Boats this month…

72 arrivals this morning so far and it’s only 8am!

One sign that the French attempts to reduce the number of crossings actually is working, is the increase in the number of small boats coming from Belgium instead.
www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260522-belgium-worries-as-migrant-crossings-to-britain-rise
It is a worrying trend because it is considerably further to the UK from Belgium, so until this route is closed down, more migrants are likely to lose their lives.

Primrose53

Think tanks on both the political right and left have reviewed the figures and reached the same conclusion the administrative delays in the asylum system created a massive and compounding financial burden on the UK taxpayer.

So this is an older problem. Not created by this government. Many years of neglect - leaving us to pick up the tab now whilst we fight to process people more quickly.

When people are housed in the community rather than hostels/ hotels apparently it's just £14 a night.

I too wonder this. Even if migration levels were on a downward trend, the population is increasing and increasing. How much longer can it go on. The face of Britain is changing and what’s good about it?

I don’t know where you are getting your statistics on costs from. Mine come from the The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford so they are not nonsense.

However many verifiable facts from government and other reliable sources are given to show that inroads are being made, the same people (who I suspect really can’t bear to admit that Labour are tackling the backlog and mess that the Tories left), will come back with the same tropes. Too many people, not enough room, not enough resources, too much money spent, when in fact the population will decline unless we have migration; only a tiny percentage of the UK is built on; a million empty homes; a critical shortage of workers in key sectors.

Instead of Reform whipping up division by describing migrants as “men of fighting age” why not describe them as “men of working age”, men who could be trained or may already have the skills to work in construction. The Skilled Worker Visa list shows the UK has shortages in most of the construction skills and many other sectors.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-visa-temporary-shortage-list/skilled-worker-visa-temporary-shortage-list

As a country we cannot keep moaning about a situation and hope it will go away. The global movement of people isn’t going to go away. War, famine and drought isn’t going to go away. The UK must take some of those people looking for a better life.

In terms of population growth, the UK birth rate is declining and the death rate is predicted to rise as more “boomers” die. Up until now the two have been around the same - 600,000 births and deaths a year. The increase in population has been as a result of migration. But if migration falls and fewer children are born how does the country achieve economic growth? We are repeated told that young people don’t want to work, that around 11 million people of working age are not working. Who will work if we don’t have migrants?

If we can’t engage in meaningful discussion about practical ways to integrate migrants into UK society, however they reach these shores, then there is little point in the discussion.

220 arrivals today.
Who knows how many will arrive tomorrow in this wonderful weather!

Think of all the money those people smuggling gangs are making and no sign of them being “smashed” that I can see. Think also of the large amounts these “poor people” are forking out to come here.

I know all the old tosh too about families chipping in to pay for one family member to get here and I am just not buying it.
They are mostly young men and no way could I have coughed up thousands of £ to get here at their age. None of my relatives could have afforded to help me out either.

Oreo

Your first paragraph is nonsense Graphite this forum is for everyone to have a comment, and if they don’t all agree with you that doesn’t make the thread a facsimile of the DM or the posters automatically being Tory/ Reform/Restore voters, this old chestnut is getting boring.
Posters do read the thread, even your contributions and see the data.
The small boats keep on coming and if we have a good Summer they will come in big numbers.It’s true we will have to wait until the end of the year to tot up the annual figure but nobody will be surprised if it’s the same as the previous year.

And Graphite posted that minimum cost of supporting an asylum seeker is £10,000. That is nonsense too. Minimum cost is £17,000 a year and can go up to £41,000 per person pa.

Your first paragraph is nonsense Graphite this forum is for everyone to have a comment, and if they don’t all agree with you that doesn’t make the thread a facsimile of the DM or the posters automatically being Tory/ Reform/Restore voters, this old chestnut is getting boring.
Posters do read the thread, even your contributions and see the data.
The small boats keep on coming and if we have a good Summer they will come in big numbers.It’s true we will have to wait until the end of the year to tot up the annual figure but nobody will be surprised if it’s the same as the previous year.

in this hell hole if you have agreen card you have to back to the country you came from and get a hat country becasuse of rapes murdered just because of the religion sex prefer food
stupid things there are thousands are dying in the everglands thiscounrty is going down fast black voting rights on and on andon

I think France has been managing to process applications over the years more quickly than the UK?
You might be right Casdon, I think I read somewhere 7- 9 months.

(But it's 10pm here now, and I'm cream crackered in the heat, so I'm off for a shower and bed!)

This board really is an echo chamber for the propaganda printed by the Daily Mail on behalf of the Tory/Reform/Restore parties, posted by people who refuse to look at data or read the thread.

The reason per capita costs have been so high is because of Reform Party Jenrick’s decision, when he was a Tory, to use more hotels to accommodate asylum seekers. Meantime, the Tories stopped processing asylum applications while they faffed around with the Rwanda Plan. They ignored a legal judgement which said Rwanda was not a safe country, actually passed an Act that said it was safe. That country was never going to take more than around 200 people - as already explained. Now Jenrick has shuffled along the opposition benches to join the Farage propaganda machine criticising the Labour government at every opportunity when it is making progress in fixing the mess the Tories left.

Hotel use is now decreasing. By March 2026, the number of asylum seekers living in temporary hotel accommodation had fallen to 20,885, roughly 35% lower than when Labour took power.

Arrivals are being processed faster. As I wrote above, the number leaving the UK, that is, turned around at the port, leaving voluntarily or deported, is the same as the number arriving so the the net result is zero more people.

Costs are around £10,000 per person in the first year where accommodation is in asylum centres, met mostly from the Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget. Total costs including Border Force are 7 billion with 3 billion coming from ODA. Money that used to go abroad in overseas aid is now used here to process and support asylum seekers. Most of the costs are because people are not allowed to work while their application is pending.

