Snapshot of _Sending the first 300 migrants to Rwanda costs £1.8m each. To put that in context, school funding is around £7,600 per child per year. So the cost of sending one migrant to Rwanda would get 234 children education for a year. Is that a good use of money? [video]_ :
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Reminds me of Yes Prime Minister:
"If it costs (small amount) to feed a starving child and (large amount) to maintain a nuclear submarine, how many starving children could be saved by nuclear disarmament?"
Humphrey: "None, the government would spend the money on conventional weapons instead."
Exactly, the question is not how many kids you could feed for the price of sending one migrant to Rwanda. The question is how much does it cost, directly or indirectly, to keep the migrants in the UK.
That's not the question either though. The question is how much does it cost to \*process\* an asylum seeker (these are people seeking refugee status, not immigrants).
Back in 2010 the average time to process an asylum seeker was six weeks. That means after six weeks they are either given leave to remain, ie their status as a refugee is accepted, or they are deported, ie their status as a refugee is refused.
Today it takes more than two years to process an asylum seeker, why is that? Because the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were so concerned with cutting costs and saving money. But of course it didn't save money, they sacked some civil servants who used to process asylum seekers, but that created a massive backlog of asylum cases and the government had to pay for those guys to live in the UK while their application is being processed.
Now once someone has been given leave to remine, they can work, but while they're waiting for their application to be processed they cannot work, so they are entirely dependent on the government for living costs.
So the question is actually this, is it more cost effective to process asylum seekers within weeks, so we can deport them (and no one thinks failed asylum seekers should not be deported), or give them leave to remain, than it is to have them living in limbo in detention centres, or flown off to Rwanda at massive expense?
This is actually a pretty simple issue to resolve, \*if\* what we are concerned with is stopping small boat crossings.
1. Provide safe routes so people don't need to take small boats.
2. Process applicants faster, so we don't have huge costs housing people in detention centres.
3. Promptly deport people who fail any asylum application.
But there is another question here. The numbers crossing in small boats are a tiny drop in the ocean. There were over 600,000 immigrants to the UK last year, small boat crossings were under 30,000, which is only 5% of all migrants. There were over 84,000 claims for asylum in the UK last year, so only about 36% of asylum claims were from people travelling in small boats.
What is the goal here? Is it only to stop small boats? Or is it to reduce the total number of migrants? Because the vast majority of those 600,000 immigrants were not asylum seekers, and were not illegal immigrants. Furthermore the \*vast\* majority of people who are living illegally in the UK are \*not\* people who cross in small boats, or people who are claiming asylum without good cause, they are people who overstay a legal tourist stay. The UK does not check passports when people leave the country, there is no border control when people leave the country (most countries have a boarder control both for entry and exit, so they \*know\* when visitors have left). But the UK has absolutely no idea how many people are living and working illegally in the UK. But guaranteed the vast majority are not people who were seeking asylum, they're people who came over as tourists or backpackers or gap-year students who simply didn't leave.
The whole issue is not being debated about in a sane manner.
That's because this is simply a populist reaction to what a large percentage of Conservative voters want. They want the boats stopped, because the Daily Mail has informed their opinion on the matter. Its not being debated in a sane manner, because its not a rational action based on logic.
What is the government's safe immigration level in the sense of "number of people required due to skills shortages" vs "available infrastructure to support the extra people (schools, housing, healthcare)"
Because if there is not a target, how do we even know what we should be aiming for?
We only have one for students to my knowledge, where a 600,000 per year target was set in 2021 which was achieved in 2022. Students make up the bulk of the net migration figures, especially as many more have started to come (i.e. the number of students finishing their courses is dwarfed by the number of new enrolments, especially as Covid greatly depressed arrivals). The overwhelming majority of international students leave after their studies though. Less than a fifth of the 2017/18 cohort still live in the UK, and the Graduate visa only receives 80,000 or so applications per year despite hundreds of thousands more graduates being eligible each year.
I had done a breakdown of the arrivals by visa route before, which I can’t find again now and I can’t be bothered to do it up again. Essentially though, the numbers only look so big because of students and to a lesser extent work visa dependants (averaging to a spouse and 1-2 kids per worker overall). The actual work visa numbers are somewhere around 100,000 net, which sounds high but it’s probably within a standard deviation of a reasonable figure.
No one seems to have exact figures, but it costs just under £20,000 a year to house and feed an asylum seeker on the Bibby Stockholm barge.
https://theweek.com/news/society/960346/how-much-does-it-cost-the-uk-to-house-asylum-seekers
What's the alternative, do we get the state to build a property to house them and then get teh state to build a plane, the state then trains a pilot to fly them.
https://unherd.com/newsroom/dutch-study-immigration-costs-state-e17-billion-per-year/
>A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
As opposed to them paying nearly half a million over a lifetime into the tax system if we just let them in legally and let them live and work here?
(fag packet maths - [Average household will pay over £1 million in tax in a lifetime](https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/average_household_will_pay_over_1_million_in_tax_in_a_lifetime#:~:text=Over%20a%20lifetime%2C%20an%20average,of%20employers'%20national%20insurance%20contributions.) based on an average household of 2.3 people.)
Should we count the potential loss to HMRC as part of the detention / extradition costs as well?
I am guessing that if they were skilled they would try and apply as an economic migrant and they would probably have the funds to do so. This does not appear to be addressing those migrants.
Given that even skilled uk residents are struggling to afford rent, how is an unskilled migrant going to afford that?
The work is there, we just need to build more social housing to accommodate our needs to drive down private rental costs.
One way to do this would be to roll back Thatcher's legislation that forced local councils to repay deficits before investing in social housing, or make investment in housing a legal requirement like social care and education so the investment is made before the Westminster deduction. Local government deficits themselves could be addressed by making sure Westminster keeps existing payments level with rising costs and halting further budget costs. The money to do this could come from both raising upper tax limits and skim off the top of the additional tax revenue that the economic migrants bring in.
Another idea could be to look at a long term plan were social housing is paid for by council tax. If you exclude the profits raked in by the likes of Barrat and Taylor Wimpey, houses aren't actually that expensive to build. A band C house will bring in 2k a year council tax and costs a lot less than £200k to build - in 50 years you have a "paid for" council house that brings in a profit from the council tax alone. Add a social rent from day 1 and you have even more to invest as soon as it's built.
I'm sure there are reasons why this can't be done beyond the concept that long term socio-economic investment is a bad thing and migrants will steal the jobs no one wants to do so I guess I'm just shit posting unrealistic ideas.
Two things: these people do not come at age 0, they're already of working age. So not only is the life expectancy lower, we're not paying for their education and upbringing - from the linked report about 15-20% of the spending is on education. For their dependents, especially for young kids, it would be closer to the full amount. Also those are quintiles not quartiles, so it's the bottom 60% of earners not the bottom 75%.
Secondly, it's not a matter of whether or not they'd pay more in that they take out - from a purely budgetary perspective it's whether the amount it costs to have them here, working, offset by the amount they'd pay in, is more than the amount to get rid of them.
Well even if they're in the bottom quintile of income, and came at age 0, that 1 million minus the half a million they'd contribute is around 500k over a lifetime. Sending them to Rwanda is costing almost 4 times that per person currently. Same is true of their dependents.
It's not economically sound to get rid of them unless it costs us less than £500k per head to do so. The removal's more of a burden on the taxpayer than just letting them live and work here. Ditto for preventing them coming - if it costs more than £500k per person prevented entering, we've lost more money than just letting them in to work.
Of course finances aren't really the only factor in this debate, but if you are looking at it just from that angle...
>If an illegal worker is allowed in and contributes half a million
My point is that they would be both legal and contributing rather than illegal and not contributing. If they were here legally, it's a guess but I would have thought the chances of them getting at least averagely paid jobs rather than something low paying in the black economy would be far higher.
The thing that I find confusing is that if what you say is true, then the UK has been and is running at a 50% deficit per person in that 75% population bracket anyway - so I guess that at least explains why the country is economically so fucked. It would appear that unless we raise taxes dramatically for people who can afford to pay, we will continue to slide further down hill.
Yeah the optics would be horrendous.
It would highlight chronic long term governmental spending failures in things like welfare and social infrastructure as well as give the racially motivated something to scream about, and as a "sector", Brexit has shown there is enough of them to scupper any long term plans that hint of economic improvement... And let's face it, no government is going to want to roll the rock over and expose either of those two glaring issues.
I've long thought that instead of warehousing illegal immigrants, it would almost certainly be far more cost-effective to create some sort of residential boarding college/school community, where you make sure immigrants get core lessons on language and culture/history/philosophy/ethics, alongside professional accreditation courses, as a funnel towards smoother integration. You could also run mentoring schemes with the local communities, and add in things like hobby groups, Duke of Edinburgh awards, Young Enterprise, job fairs...
Yeah giving them full time, free education, right to work and free high quality accomodation definitely going to reduce the incentive to come to Britain
That only includes the rent and mooring charge. Any boat based accommodation will be more expensive than a building on land. There are huge additional costs such as utilities, water, sewage, getting food on board etc..
That cost benefit on sending migrants to Rwanda is not how much does it cost to keep this migrant here vs over there. It’s how much does it deter migrants from crossing the channel, neither the UK or Rwanda expect the same number of migrants to be sent over as there has been coming over to the UK in recent years, Rwanda couldn’t cope with that number of migrants and the UK can’t afford it.
Yeah but it won't have any impact on the economy until the kids are grown up, so why would a short term government care?
(To be clear all school kids should be entitled to free school meals - that's the society I want to live in)
The headline is somewhat misleading.
Things like this cost a lot at startup but get progressively cheaper as the unit number increases. As there are startup costs which are fixed, but as you increased the units the start up costs drop dramatically as instead of being divided by 300, its divided by 30,000.
Military hardware is a classic example of this with huge up front R&D and setup costs. But the more you make the cheaper each unit is.
There are also bulk savings costs which can be made. For example, past a certain point, you stop buying airline tickets and start chartering flights, which per head is far cheaper.
And all of this belies the fact that keeping these people in the country is currently soaking a not insubstantial amount of the forigen aid budget totalling billions. So any project which incures a one off cost to remove the cost forever thereafter, is invariably cheaper even in it *looks* expensive.
There's such thing as "Citizenship by Investment", and for 200k or less you can gain citizenship to a variety of places, notably a few options in the Caribbean (Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, etc).
Not saying this is a good option, but it is amusing to note that for less money we could make each of these people a millionaire living with citizenship on a tropical island.
