[bluescrn]

> The left wing parties just wish to honour existing international treaties which we have signed to allow genuine asylum seekers.

But these are treaties are no longer fit for purpose, as can be seen by the boatloads of mostly young male economic migrants turning up in the UK to 'claim asylum'. People who've got thousands of euros to pay the small boats traffickers.

If they were refugees fleeing war or other dangers, you'd expect a lot more families - women, kids, the elderly - to be making the journey.

(Of course, legal migration to the UK is vastly higher than illegal arrivals. And this is the larger issue putting pressure on housing, healthcare, transport, and more. But the small boats are a glaring example of a broken system being exploited)

[graemep]

The UK's system for processing applications is:

1. highly inefficient: its slow and badly run. 2. seriously considers applications that clearly false - people from Canada and the EU do not need to claim asylum! Those numbers are tiny but it illustrates a winder spread problem. people who feel safe enough to return to the country they "fled" on holiday also clearly do not have a genuine claim. 3. It fails to provide a route for a lot of people who do have a genuine claim - e.g. religious minorities in the Middle East.

It is no longer true that the numbers of legal migrants are vastly higher because the government have decided that they need to cut the numbers of immigrants and the easiest way to do this is to cut legal immigration.

[wolvoleo]

Well, don't forget some of these wars are caused by us. The Western countries invaded Iraq under false pretenses so Dubya could make his Halliburton buddies happy. As a result and pure neglect to form a legit democratic government after the war a power vacuum ensued which caused the rise of ISIS which contributed to the war in Syria. Which directly caused the mass migration on foot from Syria.

In this way we do have responsibility towards them. The migration from Africa is a different issue but it is already possible to quickly reject asylum-seekers from known-safe countries.

> Of course, legal migration to the UK is vastly higher than illegal arrivals. And this is the larger issue putting pressure on housing, healthcare, transport, and more.

Well exactly but nobody is talking about that. Everyone is talking about the asylum seekers. Which are only a small part of the issue.

And the pressure on housing is very multifaceted. A lot of NIMBYism when it comes to new construction, and boomers who have invested in the housing market and don't want to see their investment evaporate by more supply on the housing market. So the parties backed by those with money are always obstructing new construction and other means to make housing cheaper. This is a much bigger problem when it comes to housing than those few apartments granted to asylum seekers.

[rangestransform]

Moral responsibility is not real responsibility that can be enforced at the point of a gun by anyone or any nation, and so this responsibility does not have to be assumed

[graemep]

> The Western countries invaded Iraq under false pretenses

True, but I would say the current refugees are not those who most need refuge. Religious minorities who are the most threatened by ISIS are under-represented.

> it is already possible to quickly reject asylum-seekers from known-safe countries.

It does not happen though. it happens in the end, but the system in ridiculously slow and inefficient.

> And the pressure on housing is very multifaceted. A lot of NIMBYism when it comes to new construction, and boomers who have invested in the housing market and don't want to see their investment evaporate by more supply on the housing market.

That is true.

[bluescrn]

Surely those who need refuge from the worst Islamic regimes are the women, not the men?

As for the housing market, yes, it'd still be in a bad state with zero migration. But at the moment, it seems that we can't build enough to keep up with the migration alone. And when we do manage to build loads of homes, we completely neglect most of the infrastructure needed to support them.

We haven't built a reservoir since the 90s. Transport is a real problem, with the roads overloaded and in bad condition while rail projects seem impossibly slow and costly (HS2 is probably the last one the UK will ever attempt?). And then there's the NHS, policing+prisons, education system, and so on.