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Oh dear Doris, do think for a moment:Having or not having money doesn't make you any more or less of a genuine refugee. Refugees are fleeing a well-founded fear of terror, persecution or war. That happens as much to the middle-classes as to anyone else.In a refugee crisis, the people who DO manage to get out are those with some resources. Think of Germany and Austria before the war: the people who got out quickly enough to become refugees, were those with money, foresight, energy, connections, not those without.Those fleeing Syria, for example and making it to Calais or here are doctors and lawyers, architects, journalists and engineers and recent graduates and business people. Having money to pay a trafficker - like having a smart phone - does not mean you are anything less of a refugee.Plus it does mean you are actually less likely to be an economic migrant. These people had careers and lives, families and homes in Syria, Libya, Iran. Why would they abandon comfortable, middle-class lives if they didn't have to?"Real" refugees may be in camps but they are just as likely to have the enterprise, the confidence and the resources to get out of those too. Wouldn't you if you could?If only applications to be refugees here were being "properly and legally processed". The only ones for whom that is happening - and interminably slowly at that - are those on the VPRS. London has taken 43 so far, the UK around a thousand. In all. And these are the vulnerable, the really needy, those who will absorb resource. As humanitarians, we should take them. But we should also welcome "real refugees" who are smart and have smart phones, who can contribute once they get here, who have sharp elbows and a honed survival instinct.  Certainly the Syrians I meet would love to return to their homeland when it is reasonably safe to do so. But they can't live in indefinite suspension,holding their breath for that to happen.

Sara Nathan ● 3649d

Hi DonnaSorry to be slow in responding - was on a school trip to Berlin.So our hosts take people for from a couple of nights to several months. The longest is I think four months - but we are relatively new so it could be longer. It really depends on what the hosts want to do. It's their home and their choice and we do everything we can to facilitate that.Every case is different: refugees may have benefits or be about to get a job, but asylum-seekers are barred from working. There's a hotch-potch of provision: some hosts provide oyster-cards, some charities pay travel costs, asylum-seekers who come to the Drop-In I volunteer at for example, get a bag of toiletries, some food vouchers, tube fare, rice, milk and access to clothes as well as a hot meal. And there are quite a lot of similar drop-ins in London and across the country. I would like Refugees At Home to be able to fund oyster cards but we don't have the resource (organisational as much as financial) to be able to do that yet.I am not talking about economic migrants/people from the EU so can't comment on the numbers or provision for those. What I do know is that a relatively small proportion of those coming to this country, do so as refugees. And we have a duty to help them.Sorry to hear about your health troubles - it sounds most unpleasant - but I don't think you can blame refugees fleeing from war or oppression for the inadequacies of your care. If only we allowed the Syrian refugee doctors, the nurses from Eritrea to work rather forbidding it and making them subsist on air, maybe your treatment would have been better. Who knows?Our hosts treat their guests as you would if you invited someone to stay in your home. No more or less.Of course sponsorship - ensuring the state bears none of the costs of the refugee until they are able to support themselves - can be an excellent idea. the Canadian model works really well and there are many groups and individuals here willing to sponsor on that basis. But, although Teresa May announced at the Conservative Party Conference that the Home Office would be moving to introduce sponsorship, the latest is that the Canadian model has been ruled out (no idea why) and the policy now is to make it as near-impossible as it can be to actually bring into effect.Its a bit like announcing the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme, saying 20,000 would be brought in from the camps and then announcing that a) they could not be hosted but had to have "their own front doors" and b) making it impossible for that to happen by ensuring the offer was wholly uncompetitive for the private landlords who are the only ones allowed to take these Syrians in, so there is no supply. What private landlord will wrk without a deposit? which is why only 1,000 have arrived in the UK - mostly to Scotland - and only 43 to the London area.We are acting in good faith to host some really vulnerable people who can and will go on to be productive members of society while they are here. It's really worthwhile and I am proud to be doing it. Of course there are many other causes too and many other opportunities to volunteer. I just happen to have chosen this one and hope some people in and around Acton will do the same.

Sara Nathan ● 3651d

Sara, I would honestly love to host someone, esp a young kid who's homeless before they go down the route we all know about, and for sure, an ex member of the forces. Alas, despite working all my life, I could only afford to buy a studio flat in Acton. I couldn't even accommodate a kitten. I repeat, I think what you guys are doing is admirable. I'm just also curious as to how it works on the ground. Presumably, the hosts don't host refugees indefinitely. As a very experienced ex social housing professional, I know there's nowhere for any homeless people in London to go. So, assuming that they don't live with the host long term, who pays for bus fares Tec? Toiletries?  I'm sure you get my drift. If they're destitute, why aren't they, if genuinely here, being supported by the government as many are? Again, if you're talking about only 4%, what is that? Per year? I didn't know and still don't, even that percentage, on top of the legal asylum seekers, on top of the illegal immigrants we don't know about, plus everyone who chooses to come here from the European union, do you honestly believe that this country can cope with the sheer numbers? Where do they go when the hosts can't accommodate them?  Where do they go for healthcare and schools?  I live in central Acton and was unfortunately ran over last year. My teeth were destroyed and only now am I getting treated by the dentist and I live here all my life and all my family. I'm not at all saying that people are not equal, but I am unequivocal in my view that everything for those of us who can't afford to live in castles in the air should sometimes look at where they live and see the woods for the trees and how desperate people are on your doorstep before importing more misery that you're not prepared to pay for. . I guess go. Would aid hosts therefore, given the government said they won't pay, therefore destitution, sign up to personally pay for healthcare, education Tec and rent for them? Just asking