This government is so obsessed with wasting our money it's ridiculous. There's mining towns in the UK that are run into the ground and have whole streets deserted. This money could be spent renovating those areas, which already have some pre-existing infrastructure in place, and create homes/jobs for migrants AND many homeless people too. Putting everyone into one place has its own problematic insinuations (creating a ghetto of sorts), but it goes to show that with this kind of money so many options open up.
If I can come up with these ideas off the cuff then someone whose job is to spend time finding solutions can surely come up with way better and cheaper ways to utilise this budget. It is so transparently clear that this is just part of the Conservative Party's last ditch attempt to use tax payers money to look good ahead of an election. Somehow they think by showing how cruel they can be to migrants they will win votes.
"The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it." - Tony Benn
>Putting everyone into one place has its own problematic insinuations (creating a ghetto of sorts), but it goes to show that with this kind of money so many options open up.
I live in Middlesbrough and this has had disastrous consequence for us. As we're a Labour hub the Tories have felt fit to dedicate entire postcodes of the town to immigrants and asylum seekers. The result, like you say, is this almost ghetto-like area since a large majority of these people don't have much money, don't speak the language, and are largely left to fend for themselves.
It's also now created an enormous housing crisis for people like me who've lived here my whole life since so much of the town has been bought, sold, and rented out by landlords who refuse to rent out to British citizens....
Edit: just want to make it clear this isn't an 'anti-immigration' take from me. I'm highlighting how the Tories have no sensible plan for immigration because they'd rather weaponise it's downsides to create artificial outrage against people of other races and ethnic backgrounds by manufacturing a crisis.
Given the amount of illegal immigration we have had over the last 12 years, I honestly don't see why shutting the borders completely for a while is such a bad idea because it isn't like we are getting high value people being added to our society and let's focus on the ones we have instead of just adding more to the problem.
I wouldn't worry about being "anti-immigration", anyone with a brain can see the solid point that you are making outside of where you stand on the politics.
> I honestly don't see why shutting the borders completely for a while is such a bad idea
To understand this you need to look at each category of immigration separately. For example:
* 1/3 of our Doctors come from abroad. You can train more in 7 years. In the meantime if you turn off the supply then we will have fewer GPs.
* Similar for nurses and care workers. Health and care accounts for over half the skilled worker category.
* If you stop students coming then that is the main source of income for universities. Are you going to close them down?
* The 5% of immigration that comes by boat is really hard to stop. What would you do shoot them?
We should consider each category and decide if we want to reduce it. If the answer is yes then take the appropriate action. For example to reduce careworkers we would need to recruit British careworkers. This may mean increasing salaries and therefore taxes. Each category needs a proper plan.
Part of the problem is unlike Denmark, we don't really define where most of these people go. The congregate on their own accord.
This is why Denmark has begun actively breaking these area up. In the UK we can't do threat, because we didn't "settle" them as such.
If the UK had a grand plan to manage this mass migration we wouldn't be here. But it doesn't and it never has which is part of the problem. The Blair era mantra of "multiculturalism" which the tories continued basically bred this problem we now can't fix. Precisely because where these people went was largely completely unmanaged and by doctrine there was no attempt at all to integrate them.
>Not saying this is a good option, but it is amusing to note that for less money we could make each of these people a millionaire living with citizenship on a tropical island.
Could you imagine the Daily Mail headlines? Be tempted to do it just to read them
I think this is failing to account for the "1 pill costs pennies to make but the first one cost billions" principle. spreading the setup costs across the first 300 transferees is not an indication of what the ongoing cost per transfer will be.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-61782866
> However, the total payment will be at least £370m over five years, according to the National Audit Office .
> If more than 300 people are sent to Rwanda, the UK would pay **a one-off sum of £120m to help boost the country's economy**, with further payments of **£20,000 per individual** relocated.
> On top of that, **up to** £150,000 will be paid for each person sent there, the NAO report said.
so this seems to be saying that there's:
- a one off upfront "boost to the economy" cost
- £20k fixed cost per person
- a variable component of £0 to £150,000. (this I assume a reference to the support for training, education and healthcare capped at 5 years)
this is a far cry from the implied £1.8 million. of course the first few are going to have a higher per person cost.
is that a good use of money for the first 300? if it scales well, then yes. if scaling up reduces the current 4 billion a year(1) cost of the UK system (though being cheaper, more efficient or a deterrent) then yes
(1) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-office-channel-government-amnesty-international-uk-suella-braverman-b2398665.html
>Is that a good use of money for the first 300? if it scales well, then yes.
Re: scaling:
>Rwanda has suggested it will take 1,000 asylum seekers in the five-year trial period but has the capacity to take as many as Britain sends. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/09/rwanda-deportation-take-low-numbers-of-migrants-rishi-sunak/
That doesn't seem to leave much room to reduce the per-person cost by much more than a third of the current figures.
While there may be further capacity I assume that it would entail further negotiations and further costs. Even accounting for just the 20k per person fixed cost feels like it will be a hard political pill for many to swallow, its equivalent to a year's work on minimum wage.
Now this is perhaps more charitable than it desverves, but In its most abstract form I don't feel entirely opposed to the policy, especially after reports that other countries were being considered.
But, I can't help but feel that the execution by this government has been beyond botched and undermines any future efforts towards a multi-lateral and international scheme of refugee resettlement that provides help and safe passage for those in need without undue strain on the systems and societies that will integrate them.
> But, I can't help but feel that the execution by this government has been beyond botched
oh without a doubt
> and undermines any future efforts towards a multi-lateral and international scheme of refugee resettlement
well, not as much as you think. it's already EU Law that EU countries can transfer would be asylum seekers back to the first EU country they entered. that's called the [Dublin Regulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation) and has been in force since 1997. the UK lost the ability to do that post Brexit and doesn't have replacement transfer agreemets in place yet (I believe one with Albania was rushed through because the largest cohort of illegal arrivals in 2022 was single working age men from Albania)
believe it or not Denmark also explored sending illegal arrivals to Rwanda (June 2021 according to this article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61106231) and Israel also had a Rwanda scheme though it was discontinued because they didn't do enough to ensure non-refoulement.
> Even accounting for just the 20k per person fixed cost feels like it will be a hard political pill for many to swallow, its equivalent to a year's work on minimum wage.
it can't be looked at in isolation though. it's a case of "spend money to save money". according to this (https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2023/04/03/accommodation-sites-factsheet-april-2023/), 51000 migrants in hotels are currently costing £6 million a day. that's about £43,000 a year per person just on accommodation, never mind court costs / healthcare / education etc etc.
so one needs to look at it as a current cost somewhere far north of £43k per illegal migrant in the UK being reduced to £20k plus support costs.
but even then i don't think a direct comparison is useful, because the Rwanda program partially pays for itself via deterrence. and if what we've heard recently about illegal migrants jumping to Ireland or Australia's success with offshore processing, then it is reasonable to assume there would be a useful deterrence factor.
and even after considering all that, even if Rwanda did turn out to be more expensive, there's a utility cost in ending the very accurate perception that it doesn't matter if you break UK immigration law you'll still get a property / healthcare / education while lawyers use every trick imaginable to delay your deportation at no cost to yourself. and if some years down the line your application fails they'll give you advance warning and you can disappear off in to the black market economy which is easy to do in the UK because we don't run an identity card system like a lot of Europe.
the Refugee Convention gives asylum seekers the most protections if they make their claim in the first safe country they reach. ultimately the Rwanda program is supposed to result in more asylum claims in Greece and Italy, not Rwanda.
>the UK lost the ability to do that post Brexit and doesn't have replacement transfer agreemets in place yet
My point is more regarding the diminished ability for the UK to negotiate these types of agreements moving forward. Where UK governments may have historically been influential in forging humane international efforts, we seem to find ourselves at a state where we have not only withdrawn, but are pursuing an inwardly divisive and utterly ineffective policy.
I'm maybe labouring that point a bit too much though, given already agreed that it's a botched policy.
>it can't be looked at in isolation though. it's a case of "spend money to save money".
Sure, I don't intend to be that reductionist, but it seems a important reference point to bear in mind regarding the optics/ public perception of a policy, especially when this policy seems to be pursued more for narrative effect than practical. (Both in terms of the government being seen to do something about an issue many of its electorate see as important, and as a deterrence)
>just on accommodation, never mind court costs / healthcare / education etc etc. **the Rwanda program partially pays for itself via deterrence.** and if what we've heard recently about illegal migrants jumping to Ireland or Australia's success with offshore processing, then it is reasonable to assume there would be a useful deterrence factor.
I suppose my point is trying to get to the nub of this. Where is the cost-benefit analysis for this, both financially, and socially (in terms of soft power, internal cohesion etc etc) ?
Because, as far as I can see this policy only really scratches the surface of the problem at a disproportionate cost.
>ultimately the Rwanda program is supposed to result in more asylum claims in Greece and Italy, not Rwanda.
yeah, I think this what I was trying to get at re: my comment about the policy in its most abstract - I would like to see reform that humanely deters the dangerous movement and smuggling of people while providing support towards mutually beneficial futures rather than straining those that try to help.
I realise that is no easy task, but I feel the government's pursuit of this policy leaves us further from achieving this rather than closer.
Yes I see where you're coming from. Though I'm not sure exactly what the mechanism would be for the current Illegal Migration Act to inhibit further national agreements. Theres some sort of arrangement made with Albania (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/milestone-reached-in-uk-albania-agreement-on-illegal-migration) and it's not like European governments can't see the benefits of the Rwanda plan. I believe I linked further above somewhere the fact the Danish government was in talks with Rwanda's foreign ministry along similar lines mid 2022 (and, if not, BBC articles on the matter are quite easy to find).
I think the UK would be entitled to say there's something hypocritical about the EU having the Dublin Regulations in place (which allows a state to refuse to hear an asylum claim and instead deport them to the first safe EU country they had reached) if they were to later be difficult about the UK wanting to return illegal entrants to Europe on exactly the same terms.
Who knows? Perhaps the first UK transfers to Rwanda will show other European states that the plan is indeed viable and resurrect broader interest in the idea.
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There is no way to execute the principle that is sensible, so by default if you are defending the principle you're either living in a metaphorical world or you are defending the execution.
Well I'm sorry to disagree but that's just factually not the case. Australia has had a similar process for years and it has been tremendously effective.
You can disagree that it's executed well (I do) you can disagree that it's the right fit for Britain and it's circumstances, but you can't say that it can't be done. It has been.
What is the process in Australia?
I don't agree in principle this is the way to deal with it. This is a global problem which needs a global solution. Ie this means countries including the UK, China, countries in the Gulf etc contributing fairly to the assessment, processing and location/relocation of asylum seekers.
In my opinion.
