Worrying situation

OK so what do you suggest?

Yellow stars in The Netherlands spring to mind.

Just an observation, I do remember being on holiday in Mexico 10 or so years ago and the hotel where we were staying gave their guests wristbands so they knew they were guests at that hotel when ordering food, drink and using the pools and also to enable them to access facilities at a nearby sister hotels. I don't think it's that unusual to for hotels to operate this sort of system. In any case people wear all manner of paraphernalia around wrists these days. Wristbands can of course be hidden. Red doors can't, so I don't think that's a great idea if it marks them out as a target.

That's a disgusting remark, petra.
Amused?
You think asylum seekers aren't in the real world?

Did you actually read the full article, bags? If so, you obviously did not take it all in.

I'm amused that one of the asylum seekers said: it was one of the worst things that had ever happened to him. Lord help him when he enters the real world.

Shows someone was more concerned than you, bags.

Red wristbands? Red doors? Asylum seekers attacked because of them?
Perhaps we should all paint our doors red?
Thought not.

In the article, they said that the bands showed all the time. If they took them off, they could not get food.

How do we really want asylum seekers to be treated?
Should we not show some compassion for people in such a plight?

news.sky.com/story/1628904/asylum-seeker-wristbands-to-be-replaced-with-id

They're withdrawing them.

Also, if it really were a problem, the rest of us could start wearing red wristbands too. Wristbands are easy enough to get hold of. I presume the Lynx House ones are distinctive but you'd have to look closely at everyone's wrist to know whether someone was wearing a Lynx House food band or not. Who"s going to do that?

If the wristband meal ticket thing is so outrageous, I guess someone needs to think of a better meal ticket idea.

Wristbands don't have to show until claiming food.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/24/asylum-seekers-made-to-wear-coloured-wristbands-cardiff

Is this how asylum seekers should be treated? They may as well be tagged.
Another company that should not be involved with social services.

The inference in the statement by Heiko Maas is he would not say such a thing if he didn't believe it, he's not Merkel's poodle and it's not in keeping with the stance his party takes on immigration matters. But I agree with you that we don't know for sure.

I doubt if the attitudes of the attackers can be changed, but they can be made aware of the consequences of acting on those attitudes. I think the government is moving away from playing down the immigration problem and is now intending to introduce legislation enabling it to come down hard on criminal migrants. The government needs to be seen as in control of the migrant situation and hopefully the new legislation will be a step in the right direction.

The problem around deportation still exists though and Germany will have to find a country willing to take deportees. Turkey has already refused.

It doesn't have to have been organised to have been a situation that spread rapidly. Violence is infectious, (against anyone, men or women, on minorities or by them) If a group of single, bored, young men with a shortage of female company in one area heard that others had harassed the "easy" local women in another area without ending up in court, then they could be attracted to places where there were going to be a lot of girls about to ogle and try to get lucky.

They would push it as far as they could go, and an attitude by the authorities of treading lightly where ethnic and cultural sensitivities could be concerned wouldn't stop them until it got out of hand.

Just because a minister says it was organised doesn't mean it was. These men's attitudes need to change full stop. Police need to be seriously seen to be on the case. Every case. Its too easy to write it off as some sort of one off attack. The govts political agenda may be leading them to downplay the situation. Its a powder keg with Pegida just waiting to get stuck in.

rosesarered the German Justice Minister Heiko Maas now said he believes that the attackers were part of an organised crime network who used smart phones and social networks to coordinate the attacks.

Heiko Maas and his SPD party have championed minority rights for years, but have now joined with Angela Merkel's CDU party in proposing tougher laws for criminal migrants (Germany has a coalition government btw). I think this makes it clear that cultural ignorance is not behind the NYE attacks.

Eloethan you just made my point. In my response to you I said I thought it's the reception centres that should be improved. I am well aware of how bad the situation is with the current process in the UK and believe that's where the improvement is necessary. In the current situation I can see the case for women with children being treated more favourably to relieve pressure on the system until it's working more smoothly. I don't know what the solution is, but clearly in this country the financing of the system is inadequate and inefficient. My replies though were really made with Germany in mind which has to cope with a huge increase in applicants.

