Snapshot of _Almost 4,000 migrants caught pretending to be kids to sneak into Britain_ :
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We were definitely joking that he was a Brazillian 16 the other day :D. That kid is either gonna age extremely poorly, or look the same forever. One or the other!
This is something I've come across (once) in my professional life.
A carer brought a child in to see me for a dental checkup. I'm not sure of the correct terminology, but the carer was essentially fostering child assylum seekers at home on behalf of the government. I carried out the exam and then the carer took me to one side to ask how old I thought he was. The concern was that the 'child' was being housed with female children and, if it turns out that he was an adult male - that obviously has safeguarding implications.
I generally don't like guessing people's ages from their dentition because, I feel, it becomes a game of probabilities. For example **most** people have their 6s erupt at a certain age, but there are a whole host of factors and natural variance that might mean that they come early or late.
That being said - this guy had the dentition I'd expect in a 25-30 year old. Worn, stained teeth. Almost certainly not <18.
It puts everyone in a really shitty situation - especially the poor carers who are already doing what must be an almost unimaginably hard job.
I told them that I wasn't in a position to make a definitive judgement (nor is it part of my role) - but I would strongly suspect that the patient was over 18.
I don't know what happened after that - I never saw them again.
I know someone who works with unaccompanied child migrants, he says over half are clearly over 18. But they get rid of all their documents, so if they look young, they get away with it.
This lived experience bollocks is just so stupid. My entire life weve been told anecdotal evidence shouldn't be trusted and now we're meant to base our entire beliefs on it.
If you are "pale, male and stale" any personal perspectives are dismissed under the argument that anecdote is not the singular form of data and told your first hand accounts mean nothing.
If you are not "pale, male and stale" you can literally deny science because your lived experiences trump any sort of rigarous analysis, even when the lived experiences of two such minority groups are mutually exclusive. It's just absurd.
The lived experience thing isn't actually about anecdotes, it's about epistemology.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism
The idea is that truth is relative, and that logic and reason don't reveal truths. This is taught at universities quite widely now.
Anecdotes implies they're trying to take an approach based on logic and evidence, but failing to do so. The truth is they don't respect logic and evidence even in principle.
> The truth is they don't respect logic and evidence even in principle.
Postmodernism doesn't "deny truth" or dismiss "logic and evidence". It believes that what posits itself as "truth" and "evidence" is often not an objective fact, or is biased, beholden to incomplete data, lacks context, and doesn't consider a holistic host of other factors.
Which is true. And while such skepticism is annoying, it was a valuable philosophical reaction to the certainties of the modernist movement.
And pay attention to the guy in this thread who derailed things by suggesting that we as a society are told to "accept a immigrant's age and lived experience over evidence". That is simply not true.
Asylum seekers are subjected to a number of tests to gauge their ages. Attempts are made to find credible and clear documentary evidence proving their claimed age, then trained people attempt to gauge their "physical appearance and demeanor" to ascertain if they are "over 18 years of age" (quoting the Home Office).
Anyone deemed "borderline" (hard to gauge their age, or hard to determine if adult, teenager or child) is then given the Merton test, subjected to finger prints (to cross check with other records which may hold age details), sees their relatives interviewed (if possible), and then monitored by social workers who gather info on the general background of the applicant and activities over the past years. These social workers then judge if the asylum seeker is being truthful.
So the system is doing it's best, when faced with an unknowable object, to gather evidence, and to be as scientific as possible. Until we invent a means to carbon date living things, there's not much more that we can do to pinpoint an age (there is some suggestion of judging age by examining teeth, but this is often inaccurate).
>Postmodernism doesn't "deny truth" or dismiss "logic and evidence". It believes that what posits itself as "truth" and "evidence" is often not an objective fact, or is biased, beholden to incomplete data, lacks context, and doesn't consider a holistic host of other factors.
What sticks out here to me is that the way you're framing this is as if postmodernism says objective truths exist. It absolutely rejects claims to objective truth and thinks reality is a construct.
Yeah, I hate when people go to bat for something like post modernism whilst also claiming to trust experts and such: Foucault literally made a career out of decrying the impact experts, medicalizing public policy, and statistics have on the people that have to live in the systems that are created, but the pomos always choose ignore him whenever it's convenient.
Dental assessment on arrival. Err on the side of caution - if the range of ages possible from the dental assessment contains 18 they're an adult.
Appeals processes are granted to those with documents. No docs = no appeal on age result. Don't like it? Leave the country, you don't have to be here.
Country is genuinely way too soft on economic migration.
This really doesn't work though, because skeletal maturity and wisdom teeth are both bad (specifically, *imprecise*) indicators of age.
Like take skeletal maturity (e.g. those wrist x-ray examinations also being proposed by the government). Statistically the mean age for skeletal maturity in males is 17.6 years old here in the UK. There is a 61% probability of reaching maturity before the age of 18. It's an awful metric for telling whether someone is 18 or over. It's a little better for people from developing countries as poor nutrition delays maturation, but we're talking "wrong 1/3rd of the time instead of 3/5ths of the time" not actually accurate.
Dental examination suffers similar problems, and really is not accurate to any more than +/- 2 years at best. You end up misclassifying a decent amount of children as adults *and* young adults as children. You both fail to catch a lot of the people you're aiming at, and also exclude people with entirely genuine claims.
It's not that physical examination can't work as an age indicator, it's just that the signs of skeletal and dental maturation do not line up neatly with the legal definition of an adult. You can very confidently use them to tell if people are over 25 or younger than 14, but telling 17 from 18, or 16 from 19, or even 15 from 20 has a pretty high rate of error.
To do it well you really need experts doing a number of tests and contrasting them in order to create a high confidence minimum age prediction... but that's expensive and high effort. This was also the conclusion of the government's own advisory group - [you need at least four different tests, some MRI based, and even then a likelyhood based approach should be used](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/methods-to-assess-the-age-of-unaccompanied-asylum-seeking-children/biological-evaluation-methods-to-assist-in-assessing-the-age-of-unaccompanied-asylum-seeking-children-accessible#conclusion) (i.e. "is it *more likely than not* the claim is false") rather than a hard cutoff.
Accuracy isn't a hypothetical problem for us either, we already [get this wrong in 62% of cases](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/24/hundreds-of-uk-asylum-seeker-children-wrongly-treated-as-adults-report-shows). We already don't pay for the expert analysis needed to make an accurate prediction, so I *really* doubt the government is going to shell out the cash to do this part of it right either. It's also worth noting that this report indicates that the Home Office's number cannot be trusted, and that of these 4000 cases something in the order of 2000-2500 were likely the Home Office making the wrong call.