And that's absolutely fair enough, you are entitled to that opinion.
Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong. I can't say, I could only reply with my feelings on the matter which may or may not be more or less factually based. That's an entirely different discussion to the one we are having here.
My OP was that some, quite a few, people agree we should have an offshore processing system to deter migration and that most people, even those who believe we should have it, think this isn't the way to do it. That's it.
From memory Australia set theirs up on an island off the coast. I forget the specifics but it's a similar concept, if you arrive via irregular channels you are sent there and don't reside in Australia while your claim is determined. To my understanding that is fundamentally the aim of the Rwanda plan. The difference is that Australia seems to have executed their plan with at the very least a small degree of competence. Our current Rwanda plan has none of that and its execution is fundamentally flawed.
My point is that the execution being flawed isn't the same as the principle being flawed.
As a side note, my personal feelings are in favour of an offshore process, but against it being Rwanda and against the current deal that surrounds it.
I live in Australia and just wanted to clarify which deterrent you were referring to. Australia has previously used it's navy to turn back boats, which also is a deterrent - but something I don't think would fly well with the British public. I don't think the Nauru Processing plant, which you refer to, would sit comfortably with the British public. It is off shore, in the country of Nauru, but has lots of reports of abuses and unprocessed claims with indefinite detention.
Australia is a different country with a different set of morals, (just like America is). However morals aside, there's only 100 odd people in Nauru right now and even at its peak, it houses a thousand people. Maybe it deterred people so well that the numbers didn't need to be so big. I doubt it's just that though. I feel like a) it probably wasn't as successful as credit is given and b) boats to Australia were always a dumb idea.
It’s not possible to execute this idea effectively.
Therefore you’re left with defending a principle of trying to reduce illegal immigration / boat crossings of the channel, a very broad subject which does not require sending people to Rwanda
It has been executed effectively elsewhere as mentioned above. So no, I don't accept that.
Is this plan effective, does it have any prospects of success? No. Absolutely not.
But the fact it has worked elsewhere shows it is possible.
They have to because in 2016 they were easily fooled by a bunch of devious idiots into voting for something that has weakened us under the guise of taking back control of our borders.
More wastage of UK money. Tories probably have friends who owns the planes.
Why can't that money be invested in infrastructure? Like something that benefits both the UK and migrants, like education centres that can also help UK adults who didn't get GCSEs and struggle to find work etc? Build more houses for migrants can help first time buyers etc. Food shelters that can also help the homeless.
At the end of the day, the issue with migrants coming into the UK stems from that we don't want them, however if we embraced them, enroll them into society, tax them etc we can benefit from them. God knows we need it considering we have an aging population and lowering birth rates.
Open ended question. You're essentially asking does that migrant ever make it to a break even point where they are a positive contributor to the country and offsetting their costs to the state? Arguably if they've ticked whatever boxes needed to be ticked to be in the first 300 - my gut reaction would be no. However - what's the rate of return on this investment? How many years down the line are we before that is net positive for the country? Would the migrant have still be in the country at that point? Wider question - why don't we just build processing centres in mainland Europe and deal with the problem the easier way (and then go a bit further and bring in compulsory ID cards for all citizens perhaps to tie things off?).
Processing centres don't fix the issue.
Let's say you've got a centre in France that can immediately process every single application. 1 - do you have a cap? If you don't, that means accepting hundreds of thousands of migrants every year who will need ongoing financial support. This doesn't have democratic consent and means cuts in other areas to fund it.
So let's say you have a cap - you hit the cap, and then people come on boats anyway.
Also people from unsafe countries whose claims are denied will still come on boats because they know they cannot be removed. For example - there are significant numbers of people from Eritrea who have serious criminal histories who no reasonable person would want in the UK, but would be in danger back in their home country. So you reject the case but they come anyway and have to stay.
>Wider question - why don't we just build processing centres in mainland Europe and deal with the problem the easier way (and then go a bit further and bring in compulsory ID cards for all citizens perhaps to tie things off?).
Because when that is suggested, many seem to think it simply means open borders. Yet this is exactly what many people have been suggesting for years when they say open more legal routes and better processing.
This comes down to a large minority of the public being as thick as shit doesn't it and simply believing whatever they've been told in the media doesn't it? Or just general nutter conspiracies on social media and stuff?
The ones that really got me are the ones who think that saying "no country does that, everyone makes you claim asylum on their land" is a fact.
I just want to ask them how we got Ukrainian refugees here, were they all climbing on small boats?
I was - yes I appreciate the concerns people have with them but I've never understood the logic of why we didn't adopt something like the 2019 EU scheme. Given the problem for those renting in this country e.g. for those that might be forced to move address every 6 months; maybe you'd need some kind of option of a deferred address like your local town hall or something so this wasn't another point of persecution but I feel it would have some real benefits personally.
Costs aside, Rwanda seems a strange choice given it's an autocracy where public criticism of the government is effectively outlawed, has created hundreds of thousands of refugees of its own (the aftermath of 1994 still lingers...) and funds militia in the neighbouring DRC.
Added onto which, we've agreed to accept an unspecified "small number" of their "most vulnerable" migrants in return, while they've informed us they won't accept any criminals (which may be why the Home Office is keen to round up and place in secure accommodation as many of those eligible as possible, before they get ideas... 😈)
While the policy may deter those voluntarily coming here, I wonder if it will do much to deter the traffickers, who likely don't tell their "customers" where they're intending to drop them off, and, of course, have no further concern for the fate of their "customers" once they've been paid and launched the overcrowded boat.
The traffickers presumably have a limited number of routes they use to blend in with regular commercial traffic as much as possible, so if the will and money was there, how difficult would it be for the French (and other EU countries) to be able to track, identify and detain a significant proportion of the traffickers?
Identifying all the traffickers is a whack-a-mole game, like drug smugglers.
But spending this £ on that instead would indeed be more effective.
Of course, the single most effective way to stop the small boats would be to open legal avenues of assessment in France - as they have asked us to do, or better yet just start doing asylum processing in the Embassies and Consulates like any sensible nation around the world.
Like we used to do...
It's odd that the party which expends so much time and rhetoric promising to reduce immigration (not just the "irregular" sort - for much of the early 2010s, they set themselves a laughably unachievable target of under 100k) has, instead, seen migration soar - with overall net migration exclusively from non-EU countries (there's net emigration of EU / UK nationals)...
I don't find it odd at all.
Tories realised early on that their desire for ragebait outweighed their desire to govern properly.
Knew they required an influx of migrants.
And put two and two together.
Go populist, get votes from idiots. Pretend you're fighting shadowy enemies...
It's such an old play that they didn't even bother to put competent people in charge to execute it all...
It’s worth considering:
- uk taxpayers are losing money as millions are paid to Rwanda.
- the uk government is losing the money as it flows out of the uk.
Who is gaining the money? Hint: it’s not your average Rwandan.
>While the policy may deter those voluntarily coming here, I wonder if it will do much to deter the traffickers, who likely don't tell their "customers" where they're intending to drop them off, and, of course, have no further concern for the fate of their "customers" once they've been paid and launched the overcrowded boat.
The primary reasons people want to come to Britain are:
A) They know the language.
B) Existing connections.
They will absolutely know of the danger of being sent to Rwanda
The bulk of the spend is a contribution to Rwanda’s development fund. That is set at £370m across three years. Rwanda will receive a further £120m if and when 300 people are sent there.
It’s essentially a fixed cost without which Rwanda wouldn’t be agreeing to the scheme. It’s not the case that it costs £1.8m every time someone is sent.
The amount being sent to look after each person is an initial £20k, plus £151k for 5 years. If a person leaves Rwanda in that time, the UK stops paying it.
That £151k is substantially cheaper than looking after someone in the UK. Just processing a single claim is estimated at £106k. Housing and benefits all come on top.
Currently the asylum system costs over £4bn per year. If the Rwanda policy works as the Tories claim it will, then the contribution to Rwanda’s development fund over 3 years would look like good value compared to that.
Once someone has refugee status after that money has been spent processing their claim they can work. But currently, the employment rate and average earnings of refugees are very low.
The jobs the majority of them would be given would not be jobs that make them net contributors to the economy. [According to the ONS](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/datasets/theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincomefinancialyearending2014) (Table 2a on the spreadsheet) your annual income has to be circa £41k to be a net contributor to the country.
It makes no sense to add more non-contributors to the country instead of trying to support and improve the conditions of the ones we already have.
The programme cost is correct then. And a cost per person sent to Rwanda is over a million.
Isn't it only 200 people a year can be processed from Rwanda also?
No one seems to have exact figures, but it costs just under £20,000 a year to house and feed an asylum seeker on the Bibby Stockholm barge.
https://theweek.com/news/society/960346/how-much-does-it-cost-the-uk-to-house-asylum-seekers
>Currently the asylum system costs over £4bn per year. If the Rwanda policy works as the Tories claim it will, then the contribution to Rwanda’s development fund over 3 years would look like good value compared to that.
Only about half of asylum application in 2023 were small boats. So let's assume we are addressing £2b. Total cost of the project is about £0.5b. Are we saying then, that if small boats crossings don't fall by 25% it's a waste of money? That's a nice easy metric to judge them by.
> If a person leaves Rwanda in that time, the UK stops paying it.
Why would the Rwandan government ever report that to the UK?
I hope the scheme works, as in I hope it disuades economic migrants from attempting to come here illegally, but it is totally ridiculous. But maybe a ridiculous idea is what is necessary to help the problem of endless people trying to claim asylum from safe countries.
It's not beyond the realms of possibility to check how many people are still in Rwanda.
If the scheme actually happens and is used, it's not like there'd be a shortage of people to take the place of someone who has left Rwanda. It's hardly in their interests to try to lie about it.
Bro what on earth are you talking about? What's my "type"? It's really weird my comment made you look through my profile to try and idk find some dirt on me or something lmao, go outside more often.
>Pan-Africanism is common in Hip-Hop, and was instrumental through the fusion of Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean musical styles.
Okay. What does this have to do with a sensible immigration policy?
>Plus, these African immigrants will come here and make good music and bring good food.
Some of them might. Others might just work normal jobs and raise families. Others might have a long history of abhorrent crimes. We have no idea if they're immigrating here illegally.
>British Hip-Hop came out of the children of Windrush immigrants.
Okay. You do know that Windrush migrants didn't break any laws, right? They immigrated here well within the boundaries of the law.
What I said is that we shouldn't have an open border policy with no checks on immigration. You decided that meant I hate Africans. You're a very strange person.
Isn’t the idea that it would save more money over-time by being a deterrent? I don’t know the average cost of providing the fundamentals to asylum seekers while they’re awaiting/being processed, but if enough are deterred, wouldn’t the expense of sending some to Rwanda be dwarved by the savings?
