Prejudice and ignorance skew public view of asylum-seekers
Study shows 'reality gap' for Britons who think they know about immigration
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Independent Minds
TOM PILSTON
Would-be immigrants and applicants for asylum in the UK wait outside a food delivery service in Calais, France
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Attitudes to asylum-seekers in Britain are being skewed by gross over-estimation of the numbers of refugees reaching the United Kingdom and prejudice towards immigrants among young people, the British Red Cross says today.
Nearly a quarter of people believe there are more than 100,000 asylum applications every year – about four times the annual figure of 25,670, and just 5 per cent of Britons know to within 10,000 how many refugees come to the UK every year, according to a survey carried out for the charity.
The Red Cross said that the study, published to coincide with a campaign to combat prejudice against refugees, highlights a "reality gap" among Britons on the issue of asylum. It said most people saw refugees as poorly educated and believed that the UK offered shelter to far more migrants that it does.
Of particular concern was the negative image of asylum-seekers among the 18-24 age group, where nearly two-thirds chose the word "uneducated" and 33 per cent used "hostile" when asked to describe refugees.
A spokesman for the Red Cross said: "There is a clear gap between what people think is the level of asylum-seekers entering the UK and the reality. They are getting figures from the media and basing their opinions on perceptions that are not true. The number of refugees coming to the UK is far lower than most people think. It is interesting to note that when people are asked to describe refugees and base their opinions on people they know or have met then you find many more positive associations."
The charity said its survey of 1,000 people, conducted by ICM, had uncovered a succession of misconceptions about asylum-seeker numbers, including a belief that Britain had a disproportionate share of the world's refugees.
85 per cent do not know how many asylum-seekers are hosted by the UK.
On average, people think that the UK is home to 24 per cent of all asylum-seekers – eight times the actual figure of 3 per cent. Of those surveyed, just 3 per cent could give the correct percentage while 85 per cent said they simply did not know.
Nick Scott-Flynn, the head of the British Red Cross refugee service, said: "We provide sanctuary to far fewer people than many developing countries which are less obviously able to cope, such as Chad, Tanzania and Pakistan. We should be proud of the UK's role offering refuge to people in desperate need of safety, and celebrate the skills, talents and contributions that these people bring to the UK."
23 per cent think Britain receives 100,000 asylum applications a year.
The current total is 25,670. Home Office figures show that applications have fallen from a peak of 84,130 in 2002 to 25,670 last year. But public perception has yet to catch up, with the average person estimating there are 58,000 new arrivals each year – more than double the 2008 figure.
The study found that men are twice as likely as women to believe that asylum applications exceed 100,000 a year. Only five per cent of those interviewed could name the correct range of 20,000 to 30,000, meaning that 95 per cent of people live in ignorance of the level of refugees coming into Britain.
34 per cent believe refugees are jobless or unskilled workers.
Perceptions of the skills offered by asylum-seekers are also out of step with reality. Seven per cent thought refugees were mostly jobless while 27 per cent they were unskilled, blue-collar workers from the farming and manufacturing sectors in their countries of origins. Only 10 per cent of asylum-seekers were judged to have been in higher education when in fact about a third of refugees have university degrees or professional qualifications.
92 per cent attach positive attributes to refugees but one in two also sees them in a negative light.
Despite ignorance of asylum figures, Britons broadly see refugees in a positive light. When asked to pick from a list of character traits, more than nine out of ten chose at least one of the following words: hardworking, intelligent, brave and friendly. Forty-eight 48 per cent said refugees were either uneducated, hostile, lazy or cowardly.
Negative descriptions rose dramatically among young people with 61 per cent choosing "uneducated" compared to an average across all age groups of 29 per cent. A third of those in the 18-24 age group chose "hostile" with another 18 per cent seeing refugees as "lazy" and 12 per cent as "cowardly".
Charities hope to reverse the trend with a campaign ahead of Refugee Week this month which will encourage people to replace their photographs on social networking sites such as Facebook with an image of an asylum-seeker.