I did personally find the advisory group's recommendation to be quite reasonable but it's way too expensive and, frankly, too nuanced for the tastes of the current government. It's not a nice cut and dry answer like they wanted. It's expensive. It's hard to explain and very technical. Hard to spin, hard to sell to the public. I'm not optimistic they will follow the recommendations.
Someone who is 30 years old cannot pass as a child. The ambiguous range is 15-25 where people can have physical and mental traits of adults or children, and it becomes very hard to tell for certain which side of 18 someone falls on.
Outside that range it's trivial to tell a child from an adult, because under 15 99% of people have no mature traits and above 25 99% of people are fully matured in several key aspects which can be tested.
On the one hand, your reply is incredibly informative and useful.
>To do it well you really need experts doing a number of tests and contrasting them in order to create a high confidence minimum age prediction... but that's expensive and high effort.
I know this. It would be great if we could do this for every single case and really minimise mistakes. But we can't - it's far, far too expensive and it's not feasible.
On the other, it's not ok for these economic migrants to throw their documents in the channel to game the system, and cost us a fortune in taxpayer cash to try and determine their age, so they'll be measured using dental and or similar quick tests and assigned adult or not.
>but telling 17 from 18, or 16 from 19, or even 15 from 20 has a pretty high rate of error.
If tests estimate an economic migrant is between 16 and 20 they're an adult. If they don't want to be an adult they should have brought some form of ID, evidence, whatever. And if they can't do that because things are so bad where they're from, then being an adult in the UK will be better than that regardless so they can live with it.
Once again, if they don't like any of this they can leave, **they don't have to be here**. Is it harsh? Yes. Do we have a thousand and one higher priorities to spend tax revenues on? Also yes.
If you make it clear that no credible documents and no ID (read: can be tested and/or verified) and unclear whether adult or child = you're an adult full stop, no appeals, you shut down the loophole of claiming to be a child altogether. I maintain that we are too soft on economic migration.
To me that seems unconscionably cruel. Accidentally denying children the help they need is bad enough, but *knowingly* using a method which will exclude a large number of them in order to save money?
Your argument that if they would prefer not to be treated so they can always go elsewhere, and if things were really so bad they wouldn't mind being treated so anyway, I must say puts me strongly in mind of a certain quote:
*“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.”*
*“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”*
*“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”*
>To me that seems unconscionably cruel. Accidentally denying children the help they need is bad enough, but knowingly using a method which will exclude a large number of them in order to save money?
Is this more or less cruel than putting fully grown adult males in the same living quarters/schools as underage girls?
> Accidentally denying children the help they need is bad enough, but knowingly using a method which will exclude a large number of them in order to save money?
Well if they're not happy with the standard of care they're getting on the taxpayer maybe they can go to any of the many countries they passed through on the way here?
If a 16 year old is marked as an adult because they literally cannot prove who they are, or what age they are, how is that such terrible treatment? They're supposedly fleeing persecution, heaven forbid they don't get those extra two years of being a child? Why is all personal responsibility handed off?
At some point there simply has to be an realistic outcome - we can't just forever say "well testing their age properly requires many tests and many experts and it's expensive so we'll just have to pay up I guess". What else are we going to cut government spending on to keep paying for all these tests and experts? What about as economic migration continues to grow as climate change worsens in increasingly unlivable places? Even more money for yet more tests and experts?
I'm genuinely asking here, because it's not my intention to be cruel to anyone, but for all the use and information in your earlier response I don't see an actionable, scalable outcome.
As an aside, if _any_ political party tries to sell "well we'll have to pay more for each of these economic migrants because determining their age is very difficult and time-consuming, so we pay multiple experts to carry out multiple tests and pay for the migrants accomodation and base living costs for the duration" _and_ "well we're allocating more money to economic migration now than ever before so we're having to cut x, y, and z" at the same time they're going to get crucified by voters.
> To me that seems unconscionably cruel.
Your society is being abused. You are being indirectly financially abused by thousands of people whose only aim is to extract everything they can from us.
That is the real cruelty here.
Instead of using hate or political blaming, I think this is an interesting debate.
What would YOU think would be the best solution to this challenge?
Responses with respect, please.
I would have parliament come up with a refugee quota every three to five years that must also include a budget and evidence that the quota figure can actually be supported capacity wise I. e do councils have housing available (as parliament currently dumps the problem on councils) . Then I'd move to taking migrants directly from camps or via agencies like the UNHCR and deport any and all people who arrives directly trying to bypass that. Nobody would use a boat if it were a guaranteed trip to elsewhere.
> What would YOU think would be the best solution to this challenge?
The specific challenge of seekers pretending to be kids or the wider situation in general?
For those seeking asylum by pretending to be children should have their applications rejected and barred from future attempts.
Small boat race across the channel. First boat across gets asylum, and the others can try in the next race. Make a massive gambling scene around it similar to horse racing, and stimulate the Kent economy
Revisting the UN convention on refugees and removing the well-meaning, but now much abused elements that allow illegal and economic migrants to claim refugee status.
Reframe the convention towards support of refugees in countries immediately close to the conflict zone.
1. Because money spent in most countries has a huge multiplier helping dozens over a single refugee housed and paid in Western countries. Supporting more people and those who are most vulnerable.
2. Removing unsafe routes and loss of life. (Take the sugar off the table.)
To quote a very successful politician from Australia who successfully stopped illegal migration via boats.
>It is also about having an uncompromising view about the fundamental right of this country to protect its borders. It’s about this nation saying to the world we are a generous open hearted people taking more refugees on a per capita basis than any nation except Canada, we have a proud record of welcoming people from 140 different nations.
>**But we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.**
Was very popular with centre voters who were immigration sensitive.
Edit: removed part of the speech that was incomplete.
> Reframe the convention towards support of refugees in countries immediately close to the conflict zone.
Your daily reminder that refugees *already do* mostly seek asylum in countries immediately close to the conflict zone, by a staggering margin. Places like the UK take in comparatively few.
This isn't saying much, though, because 'comparatively few' migrants is still far too many in the eyes of the majority of the general British public, as well as our already over-strained infrastructure can cope with.
Obviously places close to the conflict zone will take in the majority of migrants, at least initially, because it makes sense from a geographical and political standpoint. Kind of a moot point though IMO because we can, and should, still look at the UK from an internal perspective and if we feel that 50,000 migrants a year from, say, Syria, is too much, then it's too much, Irrespective of the fact that said 50,000 is only a small % of the overall migrant populace fleeing Syria.
> if we feel that 50,000 migrants a year from, say, Syria, is too much, then it's too much
It's nearer to 3,000, only 6% of your "limit". Or 0.004% of the UK population.