That net sum of 4 billion is peanuts compared to the over 1.3 trillion a year that the government spends. Roughly, threepence in every pound the government spends is spent on asylum seekers until they are given leave to stay and can start working and becoming net contributors.

Of course, if the rich elites of the Reform and Restore parties and their even rich buddies, who lie to us about how much asylum seekers are costing the taxpayer, would actually pay more tax themselves instead of hiding their money in offshore tax havens and complex tax-avoiding structures (including the billionaire owner of the Daily Mail), the threepence in the pound “burden” on people with average incomes would drop to a negligible amount.

Just think about how disastrous the Brexit that these same people tricked the UK electorate into has been for the UK economy.

Farage has now said the £5 million bung from Thai-based billionare Harborne was a reward for getting the UK to leave the EU. We’re all poorer while he’s a lot richer. What fools people are.

Or what about tax reform? If anyone cares to look at Richard Murphy’s Taxing Wealth report, simply aligning capital gains and income tax rates would raise 12 billion.

Instead of going around and around in circles repeating Daily Mail propaganda , let's have a fact-based discussion with some suggestions for how genuine asylum seekers can be accommodated and integrated in the UK and be self-supporting during that interim period.

Allowing asylum seekers to work with strict supervision would be a start. The arguments against allowing asylum seekers to work has always been based on an alleged “pull factor” said to encourage economic migrants but there is limited evidence of that.

www.cgdev.org/blog/lifttheban-why-uk-asylum-seekers-dont-have-right-work

That is the historic position, but the UK acceptance rate has now dropped substantially. I just checked, and according to the Government data, the initial decision grant rate dropped to 39% in 2025, falling from 49% the previous year and substantially below the historic peak of 77% in September 2022. It may well drop further this year, as the backlog is now being reduced. I think France has been managing to process applications over the years more quickly than the UK?

Yes, France receives considerably more applications than the UK, but does not grant asylum as readily as the UK. The UK has historically had a substantially higher grant rate - that means approvals - than France.
So, the UK grants asylum to a higher overall number of individuals than France despite receiving a smaller number of initial applications.
I'm reading this in France.

France receives about 160,000 asylum applications annually, compared with the UK about 110,000. Last year they gave asylum to 78,782 applicants, compared to 54,887 by the UK.

France isn't really playing its part in the process though. Did you know that only 25 per cent of asylum applications in France receive positive decisions? I think that makes them one of the bottom acceptance countries in the EU.
The UK on the other hand, accepts 70% of cases, so it doesn't take a genius to work out how the process can be speeded up by France pulling its weight more.

I thought folk on here were complaining about the cost of funding people awaiting their immigration status decision.
When the process is speeded up, so will be the process of removing failed asylum seekers.
Are you implying that many of the 'boat people' are actually genuine asylum seekers?
I still think that the process should be speeded up.
Labour has achieved this better than the Tories.

Casdon

Who are you reminding Chestnut, and what logic is it that persuades you that France has responsibility for people who are using it as a staging post because they want to settle in the UK? France is no more responsible for them than any other country they pass through. This is everybody’s issue!

My post was really in response to Graphite who was comparing us to France as part of a longer post (enclosed).

sundowngirl

Where do these migrants go if/when they are granted asylum or leave to remain? Are they still funded by the tax payer with free housing and benefits? Presumably going above those Brits already on the housing list .

This article explains.

cpag.org.uk/welfare-rights/benefits-scotland/more-info/benefits-migrants-factsheets/new-refugees

Maremia

The quicker the process is achieved, the sooner they are permitted to work.
And again, invest in speeding up the process.

Just what we don't need is more people, whether working or not. I've just posted that our infrastructure is unable to cope, housing, NHS, education, sewage and so on, all are struggling. I fail to see how speeding up the asylum process can help. How many more people do we need for goodness sake, isn't 70 million enough?

The quicker the process is achieved, the sooner they are permitted to work.
And again, invest in speeding up the process.

Then, another French TV report, showed a French journalist intentionally accompanying a small boat across the Channel to send a report. He said he was amazed at all the different languages, which made things chaotic at times, but the overriding conclusion was, listening to their relief on arrival, that these people on the boats felt their long journey was now over, and that they would be looked after and supported.

Well, their journey might be successfully over, but the next journey on UK soil could well last a jolly long time before they are productive and of any benefit to our economy rather than being a drain on it.

As I'm over here for a while now, and its a boiling afternoon, I thought I'd sniff round a few French newspapers and TV Channels to see where the French are at on this one currently.

Apparently, just like in the UK, many French citizens are worried about immigration, mainly due the economic strain on social services. Then comes that French pride in cultural identity, plus security concerns.

So, like in the UK, these anxieties have fuelled support for right-wing parties, and it's no surprise that Jordan Bardella, like his friend Nigel Farage, is also promising stricter border controls for France.

Rosie51

^Though Tbf, Scotland is far more welcoming to immigrants than England generally is.^
Scotland has a nearly 93% white ethnicity, England around 81% white ethnicity, London as a whole 54% white ethnicity. I wonder why so many immigrants choose to stay in England and especially London when Scotland is so much more welcoming?

If you’re working in the black economy it’s far easier to find work in a busy city.

Who are you reminding Chestnut, and what logic is it that persuades you that France has responsibility for people who are using it as a staging post because they want to settle in the UK? France is no more responsible for them than any other country they pass through. This is everybody’s issue!

There’s also the massive costs involved with taking in these asylum seekers. £17,000 to £41,000 PER PERSON PER YEAR (at the last estimate) they cost us depending on where they are housed.

Over Friday and Saturday we took in another 700 ! This just cannot continue.