Titcha Kanjanda, 38, who fled Zimbabwe and is now studying for a social care degree in Portsmouth, said refugees needed to be allowed to feel proud of themselves by contributing to their adoptive country. She said: "I didn't want to leave but circumstances forced me to. I'm not a liability, I want to be an asset. I want people to realise 'she's a refugee, but she's working towards the development of this country'."
Click here to visit the British Red Cross' refugee awareness website
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Comments
truly, uncle monty. http://thebiggerissue.org/
My wife is a black African and she is astounded how much better treated an asylum seeker/economic migrant is treated compared to local people. They do not pay rent, they get furniture, food and they do not have to get a TV licence (we lock up local little old ladies who do not pay up).
I and a lot of other people will be looking towards the BNP to try and save what is left of a second tier society we are a banana republic without the weather.
I sincerely doubt this statement if you're supporting the BNP.
If this is true, then you're in serious denial of what and who the BNP stands for.
i) UNHEALTHY because they have no health service to speak of in their home countries and therefore present a massive burden on public health services. Immigrants are IMMEDIATELY allowed the same level of medical treatment as UK citizens - without having paid a penny in taxes. In New Zealand Canada and Australia prospective immigrants have to take a very stringent medical which includes a HIV test. Any member of the family that does not pass this medical is refused residence. The philosophy here is they would pose too high a burden on medical services. And also why would you have an unhealthy immigrant when you could have a healthy one! The UK does not ask for ANY (yes, ANY!) medical exam - it does not even require an HIV test. It is also interesting to note that immigration activists have successfully demanded that all HIV-positive immigrants be given the same standard of medical treatment as UK citizens.
ii) UNSKILLED and require support by social services. Again, New Zealand Canada and Australia only allow immigrants who are skilled and who fit within certain skills categories. Most immigrants have to have a degree.
iii) VERY POOR and require social housing - in the past immigrants who had been in the country months were places at the top of the housing queue, ahead of UK citizens who had been waiting for YEARS. This fact is often (brazenly) denies by trendy-lefties.
iv) HABOURING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS WHICH ARE STRAIGHT OUR OF THE MIDDLE AGES - including immigration due to so-called 'arranged marriages'.
Labour's irresponsible (some would say treacherous) immigration policy has changed the very character of the UK - you only have to walk down any street to see evidence of that. Labour has become so politically correct that it does not even deport FAILED asylum-seekers. How contemptible of the British people is THAT!
Labour has brazenly refused to set any targets for immigration - even when the economic situation demands it. Look at the the response of Australia to the current financial crisis. It has cut its immigration intake by a significant amount because it places the rights of its people - its citizens above any PROSPECTIVE immigrant - that is just a fair and common-sense approach. Remember, Australia does not accept ANY unskilled migrants so one can appreciate the massive extra burden imposed by continuing unfettered immigration in the UK by people I have listed above.
For too long trendy lefties, in their houses in Hampstead and Islington, have stiffled all debate about immigration by labeling people as "racists" who dare to question it. This might have worked very effectively 10 or 20 years ago but people have become aware of this disgraceful strategy and it will no longer work. Trendy lefties are partly responsible for the failure of entire immigrant communities (more noticeably the Muslim community) to integrate into our society. Trendy lefties, for example, led Hate campaigns against any person who dared to criticize the wasteful practices of councils in printing information leaflets in all known languages under the sun. Now we are paying the price for this. Just look at the treatment of British soldiers returning from battle in Afghanistan by SOME Muslims - they were abused and screamed at when they paraded down the street in what should have been a celebration of their contribution.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. The reason why the BNP have gained such inroads is because of these things. We MUST have a sensible immigration policy where only those who can contribute can have residency.
Recognising and acting in accord with the conservative aspects of the British character is the best bulwark against parties like the BNP.
Nu Labor are in denial, though, aren't they. McShane and Toynbee in craven desperation have already blamed the Conservative Party for the BNP.
What cowards these people are.
