Time for a zero refugee policy? - *Read OP for mod warnings and threadbans - updated 11/5/24*

In some ways its better, in many ways its far worse.

Housing its far worse as well as homelessness. Also hospital over-crowding seems to be at record highs these days.

And people, particularly younger people, seem to be more unhappy these days, unsurprisingly.

Cost of living worse these days also. Traffic congestion. I'm sure there's other areas.

There's no doubt some things are better, but the overall direction seems to be getting worse and each generation seems to have less aspirations that the previous ones.

Irish people going to Australia are not claiming asylum as we come from a safe country so your comparison is bogus.

However many arriving in Australia from China, India, Vietnam are claiming asylum which would be unsafe are claiming asylum and that's what should be compared to Ireland.

Thousands of legal economic migrants come to Ireland every year to live and work and pay their own way and go through a rigorous process to get here but that gets ignored.

Immigration is good thing that benefits the country but people just spread fear.

Would you care to point what I said us untrue.

Will you please stop posting utter and absolute crap.

No they are not deported. Is that you Roderic , do you have a problem understanding English.

MMods Please have a word cos this guy is deliberately winding people up.

Housing is worse I agree but when I was growing up Health service was a mess, has been for decades.

Cost of living and traffic getting worse is actually a problem that comes with a successful economy as people get wealthier and population increases then prices go up and they have more cars and more people are going to work.

Problem is we didn't plan or build infrastructure to match the increased population and economic activity and that's not the fault of immigrants.

However, there's no doubt the country is better now than 30 to 40 years ago in terms of economics, socially and politically ( don't forget impact of troubles in Northern Ireland) then it has ever been and that's just not up for debate.

Ireland was a backward theocracy 40 years ago where t he church ruled and abused children. Those days are gone.

Oh sorry, you just don't like facts and just believe nonsense.

I' not on any wind up so no need for your back seat modding,

Podcast ep about the Zimbabwean murderer who used a fake South African passport to claim asylum here and then claimed to be from Mozambique. The trial has started in Zimbabwe and is making big news. Wonder how many more people we'll get using the fake South African passport trick now

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0CGiuSSiJggc0l93LMFbbz

I had a look through those and some further stats here. It's incredible stuff.

https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/statistics/

The current estimated cost of Australia's offshore policy is circa 12 billion AUD (I think there are still compensation cases pending).

In total they only ever held 4.2k people on these centers.

That's 2.8 million per person!

Approx 2k have now been returned to Australia.

Slightly less than 1k were successfully deported, or returned 'voluntarily' to origin countries.

Approx 1k were resettled in other countries. This doesn't seem to be included in the above costs. In one case they paid $40million to resettle 7 people to Cambodia!

This approach was the basis of the UK Rwanda policy. The UK are estimating their long term cost at approx 200k per person. I think that's very optimistic, especially looking at these costs and what they've had to pay for the initial cohort.

It's also worth nothing that this approach didn't seem to have any deterrent effect. More boats arrived after it was introduced and was effectively replaced some months later by a push-back approach. The push-back approach does seem to have been effective to some degree, but it's a very different set of circumstances than coast guards face in the Med or English channel.

It's amazing the amount of info she left unactioned. She must have literally sat at her desk clicking the pen all day

Any migrant arriving here from a safe country, or who travelled through several of them to get here at all, is not an asylum seeker. They are an economic migrant looking for the best deal. A true asylum seeker or refugee is looking for somewhere safe from the actual life-threatening danger they are escaping. That doesn't include skipping through half of Europe or Africa in the process.

We can absolutely renegotiate or remove ourselves from previous agreements if the political will and mandate is there. Brexit would be a more recent example, and while the merits of that decision are debatable, the decision was made and the UK is now outside of the EU as was voted for. These agreements are not suicide pacts or written in stone, inviolable until the end of time.

You can keep downplaying the impact if you wish but if we have people sleeping on tents on the streets it's too many! As for the feelings of the majority - I'm sure you're well aware of the many polls over the last few months where an ever increasing majority are expressing not just concern, but dissatisfaction over this current approach.

You can see the sort of Civil unrest the migrant situation is causing in the UK, this is a video of the far-left battling Police trying to move migrants to Dorset from London.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/02/london-protesters-block-coach-peckham-asylum-seekers-bibby-stockholm

If they do get it started it might push people to Ireland and other European countries. But so far we only have anecdotal evidence. There's been several posts here from newspapers with interviews where people are saying they are deterred. I've seen similar interviews where people say they're going to the UK regardless, one guy even said if deported he'd simply make his way back to the UK and try again.

I find that 200k future projected cost very optimistic. If it starts to look successful Rwanda have the Tories over a barrel and I'm sure will renegotiate accordingly. It's a business enterprise for them.

Actually yes, it is really that much.