I don't believe that groping, other sexual assault and robbing women on NYE was because the men' didn't understand' Western culture.They simply saw it would be easy to get away with it.So they did it.That was one night, let's hope it doesn't continue.

I'm not saying there aren't concerns and some public unrest re asylum seekers in Sweden - like most countries that take in asylum seekers there are pressures. But there don't appear to be reports from other countries saying that the situation is in virtual "meltdown". The huge backlog here arose before this particular Syrian crisis.

Other countries like Sweden do have problems with immigration matters.

Wilmaknickersfit If these cases were being resolved in a timely manner, perhaps there would be a case for reception centres. They would provide a reasonable standard of housing, companionship and basic support, as opposed to people being left to their own devices, living in sub-standard accommodation and possibly being drawn into bad company. Also language and cultural orientation courses could be held. But the asylum claims backlog is so great that it would be unjust to detain people for maybe several years (and would probably lead to unrest).

Mail January 2014
"The pile of 'pending' applications waiting to be dealt with has soared by almost a quarter in a year, with the most dramatic rises since Home Secretary Theresa May shut the discredited UK Border Agency.........

"........Asylum cases are now the responsibility of UK Visas and Immigration within the Home Office." [where a large number of staff were made redundant, in some cases given generous "exit" packages, and then re-employed when there was a furore about people being unable to renew their passports]

"One immigration lawyer told MailOnline that Home Office Presenting Officers dealing with asylum cases are now judged on their success rates, so if they think they will lose a case it will often be withdrawn.

"When these withdrawn decisions are sent back to case owners, it is not unusual for them to get caught up in the backlog of delayed decisions,' the lawyer said."

Mail October 2014

"There are still 11,000 asylum-seekers in the UK who have been waiting for at least seven years to be told if they can stay in the country, a group of MPs has said, as immigration officials fail to get to grips with long-standing backlogs of claims."

Other countries, like Sweden, also have large numbers of asylum seekers' claims to process and there don't appear to be any reports of the sort of chaos that is present in our own system. Perhaps it would be a good idea to look at how other progressive countries deal with the matter, with a view to making our own system more efficient. It seems to me that we need far more well trained staff to deal with asylum applications and that the system of giving incentives for finalising applications is creating more problems than it solves.

Petra, no I am not suggesting that a short course would change their beliefs, but it would make it clear what the standards and rules are in the society they were moving into and what the sanctions will be if they flout them. And as I said such a course could cover many other much less contentious matters that would make assimilation into society easier if they understood them.

I mentioned, either further up this thread or in another that when I was at work we sent British families on acculturisation courses before sending them abroad. These courses did not turn them into Egyptians, or Indians or Nigerians so that they immediately thought and had the cultural values of those countries, but it did mean they learnt what behaviours were and were not acceptable within those societies, that they understood them and avoided any behaviour that would offend people in those countries while they were there.

jinglbellsfrocks, I understand that, at the moment they are just given a sheet of paper with a few hints and tips on it.

I think language courses are provided, but most of these immigrants have only been in Germany for weeks or a few months so as yet their grasp of German is not good.

Eloethan I thought about that before I posted saying I think they should be in reception centres. I can't think of another option and believe it's the reception centres that should be improved, rather than asylum seekers being allowed to join our society without going through the necessary process. It seems to me it's the lesser of two evils. What would you suggest as an alternative?

I don't think that people who are claiming asylum should be placed in reception centres. It would, in effect, be imprisonment. And since there is I believe a huge backlog in investigating claims, it could be quite a long imprisonment.

Failed asylum seekers are held in detention centres and there have been some very bad reports coming out of them of intimidation, sexual assault and racism. Not all those who seek asylum will be genuine but for those who are and who have possibly had some terrible experiences, I think it would be wrong to treat them like criminals.

knew

Should go to bed.

Wouldn't there be some sort of course in place already? Along with English language lessons. I'm quite sure those men new quite well what they did was wrong, and against the law.