The real problem we face is illegal immigration - people trafficking from which criminal gangs make a lot of money. We simply don't know how many people slip under the net and arrive in our country by this means. And this problem is not confined to our country - it's Europe-wide. Here's where government action needs to be concentrated, and it needs to be done in cooperation with other EU governments and beyond. This is an international problem that only international action can solve.
Those who propose a "send them all back" policy are impractical and naive. Just how do they propose to organise such a vast project and who is going to pay for it? In the case of many asylum-seekers, sending them back to their country of origin may well be giving them a death sentence. Are we really saying as a country that we are in favour of that?
This debate is short on facts, and the Red Cross, as an established operator in this field, with no motivation other than humanitarian concerns, has at least tried to present some facts. If people are going to dispute those facts, then at least let them quote from credible sources. What appears in some of the red-top newspapers usually just panders to some of the wilder aspects of public opinion.
I never though to hear such bigotry in a British newspaper. If this is representative of our nation today, God help us all.
Most asylum seekers have paid these trafikkers for false papers and passports and immigration stamps; the "Mr Bigs" are mainly Indian mafia characters who front their organisations with respectable businesses, whilst conducting their evil clandestine operations, ranging from prostitution, human trafikking, drug running, setting up fraudulant companies to claim non existent VAT repayments. All their ill-gotten gains are then invested in Dubai property where no questions are asked.
The big question is why is this scam not being investigated ? Could it be that the various immigration departments / officers and the chain of individuals starting from embassy visa officers, police officers, customs officers have succumbed to temptation and taken the generous bribes offered by these gangs to turn a blind eye ? ??
In the meantime the genuine asylum seeker (of which there are only a few) remain the real victims, simply because they do not have the means to escape their unfortunate circumstances!
To see civil liberties dramatically reduced in the UK since 1997 in the interests of 'security', while between one and two million illegal immigrants are estimated to be in the UK, it is not difficult to see why the government is regarded with a degree of cynicism which is rapidly turning onto contempt when any official announcements are made.
Migrationwatch attempts to deal with this information deficit, but is incumbent on the government to come up with realistic numbers. Unfortunately this article looks like another attempt by what the BNP refer to as the 'liberal elite' to ignore, patronise and condescend to the very real concerns shared by many of the population about the topic of immigration.
To quote statistics is meaningless - when undisputed is the fact that Britain has limited space, limited employment prospects, limited health services and limited education facilities.
There is no reason Britain should hold open its doors to each and every asylum seeker when native Britain's are driven to escape their own country. Fear of conflict is not imaginary when a city skyline is altered by religious buildings and no-go areas abound in towns and cities due to racial conflict.
It is not racism to wish one's people to live - and to live sovereign and free. But the left's denial that the English are worth preserving - something they would never say of Jews and Japanese and Tibetans and native Indians - or that we even exist, now THAT is racist.
The left is driving us towards our own extinction, trading its own sense of moral superiority for the birthright of our children. It is almost a mental disease.
I'll be giving it all my support where I can and not just this month.
So lets not carried away and say that BNP will provide the solutions. Human Trafikking is a multi billion dollar industry !
Here is the solution
1) Any company employing individuals who do not have the right to work in the UK; must be fined and their owners imprisoned.
2) All asylum seekers must be dispatched to a holding centre; preferably an offshore Island where they can be housed in portakabins whilst the genuineness of their asylum application is processed. It is inevitable the vast majority of applicants will be found to be "customers" of the human trafikking gangs who charge about $10,000 per person to smuggle them into Europe providing them with fraudulant papers, passports etc etc.
3) Once word gets around; the opportunitic migration will stop which makes up more than 90% of these cases and only the genuine asylum seekers will remain; who in most cases are educated and politically persecuted individuals, who do deserve protection, as for the others they are as bad as the criminals who run this racket.
Unfortunately the purchasing power of these gangs; will persuade most officers to turn a blind eye in return for the huge bribes being touted and only token arrests are made whilst the leaders of these gangs live lavishly in off-shore tax havens like Dubai.