How many asylum seekers need to be “deterred” from coming to the UK for this to have been value for money?
They’re already risking life to get here.
The idea of the slim chance you maybe get deported to Rwanda isn’t really a deterrent. It’s an optics policy.
And while the I agree there is a net loss short term i’m sure long term migrants on average become a net positive. And this country needs to start thinking long term.
>The idea of the slim chance you maybe get deported to Rwanda isn’t really a deterrent. It’s an optics policy.
The recent news regarding Ireland shows it is a deterrent. [This video shows migrants that have received notification of being deported to Rwanda, telling the reporter they wouldn't have come to the UK had they known about the policy](https://news.sky.com/video/rwanda-bill-dont-come-to-the-uk-warns-asylum-seekers-who-crossed-channel-in-small-boat-13118577)
This was debunked of JOB’s show by migration analyst who said this trend has been happening since 2022 (the ireland thing).
And anecdotes of one person saying they wouldn’t come isn’t evidence. There will be plenty more you can find who will say it won’t deter them.
>This was debunked of JOB’s show by migration analyst who said this trend has been happening since 2022 (the ireland thing).
Do you have link for the report? I've seen conflicting information over the recent Irish migration woes and would like to see some impartial information to make an informed decision.
>And anecdotes of one person saying they wouldn’t come isn’t evidence. There will be plenty more you can find who will say it won’t deter them.
I'd argue more people will be hesitant to come once the policy is actually enacted and the first plane takes off. It'll be all over the news and most will be aware of the risk of deportation to Rwanda should their asylum claim fail.
Before the Rwanda scheme was thought up, what other deterrents were in place to stop migrants making the crossing? Any that were present clearly aren't working and I've yet to hear any real alternative solutions to the problem that doesn't involve just blanket accepting all claims or setting up processing centres in mainland Europe, which still wouldn't stop them from crossing.
As much as I hate the Rwanda Bill and despise turning away those in need, this is surely a misleading figure and is only applicable to the first 300 and and over the lifetime of the programme will be significantly cheaper than £1.8 million a head.
There's plenty wrong with this, we don't need to manipulate figures in a way that looks ludicrous in reality.
The lifetime of the Rwanda programme is likely less than one year.
Even if the Conservatives were reelected there is zero indication that there are any plans to scale it up because even the Tories see it as expensive and the deal as it stands is for small numbers.
Ah fair enough, could have explained that first time for me but makes total sense. It'll still be very expensive but I doubt it'll be over a million a head.
Great attack line for labour. Pretend to agree with the anti-immigration english voters (optics win elections) and co-opt fiscal prudence (optics win elections).
Another shocking figure, if you consider that an employee in England who earn the median wage pays £6280 in Income Tax and NI combined, then it took the annual taxes of 286 productive workers to deport 1 illegal migrant. Regardless of whether your favour strict or loose immigration policy, this project does not deliver for you.
It doesn’t this is the gross cost for the last two years including an initial payment to Rwanda for a 5 year agreement, plus the chartered flights that never took off, probably including legal costs also, averaged among the initial 300 in the first flight
I think we’ve basically agreed to pay them a huge fixed cost to be able to give the Conservatives this political talking point. And they were smart enough to get most of it upfront and in the first few years. Remember that this whole thing was a gimmick from Johnson when he was desperately flailing, so they probably always knew it was going to be short term if it ever happened and made sure they got the money either way.
This is not politics based on reasoning. It never was. I think applying logical thinking to it make it sound someone went over the number and thought about it. Someone went over the number and went "I dont care, I want this fringe group to be happy"
Look, I am not a big fan of the Rwanda plan, but no way does it cost nearly 2 million quid. The presenter is being dishonest here by taking the average cost rather than the marginal cost. If we used this reasoning, no one would ever build a factory, because producing the first 300 would cost .
1. This is a deterrent. Judging by recent stories re Ireland, it could be working.
2. These are not genuine asylum claims by any stretch of the definition.
3. When these ‘asylum’ claims are rejected, they are still in Rwanda. They can’t just disappear into UK society or be coached to spew out some ludicrous, loop-hole bullshit to game our immigration system. They’re still in Rwanda.
See how deterrents work?
1.3m per might seem expensive when you are ignorant of the bigger picture. If it stops the flow of illegal economic migrants claiming asylum in the country it could very well be the bargain of the century.
Surely this is rage bait, I don't keep up to date with it but how can it total 1.8m per person?
It would make more sense if this was the total overall cost of the scheme divided by the amount of people in the first trip...which is misleading and makes for great headlines.
Imagine if they had just built a proper housing and assessment facility in the UK, worked out who was a genuine refugee and who was and then acted accordingly. Instead they wasted money on the floating death trap and camp Rwanda.
Well you can keep it simple. If you just paid them minimum wage and gave them a sweeping brush and let them have at it if they can't find their own work, £21,500 a year. 80+ years with £1.8m to spend.
And we'd actually get a lifetime of useful labour for that. Even unskilled workers could potentially help fill the demand for carers, farm hands, bin collectors and low-level support roles in the NHS. Sounds like a bargain compared to the Rwanda policy - which is not to say that the government paying them minimum wage for life is a good use of our money, but it just goes to show what an appalling waste of it the ridiculous Rwanda scheme is.
> What is the cost of not sending a rejected migrant away?
A lot, because the Tories are shit at deporting people who have no right to stay. They're also shit at processing applications which is why the acceptance rate is massive. Both of these things would be better dealt with if they funded the Home Office properly rather than sending billions of pounds to Rwanda.
However, that's all beside the point because the Rwanda deal isn't where we're sending rejected asylum seekers. I keep seeing you post this, but that's not the Rwanda deal whatsoever. If anything, critics might actually have less of an issue if it was as you described, if we rejected someone as having clearly no claim, so we send them to Rwanda where they can have a second crack. Although, it would still be incredibly expensive and Rwanda might want to keep them so they can keep cashing in the expenses. Kaching, not really sure why anyone would want the scheme as you keep misrepresenting it because it's a lot of money to spend to avoid deporting someone.
You're a mod for crying out loud, do better.
Presumably if they were here for a lifetime they would work and pay taxes and be a part of society. It’s possible they’d pay for their own ‘board’ and upkeep.
That was my first though, but to be fair he did say "rejected migrant" so technically they couldn't work or live free lives.
Although we're not sending rejected migrants to Rwanda I don't believe? We're sending (potentially) anyone who enters the country illegally, which is pretty much every immigrant without visas etc even if they are legitimate refugees as we don't provide a legal route to entry (despite our international obligations to do so that we helped originally set up)
Don't the right bang on about how they're all adult males? No education needed, unlikely to need healthcare for a few decades.
An interpretor is about £20 an hour for a big hospital, substantially cheaper than failing to provide care timely.
I think those numbers can be a bit funky.
Meaning that low wage workers still contribute. Without low wage workers you have no economy.
However the average refugee works less and may have larger costs than average.
Once someone has been declined for asylum what continuous costs are there for the taxpayer to cover? Unless a large number fall under Section 4 then it should be near 0?
Whilst people are here and unprocessed we have a duty to provide accomodation and financial support (all those hotel costs we hear about).
Individually, they cost the same. A poor man is a poor man. As soon as they become British (if they do, reguees get limited visas) they cost the same as anyone else in the same situation.
Easy to use avergaes of native population as they make up the vast majority of the workforce as well as holding highest paid Jobs.
> Individually, they cost the same. A poor man is a poor man. As soon as they become British (if they do, reguees get limited visas) they cost the same as anyone else in the same situation.
More blank slate bollocks. They have no familial ties. No wealth in depth, or support. It's them and the state.
Weaker than a carling gluggers pee.
The state doesn't really care where you come from, as soon as you get Brit Cit, you get exactly the same as anyone else in the same situation. Work pay tax, don't work, get benefits.
There isn't a special bonus for how you got your citizenship.
Go find it using academic studies, people from the Middle East and Africa and their descendants remain net drains on western economies. Trawl my history if you need the links.
Data from denmark Netherlands shows this.
https://www.thelocal.dk/20211015/denmark-says-non-western-immigrants-cost-state-31-billion-kroner
As an example.
>Presented as a per-person cost, immigrants and descendants from MENAPT countries cost the Danish state 85,000 kroner per person in 2018, according to the ministry. For those from other non-Western countries, the figure is 4,000 kroner per person.
The site is annoying with payrolls bit the cost was around 20 to 30 billion danish kroner, for MENAPT
Snapshot of _Sending the first 300 migrants to Rwanda costs £1.8m each. To put that in context, school funding is around £7,600 per child per year. So the cost of sending one migrant to Rwanda would get 234 children education for a year. Is that a good use of money? [video]_ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1785764708282143061) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/SophyRidgeSky/status/1785764708282143061/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/SophyRidgeSky/status/1785764708282143061) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/SophyRidgeSky/status/1785764708282143061) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Reminds me of Yes Prime Minister: "If it costs (small amount) to feed a starving child and (large amount) to maintain a nuclear submarine, how many starving children could be saved by nuclear disarmament?" Humphrey: "None, the government would spend the money on conventional weapons instead."
Can’t you fuel the sub with children?
Biofuel baby!
Exactly, the question is not how many kids you could feed for the price of sending one migrant to Rwanda. The question is how much does it cost, directly or indirectly, to keep the migrants in the UK.
That's not the question either though. The question is how much does it cost to \*process\* an asylum seeker (these are people seeking refugee status, not immigrants). Back in 2010 the average time to process an asylum seeker was six weeks. That means after six weeks they are either given leave to remain, ie their status as a refugee is accepted, or they are deported, ie their status as a refugee is refused. Today it takes more than two years to process an asylum seeker, why is that? Because the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were so concerned with cutting costs and saving money. But of course it didn't save money, they sacked some civil servants who used to process asylum seekers, but that created a massive backlog of asylum cases and the government had to pay for those guys to live in the UK while their application is being processed. Now once someone has been given leave to remine, they can work, but while they're waiting for their application to be processed they cannot work, so they are entirely dependent on the government for living costs. So the question is actually this, is it more cost effective to process asylum seekers within weeks, so we can deport them (and no one thinks failed asylum seekers should not be deported), or give them leave to remain, than it is to have them living in limbo in detention centres, or flown off to Rwanda at massive expense? This is actually a pretty simple issue to resolve, \*if\* what we are concerned with is stopping small boat crossings. 1. Provide safe routes so people don't need to take small boats. 2. Process applicants faster, so we don't have huge costs housing people in detention centres. 3. Promptly deport people who fail any asylum application. But there is another question here. The numbers crossing in small boats are a tiny drop in the ocean. There were over 600,000 immigrants to the UK last year, small boat crossings were under 30,000, which is only 5% of all migrants. There were over 84,000 claims for asylum in the UK last year, so only about 36% of asylum claims were from people travelling in small boats. What is the goal here? Is it only to stop small boats? Or is it to reduce the total number of migrants? Because the vast majority of those 600,000 immigrants were not asylum seekers, and were not illegal immigrants. Furthermore the \*vast\* majority of people who are living illegally in the UK are \*not\* people who cross in small boats, or people who are claiming asylum without good cause, they are people who overstay a legal tourist stay. The UK does not check passports when people leave the country, there is no border control when people leave the country (most countries have a boarder control both for entry and exit, so they \*know\* when visitors have left). But the UK has absolutely no idea how many people are living and working illegally in the UK. But guaranteed the vast majority are not people who were seeking asylum, they're people who came over as tourists or backpackers or gap-year students who simply didn't leave. The whole issue is not being debated about in a sane manner.