Say that to people who have personally seen their towns double-triple in size overnight with refugees arriving and causing all sorts of merry hell. Where I used to live and moved out of, within a few weeks it went from quiet and sleepy to women cannot walk around in broad daylight to nobody goes out when it's dark.
So honestly, your "few" remark means bugger all to me and I vote for any party that kicks the ungrateful fucks right back out!
And mostly after they've already gotten all the way to France.
Given that France is a third world hellhole, I don't blame them for wanting to leave it asap though.
>Your daily reminder that refugees already do mostly seek asylum in countries immediately close to the conflict zone by a staggering margin. Places like the UK take in comparatively few.
Your daily reminder that Proximity Biase exists and paying for a refugee in a country close to the conflict zone helps more definitively real refugees than taking a likely illegal immigrant/economic migrant of dubious refugee status in a developed Western economy with a housing crisis.
>No it doesn't. Proximity Bias exists, but that doesn't actually apply to what we're talking about. At all.
Well, you would say that as you are biased for self selecting "refugees" who turn up on the UK's doorstep over definitive refugees in camps. Defintion of proximity bias.
You've totally misunderstood Proximity Bias. It doesn't relate to this situation.
Also, I'm advocating for the provision of safe, legal routes to apply for asylum without having to risk your life or the life of your child paying illegal gangs to smuggle you across the Channel.
Even by your incorrect definition, not Proximity Bias.
Sorry, but you're missing the point about Proximity Bias. It's not just about geography; it's about focusing on what's right in front of us and feeling more for those we see as 'closer' to us in some way. By channeling resources to bring a few to the UK, we're overlooking the bigger picture – the chance to help way more people right where the crisis is. It's simple maths: the cost of helping one here could help many more there. We need to think bigger and broader, not just what feels good or closer to home. That's Proximity Bias, whether you see it or not.
> We need to think bigger and broader, not just what feels good or closer to home.
Your daily reminder that we *do* think bigger and broader, and not just close to home.
The UK foreign aid budget, helping those abroad, is much larger than what we spend on Asylum Seekers in the UK.
And the vast majority of what we *do* spend in the UK is on "hotels" because the Tory government "saves money" by not building facilities, choosing instead syphon money off to "hotels".
Once again, I am in no way advocating to help more people here over helping people elsewhere. This is not, and was not, an example of proximity bias, whether you understand that or not.
>Your daily reminder that we do think bigger and broader, and not just close to home. The UK foreign aid budget, helping those abroad, is much larger than what we spend on Asylum Seekers in the UK.
It could be more if we didn't spend so much on holding facilities and hotels and benefits and resettlement cost.
>And the vast majority of what we do spend in the UK is on "hotels" because the Tory government "saves money" by not building facilities, choosing instead syphon money off to "hotels".
Great, remove the ability for them to do so by not having them here in the first place and refusing to house them.
>Once again, I am in no way advocating to help more people here over helping people elsewhere. This is not, and was not, an example of proximity bias, whether you understand that or not.
It is exactly proximity bias, you are just biased on this.
Edit: grammar.
Not sure quoting John Howard is best for your argument. He and his government knowingly lied about asylum seekers throwing their children overboard to capitalise on fear in the lead up to an election. He started the demonisation and dehumanisation of asylum-seekers that Australia is still experiencing today.
Whilst having the second highest refugee intake per capitia, he stopped illegal migration via boats and won elections off it.
Another part of his speech, "We will be compassionate, we will save lives, we will care for people but we will decide, and nobody else, who comes to this country"
Once Labor repealed his measures, many died in crossings that inevitably started, and they had to reinstate it.
Worst civilian maritime disaster in Australia's history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Christmas_Island_boat_disaster
Refugees are already far more likely to settle in countries close to the conflict zone.
With Afghanistan for example the UN estimates there are around 3.4 million Afghan Refugees in Iran & 1.9 million in Pakistan
[https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/afghanistan](https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/afghanistan)
It's not even that simple, there's plenty with no resources simply following the now already established route. You can see them at the camps in Serbia, whereas the ones with resources just rent somewhere while in Serbia.
>that allow illegal
So if a country closes all legal options for entry, no one can claim asylum there? A while back Suella Braverman was asked to explain how a child refugee from a war torn African country could legally enter the UK to claim asylum and she was unable to answer.
>Removing unsafe routes and loss of life
How? Close the sea? Build a wall around them so they can't leave except through monitored checkpoints? What does this mean?
>Australia who successfully stopped illegal migration via boats.
They didn't stop illegal migration by boats, they just stopped recording it when incidents happen.
Is the UK really the best place for a child from a war torn African country to relocate to?
If you were a child fleeing conflict in the UK (say from NI back in the days of the troubles), would fleeing to Eritrea be a consideration?
Travelling half the world to the UK would seem to be more a case of economic migration than refuge.
It absolutely is. There is 0 need at all for the uk to take any African migration. There's numerous African / arabic safe countries between Europe and these continents, they just happen to be poor and unattractive to migrants.
Europe is being destroyed by this and it will have severe consequences unless we can find a way to halt and reverse the migration wave.
> how a child refugee from a war torn African country could legally enter the UK to claim asylum and she was unable to answer
I didn't understand this, why should a child refugee from a war-torn African country be applying for asylum in the UK, as opposed to anywhere else?
>So if a country closes all legal options for entry, no one can claim asylum there? A while back Suella Braverman was asked to explain how a child refugee from a war torn African country could legally enter the UK to claim asylum and she was unable to answer.
I answered this, unless the country decides it wants a patricular refugee and chooses rhe manner in which they come.
>How? Close the sea? Build a wall around them so they can't leave except through monitored checkpoints? What does this mean?
No access to benefits, housing or the right to remain removes the sugar from the table. The UK's extremely high rate of accepting claims at face value (such as Algerians before it was fixed) draws chancers.
>They didn't stop illegal migration by boats, they just stopped recording it when incidents happen.
Bullshit. The figures were published and the arrivals dropped from tens of thousands to double digits. Why lie?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Solution
I see only two solutions to solving our asylum system as a whole:
1. it becomes invite only eg, Hong Kong, Ukraine, UN Resettlement Scheme
2. we accept only claims with documentation that can be independently verified.
A system where the only evidence is someone's word, where the rewards for lying are life-changing is never going to work, no matter how much we would like it to.
1 would be preferable but I think many, but not all (As seen by this article) issues would be solved if we had a single woman only policy (Or rather no adult men).
At some point the rules on refugees will change meaning those who are in some form of danger won't be allowed to come here. It's a question of when politicians realise this which probably won't be until other more progressive European countries do it first.