Donna Fraser ● 3657d

Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli now living in the UK has written this article. Is it relevant to this discussion?!  According to The Daily Mail, PM Tony Blair conspired to flood Britain with immigrants in order to impose a multicultural society on the Brits. Yesterday, the paper published a chapter from Tom Bower's explosive new biography of Tony Blair. The paper’s subtitle reads: “Conman Blair's cynical conspiracy to deceive the British people and let in 2 million migrants against the rules.”According to Bower, Blair secretly instructed ministers to waive tens of thousands of asylum seekers into the UK, by reclassifying them as ‘economic migrants.’ Blair planned to “change the face of Britain for ever with mass immigration.”  He ordered his Labour government never to discuss in public the supposed advantages of the unprecedented influx.If Tom Bower’s account is correct then the criticism leveled by right wing ideologists and so-called ‘bigots’ against Labour and the left is valid. The Labour government that purported to care for the lower classes, implemented radical measures designed to destroy the cohesion of the working people and dismantle their political power.  Thanks to Blair and his Labour government, the British working classes have been reduced to a workless under-class!Stephen Boys Smith, who was then head of the Home Office’s immigration directorate, said about Barbara Roche, a little-known MP who was immigration minister between 1999 and 2001: ‘It was clear that Roche wanted more immigrants to come to Britain. She didn’t see her job as controlling entry into Britain, but by looking at the wider picture in a “holistic way” she wanted us to see the benefit of a multicultural society.’According to the Mail, “Britain’s borders had been thrown open for ideological reasons.” And if this needs official confirmation, former Labour speechwriter Andrew Neither said the aim was to “rub the right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.”According to Bower, Blair thought that immigration was ‘good for Britain’ and his silence on immigration issues “encouraged Muslims and Hindus to believe there was no need for them to integrate with the rest of society.” Bower provides more evidence to support his claim.  ‘Why don’t we stipulate that immigrants must speak English before we grant them British nationality? To make British nationality a prize?’ suggested immigration chief, Tim Walker. ‘No,’ was Jack Straw’s reply. In public, Home Secretary Straw was keen to show he wasn’t an easy touch. There should be stronger controls at the borders, he told the Commons. Yet behind the scenes, he continued to make it easier for asylum seekers. And harder for (Home Office) officials.This requires an explanation. Why did Blair, Straw, Roche and others go out of their way to suffocate Britain with economic immigrants?  Shouldn’t Left politicians focus on the interests of British workers? It is no secret that Left and Labour movement relationships with working people are problematic--it is dotted with mistrust. For some reason, the working class refuse to subscribe to ‘working class politics’, they tend to vote for the Tories. The worker is too often conservative, nationalist and patriotic, he and she are not as revolutionary as Marx and Trotsky suggested.  The worker reads The Sun and the Daily Mail. The worker is not very interested in The Guardian or the Miliband dynasty.  For the British lower classes the Union Jack is more meaningful than LGBT ideology, sectarian ID Political nonsense or Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘proletarian’ history. Working class people have no need to identify ‘as working people.’ They know who they are.  The story may be even more devastating. The Mail’s story suggests that at the time Blair & Co.  conspired to destroy Britain’s working class, the Labour Friends of Israel and Lord Levy were his prime funders. It is known that Jewish left and Jewish academia have been at the forefront of multi cultural and immigration advocacy (in spite of the fact that the Jewish State's attitude towards immigrants is uniquely aggressive on the verge of barbarian). Like Labour, Jewish academia and the Jewish left are also suspicious of the ‘lower’ classes. After all, in the past it has been the working classes that have united against the Jews. Jewish lobbies have been supporting immigration and have historically joined forces with Left politicians. Officially this advocacy is accompanied by an ethical argument. There are strong ethical arguments in support of asylum seekers. But the argument in support of economic migration is political rather than moral or ethical. In 2003 Tony Blair led Britain into a Ziocon criminal war at the same time that the Labour Friends of Israel were his prime funders and Lord Cashpoint Levy was his chief fundraiser. We may want to verify whether it was the LFI, Lord Cashpoint, Minister Barbara Roche and Jack Straw who led Britain into a multi cultural experiment together with Tony Blair. We may want to understand what exactly they had in mind. Did they try to save Britain or to weaken some elements within British society?  I admit that at the time that I became a British citizen, Blair was at the helm. I was hailed as one of the heroes of British multiculturalism: the Guardian of Judea praised my work and the British Council shipped my band and me around the world. Of course, it didn’t take me long to burn that bridge. All I had to do was relate what I thought of Blair and multiculturalism.

Peter Savick ● 3711d