Firstly, the UK has seen successive waves of immigrants for centuries, and each time there is an economic crisis, exactly the same myths about immigrants have been recycled. Fact is, there are very few Britons in major cities and towns who can claim that all of their great-grandparents were British. The Royal Family certainly can't claim that. When did Prince Philip last do a day's work? Shall we throw him out for being a scrounging immigrant?
Secondly, far from being more tolerant of immigration, Labour governments over the last 30 years have consistently past more legislation restricting immigration than Tory governments. The current Labour government is no exception. Under the Tories, it was comparatively simple and easy for refugees to claim asylum, and more importanly, asylum seekers had the right to work. It was Labour that removed the right to work, condemning asylum seekers to become "scroungers". Labour have also made it much more difficult for economic migrants to come to the UK, and they have recently made it near impossible for non-EU musicians and artists to perform here.
There is no need to vote BNP, if you insist on keeping Britain White, sorry, I mean British. Just vote Labour!
The health service, housing, schools are overburdened and local councils do not have enough money to provide adequate services to taxpayers because the number of people resident in the UK is underestimated. I am amazed at the tolerance of the British taxpayer- having non contributors to the system take out from it so disproportionately thereby reducing the standard of services for the citizens and their children.Care in hospitals is abysmal. Drugs are being rationed for UK cancer sufferers so why should hugely expensive HIV meds be given to non-citizens with failed asylum claims? So many children in schools do not speak English, dragging the standard of education down for British kids. Transport is crowded. There is a shortage of housing. Asylum seekers are perceived as jumping the queue.
The welfare state was envisaged as a system you worked and paid into which would be a safety net if you fell ill, lost your job, or entered old age. It was not designed to support so many people who have not paid into it, and who make multiple claims on it for long periods of time.
Britain is perceived as a soft touch and those allowed in as refugees often do not bother to integrate. The straw that breaks the camel's back is when the British are treated worse than the immigrants under their own laws. I refer to recent protests in London. Brian Haw ( one man protesting about Iraq) and the Cenotaph ladies (reading the names of war dead out) were arrested and removed by the police for breaching antiterror laws that prohibit protests near parliament. The G20 protestors were kettled and were gone in one or two days. Yet Tamil protestors supporting a terrorist organisation( the Tamil Tigers) took over Parliament Sq for weeks, blocked roads, disrupted traffic, made thousands of Londoners late for work, climbed Westminster Abbey (a church-no respect) cost the police 8Million pounds, and reduced police cover to the rest of London for weeks.They were not moved despite the disruption and the law. On the contrary they were visited by MPs and taken to meet UK, EU and international representatives. A tad unfair, perhaps? Even more so when supporters of the Tigers have been convicted in this country of mass credit card fraud on UK citizens to fund the group.
The British have lost their identity bending over backwards for diversity and multiculturalism. It's time we were proud of being British and save that identity before it is lost.
The health service, housing, schools are overburdened and local councils do not have enough money to provide adequate services to taxpayers because the number of people resident in the UK is underestimated. I am amazed at the tolerance of the British taxpayer- having non contributors to the system take out from it so disproportionately thereby reducing the standard of services for the citizens and their children.Care in hospitals is abysmal. Drugs are being rationed for UK cancer sufferers so why should hugely expensive HIV meds be given to non-citizens with failed asylum claims? So many children in schools do not speak English, dragging the standard of education down for British kids. Transport is crowded. There is a shortage of housing. Asylum seekers are perceived as jumping the queue.
The welfare state was envisaged as a system you worked and paid into which would be a safety net if you fell ill, lost your job, or entered old age. It was not designed to support so many people who have not paid into it, and who make multiple claims on it for long periods of time.This is even more significant in these recessionary times when so many are struggling. We do not have the tax revenue to fund people's pensions. Something has to give.