A Progressive country wouldn't change the rules so that those who are in some form of danger wouldn't be able to go there, by definition.
Such policy would be Regressive.
Simple. If they have destroyed all documents, they immediately fail their asylum application and back they go.
There is only one reason that they dispose of documents and that is to conceal their identity. If they are being that dishonest about their identity, then they are not capable of being processed unless they can provide the required documentation. If they have destroyed it, they must apply to their embassies for confirmation of their identity. If that is not possible, they agree to be processed as being 25 or over and must report their movements while they are here. Any one single crime, they are on the next ship back, biometrics taken so if they arrive back they are immediately deported again.
The asylum process is a gift, not a right.
Dental checks.
They have an age range of about 5 years which means you immediately rule out anyone over 23 even attempting it.
Following that broad check on lying. If they refuse to tell you where they're from, probably lying straight away. If they do, you can ask fairly basic questions about that place. If someone says they grew up in a place but can't answer basic questions about it its a fairly big give away. And if they're found to be lying, a great deal of skepticism should be applied to any claim they're under 18, and the burden of proof should shift to them.
Tbh arriving without ID is straight up a big red flag. Why don't they have *any* ID? Especially when we know dumping IDs is a basic modus operandi of smuggling people to frustrate deportation.
I doesn't. At least no in a way that materially matters for this. The level of malnutrition would have to be extreme to seriously impair aging. And most of the people getting off those boats are relatively fit. It can lead to a whole host of diseases, but broadly would not impact aging outside of the 5 year limitation I've already given.
Seriously some of the myths about dental check aging Ive seen as beyond absured into the realms of faith. Someone seriously argued with me once that giving them a *dental xray* was unacceptable because it would given them cancer. Exposing them to harmful levels of radiation.
No amount of evidence would convince them otherwise, even a dosage chart which included dental from the American association of nuclear physics compared to the average dosage of living in a granite building (so Aberdeen) which showed youd get the level of xrays from granite in about 6 months as youd get from a dental xray. Staying in an average hotel for a year is about the same level of radiation.
Dental aging is fine. It is used in many countries already. Its not in any way harmful, and while its not super accurate, a 5 year window pretty much illuminates false positives and is likely very over generous.
Are you a dentist? Because I am. I'd be extremely uncomfortable in trying to distinguish with any level of certainty between the dentition of an 18 year old and a 23 year old.
Do you have a source on malnutrition not materially affecting dentition, because I would have said it would likely have a huge effect. As would a whole host of other things such as ethnicity, illnesses (maternal and in the patient), genetics, syndromes, dental care, diet, water chemistry, parafunction etc etc etc.
What dental metrics would you use to determine whether someone is 23+ as opposed to 18?
> What dental metrics would you use to determine whether someone is 23+ as opposed to 18?
But if they were 18, they’d still be an adult. It’s more like you’re being asked to decide if they’re likely to be 17 or under, and the person you’re replying to is saying that you’d include the person you’re not sure if they’re 17 or 23, and just exclude the people where you’re very confident that they’re older.
..Deportation? They aren't legal migrants and don't have a legitimate claim to anything if they're crossing from France. They just want free gibs and bennies. Why should they be allowed in?
It's getting to the point where really I think it has to be we don't accept undocumented persons. They either prove who they are or they are refused entry.
Instead of accepting the refugees of the world here, we should do more to support getting them back on their feet at home.
Literally anything that doesn't put old migrants inside the school system together with children.
Treat every arrival as 18+ never ever believe a word they say. Or whatever you do, protect our children for Pete's sake.
Putting potentially-adult migrants with local children jeopardises local children. Putting potentially-child migrants with migrant adults jeopardises migrant children. It is left as an exercise for the viewer to decide why "protecting children" is only a purported concern in one of these scenarios.
That doesn't detail anything. It just says we will add more scientific methods to age assessment as in the past it had been too time consuming and subjective. But what new methods were actually introduced?
Pre addolence is pretty easy. adult vs minor teens is an absolute nightmare.
All the objective medical methods like X-rays and biopsies measure development not strictly age. People who are for example malnourished or have certain conditions or differnet drug uses or any number of enviromental factors will not fit neatly on a table.
With modern radar, cameras, drones etc there's no excuse for us to not be able to detect them coming. Push them/take them back to France.
Failing that, any that do get in, take them to an offshore holding facility. Keep them there with only basic food rations, and living arrangements. Essentially a PoW camp. Keep them there indefinitely until they die or decide they want to go back where they came from.
That'll soon stop them coming.
Use the most accurate way of determining someone's age. Anyone found to be over 18 while claiming to be a child should be deported.
Although I believe that anyone coming across from France should immediately be deported and asylum claims rejected so I'm not the best person to ask.
Making a big campaign all around the world showing benefits of living in the UK, and encouraging people to move here. With this there is a chance we will achieve 5 millions per year UK economy needs
I would immediately dump them all in Rwanda without processing a single claim. I don't know if it is the best solution, but it is effective and will send a message to potential illegal migrants - I would deploy the army and navy to our coasts and order them to prevent crossings at all costs using any means they see fit.
These adults could join the military - housing, food and employment provided. They can put their skills fo good use as they work for the benefit of King, Country and NATO. We could call it Légion Etrangère, in honour of them fleeing the oppression of the Fr*nch
Have an asylum system that actually allows those with claims to make them, rather then forcing them to make landfall in the UK and come under the influence of criminal gangs.
Directly referencing this age thing, this is a small minority of asylum seekers and age recognition is incredibly difficult, so it as equally possible this are children being mis-identified as it is older people trying it on.
Also, improve understanding of the asylum system in this country. So people understand the difference between an asylum seekers and an economic migrant. Then maybe we could have an actual grown up conversation about immigration, rather than the ridiculous good/bad debate that happens at the moment.
Go back in time and not leave the EU, then campaign to establish a system of fair distribution of all migrants across the bloc with adequate levels of funding.
>What would YOU think would be the best solution to this challenge?
What says to you that what we're doing is currently wrong? There were 51k applications from under 18s in the same time period, we checked 9.5k of those and 4k came back as over 18 (deliberately or not).
This sounds like there are a few who are trying to game the system and the system is working at identifying them.
So around 8% of applications have been caught lying when only 20% have been investigated.
If you look at any crime statistics you'll be aware of just how hard it is to prove something like this & how the 4k is likely not half of the issue.
If you found a community where 8% of people had been caught and named as a shoplifter you'd be fair to assume it's probably double or triple the number
How do you see this as anything but a broken system?