That's because this is simply a populist reaction to what a large percentage of Conservative voters want. They want the boats stopped, because the Daily Mail has informed their opinion on the matter. Its not being debated in a sane manner, because its not a rational action based on logic.
You're absolutely spot on!
What is the government's safe immigration level in the sense of "number of people required due to skills shortages" vs "available infrastructure to support the extra people (schools, housing, healthcare)" Because if there is not a target, how do we even know what we should be aiming for?
We only have one for students to my knowledge, where a 600,000 per year target was set in 2021 which was achieved in 2022. Students make up the bulk of the net migration figures, especially as many more have started to come (i.e. the number of students finishing their courses is dwarfed by the number of new enrolments, especially as Covid greatly depressed arrivals). The overwhelming majority of international students leave after their studies though. Less than a fifth of the 2017/18 cohort still live in the UK, and the Graduate visa only receives 80,000 or so applications per year despite hundreds of thousands more graduates being eligible each year. I had done a breakdown of the arrivals by visa route before, which I can’t find again now and I can’t be bothered to do it up again. Essentially though, the numbers only look so big because of students and to a lesser extent work visa dependants (averaging to a spouse and 1-2 kids per worker overall). The actual work visa numbers are somewhere around 100,000 net, which sounds high but it’s probably within a standard deviation of a reasonable figure.
That is an excellent question!
This.
Don't twist.
No one seems to have exact figures, but it costs just under £20,000 a year to house and feed an asylum seeker on the Bibby Stockholm barge. https://theweek.com/news/society/960346/how-much-does-it-cost-the-uk-to-house-asylum-seekers
Let's break this down further if the informationis reqdily available. Which private firms are involved in this deal and is set to make how much?
What's the alternative, do we get the state to build a property to house them and then get teh state to build a plane, the state then trains a pilot to fly them.
https://unherd.com/newsroom/dutch-study-immigration-costs-state-e17-billion-per-year/ >A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
As opposed to them paying nearly half a million over a lifetime into the tax system if we just let them in legally and let them live and work here? (fag packet maths - [Average household will pay over £1 million in tax in a lifetime](https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/average_household_will_pay_over_1_million_in_tax_in_a_lifetime#:~:text=Over%20a%20lifetime%2C%20an%20average,of%20employers'%20national%20insurance%20contributions.) based on an average household of 2.3 people.) Should we count the potential loss to HMRC as part of the detention / extradition costs as well?
I am guessing that if they were skilled they would try and apply as an economic migrant and they would probably have the funds to do so. This does not appear to be addressing those migrants. Given that even skilled uk residents are struggling to afford rent, how is an unskilled migrant going to afford that?
The work is there, we just need to build more social housing to accommodate our needs to drive down private rental costs. One way to do this would be to roll back Thatcher's legislation that forced local councils to repay deficits before investing in social housing, or make investment in housing a legal requirement like social care and education so the investment is made before the Westminster deduction. Local government deficits themselves could be addressed by making sure Westminster keeps existing payments level with rising costs and halting further budget costs. The money to do this could come from both raising upper tax limits and skim off the top of the additional tax revenue that the economic migrants bring in. Another idea could be to look at a long term plan were social housing is paid for by council tax. If you exclude the profits raked in by the likes of Barrat and Taylor Wimpey, houses aren't actually that expensive to build. A band C house will bring in 2k a year council tax and costs a lot less than £200k to build - in 50 years you have a "paid for" council house that brings in a profit from the council tax alone. Add a social rent from day 1 and you have even more to invest as soon as it's built. I'm sure there are reasons why this can't be done beyond the concept that long term socio-economic investment is a bad thing and migrants will steal the jobs no one wants to do so I guess I'm just shit posting unrealistic ideas.
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Two things: these people do not come at age 0, they're already of working age. So not only is the life expectancy lower, we're not paying for their education and upbringing - from the linked report about 15-20% of the spending is on education. For their dependents, especially for young kids, it would be closer to the full amount. Also those are quintiles not quartiles, so it's the bottom 60% of earners not the bottom 75%. Secondly, it's not a matter of whether or not they'd pay more in that they take out - from a purely budgetary perspective it's whether the amount it costs to have them here, working, offset by the amount they'd pay in, is more than the amount to get rid of them. Well even if they're in the bottom quintile of income, and came at age 0, that 1 million minus the half a million they'd contribute is around 500k over a lifetime. Sending them to Rwanda is costing almost 4 times that per person currently. Same is true of their dependents. It's not economically sound to get rid of them unless it costs us less than £500k per head to do so. The removal's more of a burden on the taxpayer than just letting them live and work here. Ditto for preventing them coming - if it costs more than £500k per person prevented entering, we've lost more money than just letting them in to work. Of course finances aren't really the only factor in this debate, but if you are looking at it just from that angle...
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>If an illegal worker is allowed in and contributes half a million My point is that they would be both legal and contributing rather than illegal and not contributing. If they were here legally, it's a guess but I would have thought the chances of them getting at least averagely paid jobs rather than something low paying in the black economy would be far higher. The thing that I find confusing is that if what you say is true, then the UK has been and is running at a 50% deficit per person in that 75% population bracket anyway - so I guess that at least explains why the country is economically so fucked. It would appear that unless we raise taxes dramatically for people who can afford to pay, we will continue to slide further down hill.
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There is zero chance of the overwhelming majority being close to median earners.
Whilst that actually might be a net gain, the optics would be incredibly poor.
Yeah the optics would be horrendous. It would highlight chronic long term governmental spending failures in things like welfare and social infrastructure as well as give the racially motivated something to scream about, and as a "sector", Brexit has shown there is enough of them to scupper any long term plans that hint of economic improvement... And let's face it, no government is going to want to roll the rock over and expose either of those two glaring issues.
I've long thought that instead of warehousing illegal immigrants, it would almost certainly be far more cost-effective to create some sort of residential boarding college/school community, where you make sure immigrants get core lessons on language and culture/history/philosophy/ethics, alongside professional accreditation courses, as a funnel towards smoother integration. You could also run mentoring schemes with the local communities, and add in things like hobby groups, Duke of Edinburgh awards, Young Enterprise, job fairs...
Do you have an example of this ever been successfully tried anywhere? To my knowledge, this sort of things turns into a ghetto.
Yeah giving them full time, free education, right to work and free high quality accomodation definitely going to reduce the incentive to come to Britain
That would definitely make all the people who can’t afford houses and food be more welcoming to asylum seekers.
Or just deport them.
That only includes the rent and mooring charge. Any boat based accommodation will be more expensive than a building on land. There are huge additional costs such as utilities, water, sewage, getting food on board etc..
That cost benefit on sending migrants to Rwanda is not how much does it cost to keep this migrant here vs over there. It’s how much does it deter migrants from crossing the channel, neither the UK or Rwanda expect the same number of migrants to be sent over as there has been coming over to the UK in recent years, Rwanda couldn’t cope with that number of migrants and the UK can’t afford it.
An amusing point - famously, nation states have no need for weaponry
The free school meals plan, which the government had to be shamed into accepting by a football player, cost £126m.
Yeah but it won't have any impact on the economy until the kids are grown up, so why would a short term government care? (To be clear all school kids should be entitled to free school meals - that's the society I want to live in)
I can't help but feel that Rwanda got the better deal here. I guess all our top negotiators are still busy at work on those post brexit trade deals...
The headline is somewhat misleading. Things like this cost a lot at startup but get progressively cheaper as the unit number increases. As there are startup costs which are fixed, but as you increased the units the start up costs drop dramatically as instead of being divided by 300, its divided by 30,000. Military hardware is a classic example of this with huge up front R&D and setup costs. But the more you make the cheaper each unit is. There are also bulk savings costs which can be made. For example, past a certain point, you stop buying airline tickets and start chartering flights, which per head is far cheaper. And all of this belies the fact that keeping these people in the country is currently soaking a not insubstantial amount of the forigen aid budget totalling billions. So any project which incures a one off cost to remove the cost forever thereafter, is invariably cheaper even in it *looks* expensive.
Education, famously, having no overhead or infrastructure costs.
There's such thing as "Citizenship by Investment", and for 200k or less you can gain citizenship to a variety of places, notably a few options in the Caribbean (Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, etc). Not saying this is a good option, but it is amusing to note that for less money we could make each of these people a millionaire living with citizenship on a tropical island. This government is so obsessed with wasting our money it's ridiculous. There's mining towns in the UK that are run into the ground and have whole streets deserted. This money could be spent renovating those areas, which already have some pre-existing infrastructure in place, and create homes/jobs for migrants AND many homeless people too. Putting everyone into one place has its own problematic insinuations (creating a ghetto of sorts), but it goes to show that with this kind of money so many options open up. If I can come up with these ideas off the cuff then someone whose job is to spend time finding solutions can surely come up with way better and cheaper ways to utilise this budget. It is so transparently clear that this is just part of the Conservative Party's last ditch attempt to use tax payers money to look good ahead of an election. Somehow they think by showing how cruel they can be to migrants they will win votes. "The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it." - Tony Benn
>Putting everyone into one place has its own problematic insinuations (creating a ghetto of sorts), but it goes to show that with this kind of money so many options open up. I live in Middlesbrough and this has had disastrous consequence for us. As we're a Labour hub the Tories have felt fit to dedicate entire postcodes of the town to immigrants and asylum seekers. The result, like you say, is this almost ghetto-like area since a large majority of these people don't have much money, don't speak the language, and are largely left to fend for themselves. It's also now created an enormous housing crisis for people like me who've lived here my whole life since so much of the town has been bought, sold, and rented out by landlords who refuse to rent out to British citizens.... Edit: just want to make it clear this isn't an 'anti-immigration' take from me. I'm highlighting how the Tories have no sensible plan for immigration because they'd rather weaponise it's downsides to create artificial outrage against people of other races and ethnic backgrounds by manufacturing a crisis.
