Asylum seekers-know the score

Imagine living in a world where every day you wake up to is a nightmare. You have no food and your family have died fighting for your country.
So consider yourself lucky, living in a peaceful country with most your family still alive. This probably doesn’t seem like a lot to you but it would be absolute bliss for those people in countries at war. Human rights believe that every one should have the same opportunities. If we have it all, why shouldn’t they share some?
That is why some people support the motion of helping asylum seekers into this country. However, a minority of asylum seekers abuse these privileges, implement anti-social behaviours, and distress the neighbourhood. This is why some people disagree with allowing asylum seekers and refugees in to the UK.
Some people feel this way because they have seen or experienced these behaviours of some asylum seekers, and therefore conclude generalising that all asylum seekers are like that. However, the majority of asylum seekers are not like that at all, they try to participate in the community. However, most of the time they are discriminated because of their race, religion, nationality or simply by people who don’t want them to be in their country.
Further more, the majority of people that actually feel most strongly about asylum seekers are people who don’t even know much about them. They follow what they hear and believe what people say, with no opinion of their own. As like how most racists never had any different raced friends.
At the same time, even the government thinks that asylum seekers are scrounging off them, and extreme right-wingers such as the British National Party propose that all foreigners should be sent back to where they came from. They had recently published an election leaflet, entitled ‘Asylum is making Britain explode’, It has been delivered to every household in Scotland and many household in England. The Scottish Refugee Council has described it as ‘ a stomach turning document of half truths and unfounded assertions.’ No doubt if they were selected, asylum seekers not only won’t be accepted but like some other countries in the world, may even be arrested on attempting asylum.
Despite this, the labour party is supportive of the idea of asylum seekers and encourage legal asylum seeking. Also International Laws such as under the 1951 convention of refugees and the 1967 protocol under which a nation must grant political refugees an asylum and can’t force them to return to their own country. These help to defend the rights of Asylum seekers and refugees.
Although there is much talked about controversy with the subject of asylum seekers, no one really considered the asylum seeker’s own opinions. Moving into a new country, not knowing how to speak their language and adapting to a new culture is very difficult, children, less so, as they adapt quicker and easier to their surrounding.
Nevertheless, adults are usually more self-conscious and tend to be scared and worried. Their feelings are not helped by the native people who gives them appalling hospitality and welcome them in to this new freighting place with jeers and unfriendliness.
Forced to leave their country they loose everything that they previously had, such as comfort in their own home and love from their family. They feel alone and alienated in an unfamiliar country, we should show our warmth and generosity to help them cope with the deprivation of security and protection, and not mock and laugh at them to make them feel worse.
People in Britain who dislike asylum seekers have four main points:
· Firstly, working citizens in the UK have to pay taxes and they believe that it is against their interest for the money to be paid for supporting idle asylum seekers. Where as in fact more than 74% of asylum seekers that come in to the UK try to find work, and their income support is only 80% of the average giro given.
Mr. G. Trinity (a member of the public) expressed his views on asylum seekers: ‘they only sponge off the government and use up taxpayer’s money.’
However others think differently, Mrs. D Brown believes that ‘they have a right to claim social support, it better to give people who genuinely need the money than to people who are too lazy to go to work and stay on the streets in their own will.’
· Secondly, some people fear that if asylum seekers and refugees keep on coming in, and take all of the jobs, there won’t be any good jobs for the natives. On the contrary, the asylum seekers would help to improve the British economy as more work is done for less money.
· Thirdly, People support the common perception that if more asylum seeker comes in there will be more crime. This could be true as some of the asylum seekers escape from their country on criminal charges. On the other hand, these beliefs are not necessary always correct and we shouldn’t generalise that all asylum seekers are bad, as every one is an individual and should not be held responsible of other people of their race, religion or nationality’s behaviours and actions.
· Finally, some people suppose that more asylum seekers equals greater cultural decline. This view is quite absurd as every year many intellectual people actually seek asylum in to the UK and they are much more beneficial to have in the country than a British burglar or paedophile, would you not say?
This isn’t a problem that we can ignore, asylum seekers deserve better than being ridiculed or bullied for the colour of their skin, the things that they believe in or where they came from. We shouldn’t discriminate them just because they’re different. People may feel aversion towards them but if they had known more about them, they would think otherwise. Unless we do something now, their situation and status in life is not going to get any better. So think, should we hold prejudice against them or accept them in to our community - you decide.
Remember together we can make a difference.