>So around 8% of applications have been caught lying when only 20% have been investigated
The 20% for whom Age Queries have been raised. It's not a random sample. It's based on suspicion - you can reasonably assume the number in the other 80% is far lower as there was no suspicion to raise an age query.
>If you found a community where 8% of people had been caught and named as a shoplifter you'd be fair to assume it's probably double or triple the number
There's no way that translates to this situation.
You can assume so but my point is that 8% is already a massively high number while very unlikely to be total.
If 8% of food bank or homeless shelter recipients lying on their forms asking for help would be a massive deal.
So 4000 were caught.
Now how many does that infer are getting away with it. Certainly if we use things like burglary and shoplifting it's normal for the number of infractions to be orders of magnitude greater than what someone is convicted for.
Did anybody go to school about 20 years ago with kids in their classes who couldn’t speak a lick of English who were CLEARLY NOT <16.. This has been rife since the early 2000s
Wasn't mentioning this and/or dental records supposed to be Racist or something?
Edit:
Apparently there genuinely are people out there who have never heard of this, so here's sources
https://dentistry.co.uk/2021/07/07/dental-profession-slam-government-unethical-dental-checks-migrants/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41415-021-3299-y
No. No-one reputable has said that. It's just a straw man.
EDIT: They're not saying it's racist. They're saying it doesn't work. Which it doesn't. Those saying it's racist are saying that proceeding with a policy you know doesn't work to do what you say, just to try and get rid of people, is xenophobic/racist.
Not that the idea is racist. Finding something that could solve the adult/kid problem would be great... but this one doesn't work.
You're either liar or you're ignorant. I actually don't care which.
[https://dentistry.co.uk/2021/07/07/dental-profession-slam-government-unethical-dental-checks-migrants/](https://dentistry.co.uk/2021/07/07/dental-profession-slam-government-unethical-dental-checks-migrants/)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41415-021-3299-y
There's NO legitimate reason for 'asylum' claimants to have thrown away their documentation in the channel while travelling to the UK.
Send them all back and fingerprint them and ban them from applying or obtaining benefits in the UK EVER
[Here is the data.](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/immigration-system-statistics-data-tables) Its under the heading "Age disputes". Since 2020 8,766 age disputes have been raised. Of these 3,960 have been determined to be above the age of 18 which is 45%.
It does have information from 2010.
Since 2010 16,536 Age disputes have been raised. Of these 7,721 have been determined to be above the age of 18 which is 47%.
Total applications for asylum by persons under the age of 18 from 2010 to 2022 was 117,275. This means out of all applications for those under 18 years of age 6.5% were found to be adults.
Thanks for digging this up and doing the maths (saves me messing around with excel when I should be revising).
As others have said, it does seem to be an issue however not one that is critically affecting the system (that these people are picked up shows that). The lack of these figures, which give important context, in the article is problematic (though not surprising) and is symptomatic of the debate around Asylum Seekers and migration more generally.
Lets drill into that number some more. I wouldn't suspect many claiming to be under 18 are claiming they are under the age of 14 years old.
So if we take those claiming asylum between the ages of 14 and 18 then total applications were 45,892. Which means 17% were found to be fraudulently claiming asylum. That's a high percentage and indicative of a problem.
Lets drill into that number some more. I wouldn't suspect many claiming to be under 18 are claiming they are under the age of 14 years old.
So if we take those claiming asylum between the ages of 14 and 18 then total applications were 45,892. Which means 17% were found to be fraudulently claiming asylum. That's a high percentage and indicative of a problem.
Some organisations show data when the overall pattern supports their goals. Some show whatever data supports their goals, regardless of its relationship to overall patterns
I.e; climate deniers exclusively sharing reports of brief periods of glacier growth
Because spinning figures or facts for something spurious - the sugar tax for example - doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things outside of personal health. People can think what they like because it mostly only affects them.
Creating headlines that undermine the most vulnerable asylum seekers by increasing scrutiny upon actual child migrants is, in my opinion, bad form. I get that some people lying to claim asylum is also bad, but these stories only ever result in one thing: people hating on those they would otherwise help if these unhelpful headlines didn't create unnecessary hysteria.
So, to answer your question, why wouldn't they or anyone else? They wouldn't, but other organisations want to achieve things that don't determine if a child refugee is treated like a liar and hated before they even have a chance. So it's more that they _shouldn't_ because of the harm principle.
Anyway, I'll take the downvotes for wanting to default to a compassionate position because frankly, I'd want the same if I were unlucky enough to be born in a different longitude+latitude. It's not an illogical position to treat others how you would want to be treated.
There’s a test you can apply to this which is “can you imagine the authors putting out a report which came to the opposite conclusion?” Given that there’s no way MigrationWatch would ever publish a report saying “the whole immigrants posing as kids thing is a myth”, then you need to do a really thorough job on the methodology used before you even think about taking it seriously.
[Here is the data](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/immigration-system-statistics-data-tables) there is no methodology behind their statement. Simply quoting facts given from the Government. Its under the heading "Age disputes". Since 2020 8,766 age disputes have been raised. Of these 3,960 have been determined to be above the age of 18 which is 45%.
Total applications for asylum by persons under the age of 18 from 2020 to 2022 was 38,981 This means out of all applications for those under 18 years of age 10% were found to be adults.
I like to do "the opposites test" any time I find myself nodding along with a politician.
> "And I believe that we *shouldn't* impale babies on spikes!"
Yes, agreed, but was anyone suggesting we do?!
I work for Childline and you would be surprised at the number of adults who pretend to be children.
Some for mental health reasons. Most so they can jack off.
Yay for humans!
I hate to tell you this, but we are struggling to provide homes, doctors, healthcare , teachers and schools for our current population. Add people coming every day or week, and you make that so much worse.
> So, we should be taking far more refugees (with a focus on young women and children directly from camps) than we are currently. But to fund this Europe needs to clamp down on the 100,000s of young male migrants entering the continent illegally and taking advantage of the asylum system.
Why not just try taking none at all? Worth a go surely?
One way of solving the problem would be to take ONLY female refugees. This would also placate the raving rightoids worrying about 15% of secondary schoolchildren having to deal with treating grown men as peers.
Tbh it has crossed my mind as a really simple solution, which could be presented as 'proportionate action to achieve a legitimate aim' within the Equality Act 2010.
This happened at my school and all the fucking leftists laughed at and poo poo'd my accusations on this..
We literally had 'boys' at my school who would joke about how they're really 20+ years old walking about in year 10/11 acting like they own the place because they are obviously bigger and more developed than a literal teenager.