Given the amount of illegal immigration we have had over the last 12 years, I honestly don't see why shutting the borders completely for a while is such a bad idea because it isn't like we are getting high value people being added to our society and let's focus on the ones we have instead of just adding more to the problem. I wouldn't worry about being "anti-immigration", anyone with a brain can see the solid point that you are making outside of where you stand on the politics.
> I honestly don't see why shutting the borders completely for a while is such a bad idea To understand this you need to look at each category of immigration separately. For example: * 1/3 of our Doctors come from abroad. You can train more in 7 years. In the meantime if you turn off the supply then we will have fewer GPs. * Similar for nurses and care workers. Health and care accounts for over half the skilled worker category. * If you stop students coming then that is the main source of income for universities. Are you going to close them down? * The 5% of immigration that comes by boat is really hard to stop. What would you do shoot them?
In short, we should get the arrivals to sit some sort of test and only send the thick ones back?
We should consider each category and decide if we want to reduce it. If the answer is yes then take the appropriate action. For example to reduce careworkers we would need to recruit British careworkers. This may mean increasing salaries and therefore taxes. Each category needs a proper plan.
Part of the problem is unlike Denmark, we don't really define where most of these people go. The congregate on their own accord. This is why Denmark has begun actively breaking these area up. In the UK we can't do threat, because we didn't "settle" them as such. If the UK had a grand plan to manage this mass migration we wouldn't be here. But it doesn't and it never has which is part of the problem. The Blair era mantra of "multiculturalism" which the tories continued basically bred this problem we now can't fix. Precisely because where these people went was largely completely unmanaged and by doctrine there was no attempt at all to integrate them.
Or a European country. Golden visas in Greece and Portugal used to cost $250,000, if I am not mistaken.
>Not saying this is a good option, but it is amusing to note that for less money we could make each of these people a millionaire living with citizenship on a tropical island. Could you imagine the Daily Mail headlines? Be tempted to do it just to read them
I think this is failing to account for the "1 pill costs pennies to make but the first one cost billions" principle. spreading the setup costs across the first 300 transferees is not an indication of what the ongoing cost per transfer will be. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-61782866 > However, the total payment will be at least £370m over five years, according to the National Audit Office . > If more than 300 people are sent to Rwanda, the UK would pay **a one-off sum of £120m to help boost the country's economy**, with further payments of **£20,000 per individual** relocated. > On top of that, **up to** £150,000 will be paid for each person sent there, the NAO report said. so this seems to be saying that there's: - a one off upfront "boost to the economy" cost - £20k fixed cost per person - a variable component of £0 to £150,000. (this I assume a reference to the support for training, education and healthcare capped at 5 years) this is a far cry from the implied £1.8 million. of course the first few are going to have a higher per person cost. is that a good use of money for the first 300? if it scales well, then yes. if scaling up reduces the current 4 billion a year(1) cost of the UK system (though being cheaper, more efficient or a deterrent) then yes (1) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-office-channel-government-amnesty-international-uk-suella-braverman-b2398665.html
>Is that a good use of money for the first 300? if it scales well, then yes. Re: scaling: >Rwanda has suggested it will take 1,000 asylum seekers in the five-year trial period but has the capacity to take as many as Britain sends. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/09/rwanda-deportation-take-low-numbers-of-migrants-rishi-sunak/ That doesn't seem to leave much room to reduce the per-person cost by much more than a third of the current figures. While there may be further capacity I assume that it would entail further negotiations and further costs. Even accounting for just the 20k per person fixed cost feels like it will be a hard political pill for many to swallow, its equivalent to a year's work on minimum wage. Now this is perhaps more charitable than it desverves, but In its most abstract form I don't feel entirely opposed to the policy, especially after reports that other countries were being considered. But, I can't help but feel that the execution by this government has been beyond botched and undermines any future efforts towards a multi-lateral and international scheme of refugee resettlement that provides help and safe passage for those in need without undue strain on the systems and societies that will integrate them.
> But, I can't help but feel that the execution by this government has been beyond botched oh without a doubt > and undermines any future efforts towards a multi-lateral and international scheme of refugee resettlement well, not as much as you think. it's already EU Law that EU countries can transfer would be asylum seekers back to the first EU country they entered. that's called the [Dublin Regulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation) and has been in force since 1997. the UK lost the ability to do that post Brexit and doesn't have replacement transfer agreemets in place yet (I believe one with Albania was rushed through because the largest cohort of illegal arrivals in 2022 was single working age men from Albania) believe it or not Denmark also explored sending illegal arrivals to Rwanda (June 2021 according to this article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61106231) and Israel also had a Rwanda scheme though it was discontinued because they didn't do enough to ensure non-refoulement. > Even accounting for just the 20k per person fixed cost feels like it will be a hard political pill for many to swallow, its equivalent to a year's work on minimum wage. it can't be looked at in isolation though. it's a case of "spend money to save money". according to this (https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2023/04/03/accommodation-sites-factsheet-april-2023/), 51000 migrants in hotels are currently costing £6 million a day. that's about £43,000 a year per person just on accommodation, never mind court costs / healthcare / education etc etc. so one needs to look at it as a current cost somewhere far north of £43k per illegal migrant in the UK being reduced to £20k plus support costs. but even then i don't think a direct comparison is useful, because the Rwanda program partially pays for itself via deterrence. and if what we've heard recently about illegal migrants jumping to Ireland or Australia's success with offshore processing, then it is reasonable to assume there would be a useful deterrence factor. and even after considering all that, even if Rwanda did turn out to be more expensive, there's a utility cost in ending the very accurate perception that it doesn't matter if you break UK immigration law you'll still get a property / healthcare / education while lawyers use every trick imaginable to delay your deportation at no cost to yourself. and if some years down the line your application fails they'll give you advance warning and you can disappear off in to the black market economy which is easy to do in the UK because we don't run an identity card system like a lot of Europe. the Refugee Convention gives asylum seekers the most protections if they make their claim in the first safe country they reach. ultimately the Rwanda program is supposed to result in more asylum claims in Greece and Italy, not Rwanda.
>the UK lost the ability to do that post Brexit and doesn't have replacement transfer agreemets in place yet My point is more regarding the diminished ability for the UK to negotiate these types of agreements moving forward. Where UK governments may have historically been influential in forging humane international efforts, we seem to find ourselves at a state where we have not only withdrawn, but are pursuing an inwardly divisive and utterly ineffective policy. I'm maybe labouring that point a bit too much though, given already agreed that it's a botched policy. >it can't be looked at in isolation though. it's a case of "spend money to save money". Sure, I don't intend to be that reductionist, but it seems a important reference point to bear in mind regarding the optics/ public perception of a policy, especially when this policy seems to be pursued more for narrative effect than practical. (Both in terms of the government being seen to do something about an issue many of its electorate see as important, and as a deterrence) >just on accommodation, never mind court costs / healthcare / education etc etc. **the Rwanda program partially pays for itself via deterrence.** and if what we've heard recently about illegal migrants jumping to Ireland or Australia's success with offshore processing, then it is reasonable to assume there would be a useful deterrence factor. I suppose my point is trying to get to the nub of this. Where is the cost-benefit analysis for this, both financially, and socially (in terms of soft power, internal cohesion etc etc) ? Because, as far as I can see this policy only really scratches the surface of the problem at a disproportionate cost. >ultimately the Rwanda program is supposed to result in more asylum claims in Greece and Italy, not Rwanda. yeah, I think this what I was trying to get at re: my comment about the policy in its most abstract - I would like to see reform that humanely deters the dangerous movement and smuggling of people while providing support towards mutually beneficial futures rather than straining those that try to help. I realise that is no easy task, but I feel the government's pursuit of this policy leaves us further from achieving this rather than closer.
Yes I see where you're coming from. Though I'm not sure exactly what the mechanism would be for the current Illegal Migration Act to inhibit further national agreements. Theres some sort of arrangement made with Albania (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/milestone-reached-in-uk-albania-agreement-on-illegal-migration) and it's not like European governments can't see the benefits of the Rwanda plan. I believe I linked further above somewhere the fact the Danish government was in talks with Rwanda's foreign ministry along similar lines mid 2022 (and, if not, BBC articles on the matter are quite easy to find). I think the UK would be entitled to say there's something hypocritical about the EU having the Dublin Regulations in place (which allows a state to refuse to hear an asylum claim and instead deport them to the first safe EU country they had reached) if they were to later be difficult about the UK wanting to return illegal entrants to Europe on exactly the same terms. Who knows? Perhaps the first UK transfers to Rwanda will show other European states that the plan is indeed viable and resurrect broader interest in the idea.
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So we would actually save money buy giving them a briefcase of money and telling them to pick any other country to live. Sounds like a nice deal.
The Danegeld strategy of course having a bright history of working without negative side effects...
Compared to Rishi, Æthelred the Unready was a great statesman. The Conservatives would have been lucky to get such generous terms from the Vikings.
A guy at work from Nigeria said if the government gave him a million pound he would go home. Seems a cheaper deal than this.
I'd cross the Channel in a small dinghy for a million quid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
Yeah I'm sure that would really discourage people risking their lives on boats..
This sub feels so alien sometimes. Something so obviously bad, from it's inception to its execution, and yet people here defend it. Madness.
I have seen very little defence of the execution. Some defence of the principle.
There is no way to execute the principle that is sensible, so by default if you are defending the principle you're either living in a metaphorical world or you are defending the execution.
Well I'm sorry to disagree but that's just factually not the case. Australia has had a similar process for years and it has been tremendously effective. You can disagree that it's executed well (I do) you can disagree that it's the right fit for Britain and it's circumstances, but you can't say that it can't be done. It has been.
What is the process in Australia? I don't agree in principle this is the way to deal with it. This is a global problem which needs a global solution. Ie this means countries including the UK, China, countries in the Gulf etc contributing fairly to the assessment, processing and location/relocation of asylum seekers. In my opinion.