Britain is perceived as a soft touch and those allowed in as refugees often do not bother to integrate. The straw that breaks the camel's back is when the British are treated worse than the immigrants under their own laws. I refer to recent protests in London. Brian Haw ( one man protesting about Iraq) and the Cenotaph ladies (reading the names of war dead out) were arrested and removed by the police for breaching antiterror laws that prohibit protests near parliament. The G20 protestors were kettled and were gone in one or two days. Yet Tamil protestors supporting a terrorist organisation( the Tamil Tigers) took over Parliament Sq for weeks, blocked roads, disrupted traffic, made thousands of Londoners late for work, climbed Westminster Abbey (a church-no respect) cost the police 8Million pounds, and reduced police cover to the rest of London for weeks.They were not moved despite the disruption and the law. On the contrary they were visited by MPs and taken to meet UK, EU and international representatives. A tad unfair, perhaps? Even more so when supporters of the Tigers have been convicted in this country of mass credit card fraud on UK citizens to fund the group.
The British have lost their identity bending over backwards for diversity and multiculturalism. It's time we were proud of being British and save that identity before it is lost.
For more than 1000 years there have been large scale migration, individually and even en mass.
It was not Pakistanies at that time perhaps. But what about the Celts, the Hunn and the Visigoth. Those refered to as aryian today were once the residents of modern Iran before spreading out.
In the 18 hundreds it was 100's of thousands of (- sometimes desperate-) North and Central Europeans who headed off to N. America, parts of Asia, Australia, New Zealand etc. The Spaniards and Portuguese went to S. America in droves.
So why all this alarm and screams of injustice when this ancient and well- established reality is also to be observed today!?
What is so special about people moving? Why should humans have far less rights than the birds in this respect?
For more than 1000 years there have been large scale migration, individually and even en mass.
It was not Pakistanies at that time perhaps. But what about the Celts, the Hunn and the Visigoth. Those refered to as aryian today were once the residents of modern Iran before spreading out.
In the 18 hundreds it was 100's of thousands of (- sometimes desperate-) North and Central Europeans who headed off to N. America, parts of Asia, Australia, New Zealand etc. The Spaniards and Portuguese went to S. America in droves.
So why all this alarm and screams of injustice when this ancient and well- established reality is also to be observed today!?
What is so special about people moving? Why should humans have far less rights than the birds in this respect?
<written: A disabled Royal Air Force veteran living in Germany the last 26 years.>
Whilst I can see straight through to the core of this article (that BNP members are a bit thick), the very crassness of it shocks me. Yes the BNP just got a seat (or two), yes, this is very disturbing, but the "Any true Scotsman believes X" (and anyone else is stupid) argument is straight out of the playground, not something I expect to see in a newspaper.
Repeating the same statistic for effect is really lame. (5% believe... 95% don't believe... Over 90% think.... Less than 10% think....)
How stupid do you think your readers are? I am staunchly against the BNP, but you win arguments with intelligence, superior logic and reason, not by screaming insults like some child.
On a more intelligent level: I am deeply concerned that the BNP are gaining seats, but not that surprised. I'm not going to throw silly insults at the BNP members as I am sure many of them are well educated - the simple fact that they are right wing nationalists is enough to keep me well away from them. I'm also concerned that the Tories gained a pile of seats because this whole political atmosphere reminds me of Britain in 1997 and the landslide victory that Labour won from the Tories because the Tories were so sleazy and corrupt. Nothing changed, we got a "Labour" government who were actually Tory and now I'm supposed to be jumping hoops at the return of the Tories?
Labour or Tory matters not, they both sing from the same hymn sheet.
So that leaves......? Well as a thinking voter it leaves me wondering. I will not vote BNP, but many will and the alternatives are equally crap. But all of this is a foregone conclusion anyway, the Lab / Tory pact will win as they always do and nothing will change.
It's a 2 horse race where both horses are lame.
what a lot of small brained scaredy cats on this site today!
go home to the begining of time amoeba brains trace your anscestors back, it turns out we are all running from ourselves unless you marry your mother!!
stop this whining about having to share with the rest of the world which little britain squandered for many a century.
if you have a problem with britain being multicultural piss off to antartica. the future generations dont need any of these out dated views or parties dont hide embrace!
sharing is caring
cheers guys
What an utterly pointless statement: doesn't prejudice skew everyone's view of everything?