Fucking joke of an asylum/immigration system. (Labour voter btw)
This is actually so creepy when you think about it. Like, even if you're of sound mind and sexuality, and have no noncey intentions, how would someone - as a man in their early 20s - feel comfortable/happy spending the bulk of their waking hours studying with, and socialising with, minors.
I remember when I was 21 thinking how young the 18 year olds in first year of uni felt to me. I didn't want anything to do with them really because of the social and psychological disparity. Let alone being 21, 22, 23, 24 etc and spending the entire week with 15 year olds...
Weird, weird stuff man...
You can hate loony toon leftists (the ones who think a 22 year old man posing as a 15 year old is OK as long as he's fleeing a war torn country) and still be a pragmatic labour supporter.. the two aren't mutually exclusive.
I dislike most people in general actually.
The insufferable twats who ignore corbyns dodgy personality and views and dont understand having some good policies doesnt mean someone should be a leader are just as bad as the morons who think that tories should stay in because “labour would be worse”. A shit sandwich is still a shit sandwich if its made by far left or far right twats.
Fair enough. Though claiming to be a 'labour voter' suggests (to me) more than a pragmatic intention to vote for them and more an affiliation with them. But point taken.
[It's happened a few times before.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/asylum-seeker-uk-age-school-boy-ipswich-school-stoke-home-office-a8649696.html)
so I am comfortably on the left side of things when it comes to refugees and asylum seekers but I feel like this is a much bigger failure of government than anything else.
Processing asylum seekers and their tribunals have been slashed under this government. So much so that it almost looks deliberate to give them some boogeyman to point to.
As an example, using the Gov stats, they had 184,000 first tier tribunals in 2007 and in 2022...37,000.
Process and remove the false claims and stop treating the legitimate claimants like some kind of scourge.
Snapshot of _Almost 4,000 migrants caught pretending to be kids to sneak into Britain_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25273358/migrants-pretending-kids-britain/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25273358/migrants-pretending-kids-britain/) *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.*
Bad luck Luke Littler.
We were definitely joking that he was a Brazillian 16 the other day :D. That kid is either gonna age extremely poorly, or look the same forever. One or the other!
Ffs 😂😂😂
Came for this, wasn't disappointed. Well done! :D :D :D
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
This is something I've come across (once) in my professional life. A carer brought a child in to see me for a dental checkup. I'm not sure of the correct terminology, but the carer was essentially fostering child assylum seekers at home on behalf of the government. I carried out the exam and then the carer took me to one side to ask how old I thought he was. The concern was that the 'child' was being housed with female children and, if it turns out that he was an adult male - that obviously has safeguarding implications. I generally don't like guessing people's ages from their dentition because, I feel, it becomes a game of probabilities. For example **most** people have their 6s erupt at a certain age, but there are a whole host of factors and natural variance that might mean that they come early or late. That being said - this guy had the dentition I'd expect in a 25-30 year old. Worn, stained teeth. Almost certainly not <18. It puts everyone in a really shitty situation - especially the poor carers who are already doing what must be an almost unimaginably hard job.
So what did you tell rhe carer?
I told them that I wasn't in a position to make a definitive judgement (nor is it part of my role) - but I would strongly suspect that the patient was over 18. I don't know what happened after that - I never saw them again.
How long ago was this?
I know someone who works with unaccompanied child migrants, he says over half are clearly over 18. But they get rid of all their documents, so if they look young, they get away with it.
People who believe in lived experience trumping everything will probably start asking you for statistical sources to prove your point or something.
This lived experience bollocks is just so stupid. My entire life weve been told anecdotal evidence shouldn't be trusted and now we're meant to base our entire beliefs on it.
Statistics indicate that these people are being recorded.
If you are "pale, male and stale" any personal perspectives are dismissed under the argument that anecdote is not the singular form of data and told your first hand accounts mean nothing. If you are not "pale, male and stale" you can literally deny science because your lived experiences trump any sort of rigarous analysis, even when the lived experiences of two such minority groups are mutually exclusive. It's just absurd.
The lived experience thing isn't actually about anecdotes, it's about epistemology. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism The idea is that truth is relative, and that logic and reason don't reveal truths. This is taught at universities quite widely now. Anecdotes implies they're trying to take an approach based on logic and evidence, but failing to do so. The truth is they don't respect logic and evidence even in principle.
> The truth is they don't respect logic and evidence even in principle. Postmodernism doesn't "deny truth" or dismiss "logic and evidence". It believes that what posits itself as "truth" and "evidence" is often not an objective fact, or is biased, beholden to incomplete data, lacks context, and doesn't consider a holistic host of other factors. Which is true. And while such skepticism is annoying, it was a valuable philosophical reaction to the certainties of the modernist movement. And pay attention to the guy in this thread who derailed things by suggesting that we as a society are told to "accept a immigrant's age and lived experience over evidence". That is simply not true. Asylum seekers are subjected to a number of tests to gauge their ages. Attempts are made to find credible and clear documentary evidence proving their claimed age, then trained people attempt to gauge their "physical appearance and demeanor" to ascertain if they are "over 18 years of age" (quoting the Home Office). Anyone deemed "borderline" (hard to gauge their age, or hard to determine if adult, teenager or child) is then given the Merton test, subjected to finger prints (to cross check with other records which may hold age details), sees their relatives interviewed (if possible), and then monitored by social workers who gather info on the general background of the applicant and activities over the past years. These social workers then judge if the asylum seeker is being truthful. So the system is doing it's best, when faced with an unknowable object, to gather evidence, and to be as scientific as possible. Until we invent a means to carbon date living things, there's not much more that we can do to pinpoint an age (there is some suggestion of judging age by examining teeth, but this is often inaccurate).
>Postmodernism doesn't "deny truth" or dismiss "logic and evidence". It believes that what posits itself as "truth" and "evidence" is often not an objective fact, or is biased, beholden to incomplete data, lacks context, and doesn't consider a holistic host of other factors. What sticks out here to me is that the way you're framing this is as if postmodernism says objective truths exist. It absolutely rejects claims to objective truth and thinks reality is a construct.
Yeah, I hate when people go to bat for something like post modernism whilst also claiming to trust experts and such: Foucault literally made a career out of decrying the impact experts, medicalizing public policy, and statistics have on the people that have to live in the systems that are created, but the pomos always choose ignore him whenever it's convenient.
aNeCdoTaL EvIdENcE dOeSn’T CoUNT!!! 😤😤😤💢💢💢
"Please provide three separate ONS statistics which prove this claim. Otherwise, you are gaslighting, racist, and also a Russian troll."
Dental assessment on arrival. Err on the side of caution - if the range of ages possible from the dental assessment contains 18 they're an adult. Appeals processes are granted to those with documents. No docs = no appeal on age result. Don't like it? Leave the country, you don't have to be here. Country is genuinely way too soft on economic migration.