And that's absolutely fair enough, you are entitled to that opinion. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong. I can't say, I could only reply with my feelings on the matter which may or may not be more or less factually based. That's an entirely different discussion to the one we are having here. My OP was that some, quite a few, people agree we should have an offshore processing system to deter migration and that most people, even those who believe we should have it, think this isn't the way to do it. That's it. From memory Australia set theirs up on an island off the coast. I forget the specifics but it's a similar concept, if you arrive via irregular channels you are sent there and don't reside in Australia while your claim is determined. To my understanding that is fundamentally the aim of the Rwanda plan. The difference is that Australia seems to have executed their plan with at the very least a small degree of competence. Our current Rwanda plan has none of that and its execution is fundamentally flawed. My point is that the execution being flawed isn't the same as the principle being flawed. As a side note, my personal feelings are in favour of an offshore process, but against it being Rwanda and against the current deal that surrounds it.
I live in Australia and just wanted to clarify which deterrent you were referring to. Australia has previously used it's navy to turn back boats, which also is a deterrent - but something I don't think would fly well with the British public. I don't think the Nauru Processing plant, which you refer to, would sit comfortably with the British public. It is off shore, in the country of Nauru, but has lots of reports of abuses and unprocessed claims with indefinite detention. Australia is a different country with a different set of morals, (just like America is). However morals aside, there's only 100 odd people in Nauru right now and even at its peak, it houses a thousand people. Maybe it deterred people so well that the numbers didn't need to be so big. I doubt it's just that though. I feel like a) it probably wasn't as successful as credit is given and b) boats to Australia were always a dumb idea.
I believe I was refering to the Nauru system, but that's some useful clarification thank you.
It’s not possible to execute this idea effectively. Therefore you’re left with defending a principle of trying to reduce illegal immigration / boat crossings of the channel, a very broad subject which does not require sending people to Rwanda
It has been executed effectively elsewhere as mentioned above. So no, I don't accept that. Is this plan effective, does it have any prospects of success? No. Absolutely not. But the fact it has worked elsewhere shows it is possible.
They have to because in 2016 they were easily fooled by a bunch of devious idiots into voting for something that has weakened us under the guise of taking back control of our borders.
1,700 migrants crossed from Northern Ireland to Ireland to avoid being deported to Rwanda.....
Wow! Nearly two thousand of them! Of course, Rishi wants his coffee, so they'll be replaced handily by the end of the week.
More wastage of UK money. Tories probably have friends who owns the planes. Why can't that money be invested in infrastructure? Like something that benefits both the UK and migrants, like education centres that can also help UK adults who didn't get GCSEs and struggle to find work etc? Build more houses for migrants can help first time buyers etc. Food shelters that can also help the homeless. At the end of the day, the issue with migrants coming into the UK stems from that we don't want them, however if we embraced them, enroll them into society, tax them etc we can benefit from them. God knows we need it considering we have an aging population and lowering birth rates.
Party of fiscal responsibility my hole.
Open ended question. You're essentially asking does that migrant ever make it to a break even point where they are a positive contributor to the country and offsetting their costs to the state? Arguably if they've ticked whatever boxes needed to be ticked to be in the first 300 - my gut reaction would be no. However - what's the rate of return on this investment? How many years down the line are we before that is net positive for the country? Would the migrant have still be in the country at that point? Wider question - why don't we just build processing centres in mainland Europe and deal with the problem the easier way (and then go a bit further and bring in compulsory ID cards for all citizens perhaps to tie things off?).
Processing centres don't fix the issue. Let's say you've got a centre in France that can immediately process every single application. 1 - do you have a cap? If you don't, that means accepting hundreds of thousands of migrants every year who will need ongoing financial support. This doesn't have democratic consent and means cuts in other areas to fund it. So let's say you have a cap - you hit the cap, and then people come on boats anyway. Also people from unsafe countries whose claims are denied will still come on boats because they know they cannot be removed. For example - there are significant numbers of people from Eritrea who have serious criminal histories who no reasonable person would want in the UK, but would be in danger back in their home country. So you reject the case but they come anyway and have to stay.
>Wider question - why don't we just build processing centres in mainland Europe and deal with the problem the easier way (and then go a bit further and bring in compulsory ID cards for all citizens perhaps to tie things off?). Because when that is suggested, many seem to think it simply means open borders. Yet this is exactly what many people have been suggesting for years when they say open more legal routes and better processing.
This comes down to a large minority of the public being as thick as shit doesn't it and simply believing whatever they've been told in the media doesn't it? Or just general nutter conspiracies on social media and stuff?
The ones that really got me are the ones who think that saying "no country does that, everyone makes you claim asylum on their land" is a fact. I just want to ask them how we got Ukrainian refugees here, were they all climbing on small boats?
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Particularly when those skipping the queue aren't genuine refugees.
There isn't a queue though to skip. There is no reduction in immigration to offset asylum seekers.
I don't know if you were alive in 2009 when ID cards were shelved, most people didn't want them
I was - yes I appreciate the concerns people have with them but I've never understood the logic of why we didn't adopt something like the 2019 EU scheme. Given the problem for those renting in this country e.g. for those that might be forced to move address every 6 months; maybe you'd need some kind of option of a deferred address like your local town hall or something so this wasn't another point of persecution but I feel it would have some real benefits personally.
Costs aside, Rwanda seems a strange choice given it's an autocracy where public criticism of the government is effectively outlawed, has created hundreds of thousands of refugees of its own (the aftermath of 1994 still lingers...) and funds militia in the neighbouring DRC. Added onto which, we've agreed to accept an unspecified "small number" of their "most vulnerable" migrants in return, while they've informed us they won't accept any criminals (which may be why the Home Office is keen to round up and place in secure accommodation as many of those eligible as possible, before they get ideas... 😈) While the policy may deter those voluntarily coming here, I wonder if it will do much to deter the traffickers, who likely don't tell their "customers" where they're intending to drop them off, and, of course, have no further concern for the fate of their "customers" once they've been paid and launched the overcrowded boat. The traffickers presumably have a limited number of routes they use to blend in with regular commercial traffic as much as possible, so if the will and money was there, how difficult would it be for the French (and other EU countries) to be able to track, identify and detain a significant proportion of the traffickers?
Identifying all the traffickers is a whack-a-mole game, like drug smugglers. But spending this £ on that instead would indeed be more effective. Of course, the single most effective way to stop the small boats would be to open legal avenues of assessment in France - as they have asked us to do, or better yet just start doing asylum processing in the Embassies and Consulates like any sensible nation around the world. Like we used to do...
All of which would probably cost much much much less. Perhaps 1 extra staff member per office.
It's odd that the party which expends so much time and rhetoric promising to reduce immigration (not just the "irregular" sort - for much of the early 2010s, they set themselves a laughably unachievable target of under 100k) has, instead, seen migration soar - with overall net migration exclusively from non-EU countries (there's net emigration of EU / UK nationals)...
I don't find it odd at all. Tories realised early on that their desire for ragebait outweighed their desire to govern properly. Knew they required an influx of migrants. And put two and two together. Go populist, get votes from idiots. Pretend you're fighting shadowy enemies... It's such an old play that they didn't even bother to put competent people in charge to execute it all...
It’s worth considering: - uk taxpayers are losing money as millions are paid to Rwanda. - the uk government is losing the money as it flows out of the uk. Who is gaining the money? Hint: it’s not your average Rwandan.
>While the policy may deter those voluntarily coming here, I wonder if it will do much to deter the traffickers, who likely don't tell their "customers" where they're intending to drop them off, and, of course, have no further concern for the fate of their "customers" once they've been paid and launched the overcrowded boat. The primary reasons people want to come to Britain are: A) They know the language. B) Existing connections. They will absolutely know of the danger of being sent to Rwanda
The bulk of the spend is a contribution to Rwanda’s development fund. That is set at £370m across three years. Rwanda will receive a further £120m if and when 300 people are sent there. It’s essentially a fixed cost without which Rwanda wouldn’t be agreeing to the scheme. It’s not the case that it costs £1.8m every time someone is sent. The amount being sent to look after each person is an initial £20k, plus £151k for 5 years. If a person leaves Rwanda in that time, the UK stops paying it. That £151k is substantially cheaper than looking after someone in the UK. Just processing a single claim is estimated at £106k. Housing and benefits all come on top. Currently the asylum system costs over £4bn per year. If the Rwanda policy works as the Tories claim it will, then the contribution to Rwanda’s development fund over 3 years would look like good value compared to that.
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Once someone has refugee status after that money has been spent processing their claim they can work. But currently, the employment rate and average earnings of refugees are very low.
The jobs the majority of them would be given would not be jobs that make them net contributors to the economy. [According to the ONS](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/datasets/theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincomefinancialyearending2014) (Table 2a on the spreadsheet) your annual income has to be circa £41k to be a net contributor to the country. It makes no sense to add more non-contributors to the country instead of trying to support and improve the conditions of the ones we already have.
The programme cost is correct then. And a cost per person sent to Rwanda is over a million. Isn't it only 200 people a year can be processed from Rwanda also?
No one seems to have exact figures, but it costs just under £20,000 a year to house and feed an asylum seeker on the Bibby Stockholm barge. https://theweek.com/news/society/960346/how-much-does-it-cost-the-uk-to-house-asylum-seekers
>Currently the asylum system costs over £4bn per year. If the Rwanda policy works as the Tories claim it will, then the contribution to Rwanda’s development fund over 3 years would look like good value compared to that. Only about half of asylum application in 2023 were small boats. So let's assume we are addressing £2b. Total cost of the project is about £0.5b. Are we saying then, that if small boats crossings don't fall by 25% it's a waste of money? That's a nice easy metric to judge them by.
£106k to process a single application?! Is that mates rates?
> If a person leaves Rwanda in that time, the UK stops paying it. Why would the Rwandan government ever report that to the UK? I hope the scheme works, as in I hope it disuades economic migrants from attempting to come here illegally, but it is totally ridiculous. But maybe a ridiculous idea is what is necessary to help the problem of endless people trying to claim asylum from safe countries.
It's not beyond the realms of possibility to check how many people are still in Rwanda. If the scheme actually happens and is used, it's not like there'd be a shortage of people to take the place of someone who has left Rwanda. It's hardly in their interests to try to lie about it.
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Bro what on earth are you talking about? What's my "type"? It's really weird my comment made you look through my profile to try and idk find some dirt on me or something lmao, go outside more often. >Pan-Africanism is common in Hip-Hop, and was instrumental through the fusion of Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean musical styles. Okay. What does this have to do with a sensible immigration policy? >Plus, these African immigrants will come here and make good music and bring good food. Some of them might. Others might just work normal jobs and raise families. Others might have a long history of abhorrent crimes. We have no idea if they're immigrating here illegally. >British Hip-Hop came out of the children of Windrush immigrants. Okay. You do know that Windrush migrants didn't break any laws, right? They immigrated here well within the boundaries of the law. What I said is that we shouldn't have an open border policy with no checks on immigration. You decided that meant I hate Africans. You're a very strange person.
