right to be here? I certainly do not.
I think there is a legitimate complaint that in many instances the government has dumped asylum seekers into disadvantaged communities without ever speaking to the people already living there and explaining to them exactly what’s going on. This was only ever going to inflame racial tensions. However, the asylum seekers themselves should hardly be blamed for it.
Where else are they going to dump them? Millionare acres or something? Racial tensions are going to be present anywhere you go. Look at it like this.
You (the A.S) got kicked out of your country by the ruling thugs of the current government so you have to land somewhere or else you go back and take your land from the thugs. Where ever you land you are going to be trouble because “you weren’t born here!”
Why is it we never hear of US citizens seeking asylum from the evil thug US gov’t? Because, eventhough we have our differences I can’t think of anyone who would willing exile themselves from here. Heck when I was in Europe it seemed a good part of the news was just devoted to what the US was doing and what we (ie europeans) would have to do now to follow the US’s lead.
Well sorry for having an opinion. Since I disagree with the majority of people’s post’s Im am immediately less intelligent (Angua). This is probably right as I admit I’m not scientist or as well spoken as 99% of you’s.
However if you look at previous posts, I take most if not all comments on board as by the sounds of most of you, I am a lot younger and less experienced with life’s challenges. I’ll also admit it upsets me to be called a racist for disagreeing with having A.S’s in my local community. I may be selfish but how does this define me a racist? If I seen A.S’s being attacked in the street for simply being in our community, I wouldnt walk passed or join the attackers, I would help as much as I could.
If you think by mocking me and making me feel unwanted at your little meetings will prevent me from voicing future posts…your wrong.
TO ALL INCLUDING MY NEWLY NOTED *FRIENDS (*SARCASM), YOUR COMMENTS AND OPINIONS ARE APPRECIATED AND HAVE GAVE ME SOME SECOND THOUGHTS.
Not quite what? Poor Winston is a dopefest persona non grata? sniffsniff
You won’t be around people afflicted by radical different ideas than your own, is your loss. Personally I prefer people with different views than myself, partly because I’m obnoxious and another me would insufferable, but also because life would be too bland and fetid any other way. Yah, washing my dirty laundry, I admit to having this gross fetish for leftist girls. Even to the point where I, in my more reckless youth, have been participating in many a peace march just to impress the hot commie bimboes. Even got to marry one in the end, how about that.
Oh wow! I didn’t see any of all that! I severely wish I had your powerful eye of perception, because all I saw was someone worried about immigration.
Goodie. A long lost relative. How’s the raping and pillaging these days? You’re still upholding the Danelaw I hope; shouldn’t want them pesky English to forget their proper place.
Is that a rephrase of the ole: Property is theft thingy? For I tell you what, my computer is staggering and wobbling just at the prospect of having to load these here boards – how about I come 'round and took yours? But perhaps you meant it more like We didn’t inherit the country from our parents, but loaned it from the immigrants?
Well I remember this one guy seeking refuge in New Zealand, something about the CIA and the Mafia or whatever, but I agree. Why’re you bringing it up? Are you seriously suggesting there’s a big bunch of British or Norwegian trash seeking asylum in your illustrious USA? Or that the majority of Europeans dream of nothing better that setting foot on your blessed shore?
No better advice.
Well Mr. Meat hasn’t been around to explain why, so I wouldn’t get too hanged up on it.
Really? I recognised the language, as being the same language used by the type of people who used to do things like that, to me.
Guess its just a difference of perception. It must be hard to see anything from anyone else’s point of view when you’re white, anglo-saxon and have never had to endure any sort of racism whatsoever.
NightUK, please do not confuse the directness of the arguments of myself and others here for personal animosity towards you. I actually admire your courage in initiating such a sensitive debate, and hope you stick around these Boards to provide genuine opinions which may differ to most others here: variety is the spice of life.
I put it to you that you were a racist in order for you to honestly examine yourself in that respect. It is possible that the root of your “England for the English” attitude has some other origin, but I would suggest that the chances are that, based on our posts to date, you think those who you feel are not “your kind” are in some way inferior. (After all, if not, why should there be any problem at all in the “mixing” caused by immigration?)
If your arguments are strictly economic, then we can speak of declining birth rates, an ageing population and the taxes paid (eventually) by immigrants and their children in jobs “our kind” find unattractive.
Please understand, I am not calling you a racist, I am putting it to you in an attempt to genuinely and honestly explore why you feel the way you do and whether it is morally justified.
I realise this. However, the government should also realise this and should take steps to ameliorate those tensions. Which, from what I am hearing from comrades in Britain, they have not sufficiently done.
There ARE legitimate issues about asylum seekers/refugees that do need to be discussed without people calling one another racists everytime they acknowledge the problem.
I would hazard a guess that most of the British people here are quite middle class and as such aren’t overly impacted by this issue. Eg if the local schools are full of children who don’t speak English we have the option to go private, or use middle class nous to get into the good local schools, ditto health care etc (I know I do), and my lifestyle, and earning potential aren’t in the least bit affected by a deluge of cheap labour - in fact it benefits me as I can get a cleaner and baby sitter etc easily. (cue “prolier than thou” posts from the offenderati).
However those lower down the social scale who don’t have the money, resources and contacts are affected. It is the schools that their children go to , their hospitals, their neighbourhoods that are affected. No one asked them (no one ever asks them - us MCs think we know best) and they don’t like it. When they express this unhappines some know-nothing middle class lefty in the Guardian or BBC calls them racist (when in fact they are no such thing - how many mixed race Middle/Upper class couples do you know? Then look on a council estate).
The whole issue has been badly managed because people won’t acknowledge that there is a problem. There is, now let’s deal with it!
sniff sniff