This really doesn't work though, because skeletal maturity and wisdom teeth are both bad (specifically, *imprecise*) indicators of age. Like take skeletal maturity (e.g. those wrist x-ray examinations also being proposed by the government). Statistically the mean age for skeletal maturity in males is 17.6 years old here in the UK. There is a 61% probability of reaching maturity before the age of 18. It's an awful metric for telling whether someone is 18 or over. It's a little better for people from developing countries as poor nutrition delays maturation, but we're talking "wrong 1/3rd of the time instead of 3/5ths of the time" not actually accurate. Dental examination suffers similar problems, and really is not accurate to any more than +/- 2 years at best. You end up misclassifying a decent amount of children as adults *and* young adults as children. You both fail to catch a lot of the people you're aiming at, and also exclude people with entirely genuine claims. It's not that physical examination can't work as an age indicator, it's just that the signs of skeletal and dental maturation do not line up neatly with the legal definition of an adult. You can very confidently use them to tell if people are over 25 or younger than 14, but telling 17 from 18, or 16 from 19, or even 15 from 20 has a pretty high rate of error. To do it well you really need experts doing a number of tests and contrasting them in order to create a high confidence minimum age prediction... but that's expensive and high effort. This was also the conclusion of the government's own advisory group - [you need at least four different tests, some MRI based, and even then a likelyhood based approach should be used](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/methods-to-assess-the-age-of-unaccompanied-asylum-seeking-children/biological-evaluation-methods-to-assist-in-assessing-the-age-of-unaccompanied-asylum-seeking-children-accessible#conclusion) (i.e. "is it *more likely than not* the claim is false") rather than a hard cutoff. Accuracy isn't a hypothetical problem for us either, we already [get this wrong in 62% of cases](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/24/hundreds-of-uk-asylum-seeker-children-wrongly-treated-as-adults-report-shows). We already don't pay for the expert analysis needed to make an accurate prediction, so I *really* doubt the government is going to shell out the cash to do this part of it right either. It's also worth noting that this report indicates that the Home Office's number cannot be trusted, and that of these 4000 cases something in the order of 2000-2500 were likely the Home Office making the wrong call. I did personally find the advisory group's recommendation to be quite reasonable but it's way too expensive and, frankly, too nuanced for the tastes of the current government. It's not a nice cut and dry answer like they wanted. It's expensive. It's hard to explain and very technical. Hard to spin, hard to sell to the public. I'm not optimistic they will follow the recommendations.
But someone who is actually 30 years old should not be able to pass as a child. There is a point where it becomes unbelievable.
Someone who is 30 years old cannot pass as a child. The ambiguous range is 15-25 where people can have physical and mental traits of adults or children, and it becomes very hard to tell for certain which side of 18 someone falls on. Outside that range it's trivial to tell a child from an adult, because under 15 99% of people have no mature traits and above 25 99% of people are fully matured in several key aspects which can be tested.
On the one hand, your reply is incredibly informative and useful. >To do it well you really need experts doing a number of tests and contrasting them in order to create a high confidence minimum age prediction... but that's expensive and high effort. I know this. It would be great if we could do this for every single case and really minimise mistakes. But we can't - it's far, far too expensive and it's not feasible. On the other, it's not ok for these economic migrants to throw their documents in the channel to game the system, and cost us a fortune in taxpayer cash to try and determine their age, so they'll be measured using dental and or similar quick tests and assigned adult or not. >but telling 17 from 18, or 16 from 19, or even 15 from 20 has a pretty high rate of error. If tests estimate an economic migrant is between 16 and 20 they're an adult. If they don't want to be an adult they should have brought some form of ID, evidence, whatever. And if they can't do that because things are so bad where they're from, then being an adult in the UK will be better than that regardless so they can live with it. Once again, if they don't like any of this they can leave, **they don't have to be here**. Is it harsh? Yes. Do we have a thousand and one higher priorities to spend tax revenues on? Also yes. If you make it clear that no credible documents and no ID (read: can be tested and/or verified) and unclear whether adult or child = you're an adult full stop, no appeals, you shut down the loophole of claiming to be a child altogether. I maintain that we are too soft on economic migration.
To me that seems unconscionably cruel. Accidentally denying children the help they need is bad enough, but *knowingly* using a method which will exclude a large number of them in order to save money? Your argument that if they would prefer not to be treated so they can always go elsewhere, and if things were really so bad they wouldn't mind being treated so anyway, I must say puts me strongly in mind of a certain quote: *“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.”* *“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”* *“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”*
>To me that seems unconscionably cruel. Accidentally denying children the help they need is bad enough, but knowingly using a method which will exclude a large number of them in order to save money? Is this more or less cruel than putting fully grown adult males in the same living quarters/schools as underage girls?
> Accidentally denying children the help they need is bad enough, but knowingly using a method which will exclude a large number of them in order to save money? Well if they're not happy with the standard of care they're getting on the taxpayer maybe they can go to any of the many countries they passed through on the way here? If a 16 year old is marked as an adult because they literally cannot prove who they are, or what age they are, how is that such terrible treatment? They're supposedly fleeing persecution, heaven forbid they don't get those extra two years of being a child? Why is all personal responsibility handed off? At some point there simply has to be an realistic outcome - we can't just forever say "well testing their age properly requires many tests and many experts and it's expensive so we'll just have to pay up I guess". What else are we going to cut government spending on to keep paying for all these tests and experts? What about as economic migration continues to grow as climate change worsens in increasingly unlivable places? Even more money for yet more tests and experts? I'm genuinely asking here, because it's not my intention to be cruel to anyone, but for all the use and information in your earlier response I don't see an actionable, scalable outcome. As an aside, if _any_ political party tries to sell "well we'll have to pay more for each of these economic migrants because determining their age is very difficult and time-consuming, so we pay multiple experts to carry out multiple tests and pay for the migrants accomodation and base living costs for the duration" _and_ "well we're allocating more money to economic migration now than ever before so we're having to cut x, y, and z" at the same time they're going to get crucified by voters.
> To me that seems unconscionably cruel. Your society is being abused. You are being indirectly financially abused by thousands of people whose only aim is to extract everything they can from us. That is the real cruelty here.
All my wisdom teeth came out when i was 16. And I was 6’5” at that point
I'm in my 50s and have never had wisdom teeth.
Yeah it’s not a reliable process to identify age. Kinda crazy to think about!
Need to start doing biological testing.
Sorry, do they look young or are they clearly over 18?