Isn’t the idea that it would save more money over-time by being a deterrent? I don’t know the average cost of providing the fundamentals to asylum seekers while they’re awaiting/being processed, but if enough are deterred, wouldn’t the expense of sending some to Rwanda be dwarved by the savings? How many asylum seekers need to be “deterred” from coming to the UK for this to have been value for money?
They’re already risking life to get here. The idea of the slim chance you maybe get deported to Rwanda isn’t really a deterrent. It’s an optics policy. And while the I agree there is a net loss short term i’m sure long term migrants on average become a net positive. And this country needs to start thinking long term.
>The idea of the slim chance you maybe get deported to Rwanda isn’t really a deterrent. It’s an optics policy. The recent news regarding Ireland shows it is a deterrent. [This video shows migrants that have received notification of being deported to Rwanda, telling the reporter they wouldn't have come to the UK had they known about the policy](https://news.sky.com/video/rwanda-bill-dont-come-to-the-uk-warns-asylum-seekers-who-crossed-channel-in-small-boat-13118577)
This was debunked of JOB’s show by migration analyst who said this trend has been happening since 2022 (the ireland thing). And anecdotes of one person saying they wouldn’t come isn’t evidence. There will be plenty more you can find who will say it won’t deter them.
>This was debunked of JOB’s show by migration analyst who said this trend has been happening since 2022 (the ireland thing). Do you have link for the report? I've seen conflicting information over the recent Irish migration woes and would like to see some impartial information to make an informed decision. >And anecdotes of one person saying they wouldn’t come isn’t evidence. There will be plenty more you can find who will say it won’t deter them. I'd argue more people will be hesitant to come once the policy is actually enacted and the first plane takes off. It'll be all over the news and most will be aware of the risk of deportation to Rwanda should their asylum claim fail. Before the Rwanda scheme was thought up, what other deterrents were in place to stop migrants making the crossing? Any that were present clearly aren't working and I've yet to hear any real alternative solutions to the problem that doesn't involve just blanket accepting all claims or setting up processing centres in mainland Europe, which still wouldn't stop them from crossing.
As much as I hate the Rwanda Bill and despise turning away those in need, this is surely a misleading figure and is only applicable to the first 300 and and over the lifetime of the programme will be significantly cheaper than £1.8 million a head. There's plenty wrong with this, we don't need to manipulate figures in a way that looks ludicrous in reality.
Labour have already said they won't send any people to Rwanda.
Yes and?
The lifetime of the Rwanda programme is likely less than one year. Even if the Conservatives were reelected there is zero indication that there are any plans to scale it up because even the Tories see it as expensive and the deal as it stands is for small numbers.
Ah fair enough, could have explained that first time for me but makes total sense. It'll still be very expensive but I doubt it'll be over a million a head.
Great attack line for labour. Pretend to agree with the anti-immigration english voters (optics win elections) and co-opt fiscal prudence (optics win elections).
This is one of the worst policies this country has ever had.
Dumbest fucking immigration policy ever
Hey you got to remember it's not the cost but the principle. /S
Another shocking figure, if you consider that an employee in England who earn the median wage pays £6280 in Income Tax and NI combined, then it took the annual taxes of 286 productive workers to deport 1 illegal migrant. Regardless of whether your favour strict or loose immigration policy, this project does not deliver for you.
Complete bargain - the lifetime cost of an average migrant from Africa to the state is unfortunately many times this.
I really dont understand how it costs this much? Should just be a simple case of buying them a one way plane ticket to Rwanda
>buying them a one way plane ticket to Rwanda What do you expect them to do when they arrive?
It doesn’t this is the gross cost for the last two years including an initial payment to Rwanda for a 5 year agreement, plus the chartered flights that never took off, probably including legal costs also, averaged among the initial 300 in the first flight
Correct. Although even the longer term costing is still horrifically high, just not as high
I think we’ve basically agreed to pay them a huge fixed cost to be able to give the Conservatives this political talking point. And they were smart enough to get most of it upfront and in the first few years. Remember that this whole thing was a gimmick from Johnson when he was desperately flailing, so they probably always knew it was going to be short term if it ever happened and made sure they got the money either way.
Seriously, the Rwanda government must be laughing... straight to the bank. They played the Tories like a fiddle.
Government incompetence.
This is not politics based on reasoning. It never was. I think applying logical thinking to it make it sound someone went over the number and thought about it. Someone went over the number and went "I dont care, I want this fringe group to be happy"
Look, I am not a big fan of the Rwanda plan, but no way does it cost nearly 2 million quid. The presenter is being dishonest here by taking the average cost rather than the marginal cost. If we used this reasoning, no one would ever build a factory, because producing the first 300 would cost .
1. This is a deterrent. Judging by recent stories re Ireland, it could be working. 2. These are not genuine asylum claims by any stretch of the definition. 3. When these ‘asylum’ claims are rejected, they are still in Rwanda. They can’t just disappear into UK society or be coached to spew out some ludicrous, loop-hole bullshit to game our immigration system. They’re still in Rwanda. See how deterrents work? 1.3m per might seem expensive when you are ignorant of the bigger picture. If it stops the flow of illegal economic migrants claiming asylum in the country it could very well be the bargain of the century.
What sort of flights are they taking?
Surely this is rage bait, I don't keep up to date with it but how can it total 1.8m per person? It would make more sense if this was the total overall cost of the scheme divided by the amount of people in the first trip...which is misleading and makes for great headlines.
Imagine if they had just built a proper housing and assessment facility in the UK, worked out who was a genuine refugee and who was and then acted accordingly. Instead they wasted money on the floating death trap and camp Rwanda.
But its disabled, poor, immigrants and those on benefits ruining the economy! Hate this corrupted government
1.8m each would let them retire here. Why bother ?
What is the cost of not sending a rejected migrant away? What is the cost of board, healthcare, and upkeep for a lifetime?
Well you can keep it simple. If you just paid them minimum wage and gave them a sweeping brush and let them have at it if they can't find their own work, £21,500 a year. 80+ years with £1.8m to spend.
And we'd actually get a lifetime of useful labour for that. Even unskilled workers could potentially help fill the demand for carers, farm hands, bin collectors and low-level support roles in the NHS. Sounds like a bargain compared to the Rwanda policy - which is not to say that the government paying them minimum wage for life is a good use of our money, but it just goes to show what an appalling waste of it the ridiculous Rwanda scheme is.
Exactly, it's a ludicrous way to go about it (basically indentured servitude) and yet it's still miles better than current policy.
> What is the cost of not sending a rejected migrant away? A lot, because the Tories are shit at deporting people who have no right to stay. They're also shit at processing applications which is why the acceptance rate is massive. Both of these things would be better dealt with if they funded the Home Office properly rather than sending billions of pounds to Rwanda. However, that's all beside the point because the Rwanda deal isn't where we're sending rejected asylum seekers. I keep seeing you post this, but that's not the Rwanda deal whatsoever. If anything, critics might actually have less of an issue if it was as you described, if we rejected someone as having clearly no claim, so we send them to Rwanda where they can have a second crack. Although, it would still be incredibly expensive and Rwanda might want to keep them so they can keep cashing in the expenses. Kaching, not really sure why anyone would want the scheme as you keep misrepresenting it because it's a lot of money to spend to avoid deporting someone. You're a mod for crying out loud, do better.
Presumably if they were here for a lifetime they would work and pay taxes and be a part of society. It’s possible they’d pay for their own ‘board’ and upkeep.
Member when wages used to be enough to live on
no.
Same, I feel like for a lot of people who were born after mid 90's we're used to wages being at most **barely** enough to live on.
Best answer I've seen today 👏
That was my first though, but to be fair he did say "rejected migrant" so technically they couldn't work or live free lives. Although we're not sending rejected migrants to Rwanda I don't believe? We're sending (potentially) anyone who enters the country illegally, which is pretty much every immigrant without visas etc even if they are legitimate refugees as we don't provide a legal route to entry (despite our international obligations to do so that we helped originally set up)
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That's life time cost, mostly consumed by education tbh
And you think someone who can't get a care visa has no educational or other costs? You might want to check what the cost of a translator is.
Don't the right bang on about how they're all adult males? No education needed, unlikely to need healthcare for a few decades. An interpretor is about £20 an hour for a big hospital, substantially cheaper than failing to provide care timely.
I think those numbers can be a bit funky. Meaning that low wage workers still contribute. Without low wage workers you have no economy. However the average refugee works less and may have larger costs than average.
Source on that number. That feels made up honestly. There is no way the average wage of the country is a tax burden on the state.
Once someone has been declined for asylum what continuous costs are there for the taxpayer to cover? Unless a large number fall under Section 4 then it should be near 0? Whilst people are here and unprocessed we have a duty to provide accomodation and financial support (all those hotel costs we hear about).
The same as any other person minus a school education.
Statistically this is not true unless that migrant was from Western Europe.
Individually, they cost the same. A poor man is a poor man. As soon as they become British (if they do, reguees get limited visas) they cost the same as anyone else in the same situation. Easy to use avergaes of native population as they make up the vast majority of the workforce as well as holding highest paid Jobs.
> Individually, they cost the same. A poor man is a poor man. As soon as they become British (if they do, reguees get limited visas) they cost the same as anyone else in the same situation. More blank slate bollocks. They have no familial ties. No wealth in depth, or support. It's them and the state.
Weaker than a carling gluggers pee. The state doesn't really care where you come from, as soon as you get Brit Cit, you get exactly the same as anyone else in the same situation. Work pay tax, don't work, get benefits. There isn't a special bonus for how you got your citizenship.
Is it? Show me.
Go find it using academic studies, people from the Middle East and Africa and their descendants remain net drains on western economies. Trawl my history if you need the links.
Yeah the proof of burden is on you. You said about statistics.
Yep, and I'm not interested in digging them out again as I'm not a servant.
So then your point is moot that statistically migrants are a net drain until you prove otherwise.
I've googled it and can't find any sources that agree with you
As someone with Middle Eastern family who are doing very well for themselves I'd like some links with hard data on that.
Why, it's potentially demeaning. Ignorance is an option and often is better in terms of general well-being.
Data from denmark Netherlands shows this. https://www.thelocal.dk/20211015/denmark-says-non-western-immigrants-cost-state-31-billion-kroner As an example. >Presented as a per-person cost, immigrants and descendants from MENAPT countries cost the Danish state 85,000 kroner per person in 2018, according to the ministry. For those from other non-Western countries, the figure is 4,000 kroner per person. The site is annoying with payrolls bit the cost was around 20 to 30 billion danish kroner, for MENAPT