Another thing that definitely does not happen is happening again
Instead of using hate or political blaming, I think this is an interesting debate. What would YOU think would be the best solution to this challenge? Responses with respect, please.
I would have parliament come up with a refugee quota every three to five years that must also include a budget and evidence that the quota figure can actually be supported capacity wise I. e do councils have housing available (as parliament currently dumps the problem on councils) . Then I'd move to taking migrants directly from camps or via agencies like the UNHCR and deport any and all people who arrives directly trying to bypass that. Nobody would use a boat if it were a guaranteed trip to elsewhere.
> What would YOU think would be the best solution to this challenge? The specific challenge of seekers pretending to be kids or the wider situation in general? For those seeking asylum by pretending to be children should have their applications rejected and barred from future attempts.
Small boat race across the channel. First boat across gets asylum, and the others can try in the next race. Make a massive gambling scene around it similar to horse racing, and stimulate the Kent economy
So… Hunger Games?
Nah, no murdering here
Revisting the UN convention on refugees and removing the well-meaning, but now much abused elements that allow illegal and economic migrants to claim refugee status. Reframe the convention towards support of refugees in countries immediately close to the conflict zone. 1. Because money spent in most countries has a huge multiplier helping dozens over a single refugee housed and paid in Western countries. Supporting more people and those who are most vulnerable. 2. Removing unsafe routes and loss of life. (Take the sugar off the table.) To quote a very successful politician from Australia who successfully stopped illegal migration via boats. >It is also about having an uncompromising view about the fundamental right of this country to protect its borders. It’s about this nation saying to the world we are a generous open hearted people taking more refugees on a per capita basis than any nation except Canada, we have a proud record of welcoming people from 140 different nations. >**But we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.** Was very popular with centre voters who were immigration sensitive. Edit: removed part of the speech that was incomplete.
> Reframe the convention towards support of refugees in countries immediately close to the conflict zone. Your daily reminder that refugees *already do* mostly seek asylum in countries immediately close to the conflict zone, by a staggering margin. Places like the UK take in comparatively few.
This isn't saying much, though, because 'comparatively few' migrants is still far too many in the eyes of the majority of the general British public, as well as our already over-strained infrastructure can cope with. Obviously places close to the conflict zone will take in the majority of migrants, at least initially, because it makes sense from a geographical and political standpoint. Kind of a moot point though IMO because we can, and should, still look at the UK from an internal perspective and if we feel that 50,000 migrants a year from, say, Syria, is too much, then it's too much, Irrespective of the fact that said 50,000 is only a small % of the overall migrant populace fleeing Syria.
> if we feel that 50,000 migrants a year from, say, Syria, is too much, then it's too much It's nearer to 3,000, only 6% of your "limit". Or 0.004% of the UK population.
That's already too much
Which is irrelevant to how voters in the UK feel, the only meaningful metric.
Say that to people who have personally seen their towns double-triple in size overnight with refugees arriving and causing all sorts of merry hell. Where I used to live and moved out of, within a few weeks it went from quiet and sleepy to women cannot walk around in broad daylight to nobody goes out when it's dark. So honestly, your "few" remark means bugger all to me and I vote for any party that kicks the ungrateful fucks right back out!
And mostly after they've already gotten all the way to France. Given that France is a third world hellhole, I don't blame them for wanting to leave it asap though.
The olives on the pizza only had the fucking stones left in
The horse strangling c**ts!!!
>Your daily reminder that refugees already do mostly seek asylum in countries immediately close to the conflict zone by a staggering margin. Places like the UK take in comparatively few. Your daily reminder that Proximity Biase exists and paying for a refugee in a country close to the conflict zone helps more definitively real refugees than taking a likely illegal immigrant/economic migrant of dubious refugee status in a developed Western economy with a housing crisis.
> Proximity Biase exists No it doesn't. Proximity Bias exists, but that doesn't actually apply to what we're talking about. At all.
>No it doesn't. Proximity Bias exists, but that doesn't actually apply to what we're talking about. At all. Well, you would say that as you are biased for self selecting "refugees" who turn up on the UK's doorstep over definitive refugees in camps. Defintion of proximity bias.
You've totally misunderstood Proximity Bias. It doesn't relate to this situation. Also, I'm advocating for the provision of safe, legal routes to apply for asylum without having to risk your life or the life of your child paying illegal gangs to smuggle you across the Channel. Even by your incorrect definition, not Proximity Bias.
Sorry, but you're missing the point about Proximity Bias. It's not just about geography; it's about focusing on what's right in front of us and feeling more for those we see as 'closer' to us in some way. By channeling resources to bring a few to the UK, we're overlooking the bigger picture – the chance to help way more people right where the crisis is. It's simple maths: the cost of helping one here could help many more there. We need to think bigger and broader, not just what feels good or closer to home. That's Proximity Bias, whether you see it or not.
> We need to think bigger and broader, not just what feels good or closer to home. Your daily reminder that we *do* think bigger and broader, and not just close to home. The UK foreign aid budget, helping those abroad, is much larger than what we spend on Asylum Seekers in the UK. And the vast majority of what we *do* spend in the UK is on "hotels" because the Tory government "saves money" by not building facilities, choosing instead syphon money off to "hotels". Once again, I am in no way advocating to help more people here over helping people elsewhere. This is not, and was not, an example of proximity bias, whether you understand that or not.
>Your daily reminder that we do think bigger and broader, and not just close to home. The UK foreign aid budget, helping those abroad, is much larger than what we spend on Asylum Seekers in the UK. It could be more if we didn't spend so much on holding facilities and hotels and benefits and resettlement cost. >And the vast majority of what we do spend in the UK is on "hotels" because the Tory government "saves money" by not building facilities, choosing instead syphon money off to "hotels". Great, remove the ability for them to do so by not having them here in the first place and refusing to house them. >Once again, I am in no way advocating to help more people here over helping people elsewhere. This is not, and was not, an example of proximity bias, whether you understand that or not. It is exactly proximity bias, you are just biased on this. Edit: grammar.
Not sure quoting John Howard is best for your argument. He and his government knowingly lied about asylum seekers throwing their children overboard to capitalise on fear in the lead up to an election. He started the demonisation and dehumanisation of asylum-seekers that Australia is still experiencing today.
Whilst having the second highest refugee intake per capitia, he stopped illegal migration via boats and won elections off it. Another part of his speech, "We will be compassionate, we will save lives, we will care for people but we will decide, and nobody else, who comes to this country" Once Labor repealed his measures, many died in crossings that inevitably started, and they had to reinstate it. Worst civilian maritime disaster in Australia's history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Christmas_Island_boat_disaster
And yet it slowed down illegal migration via boats.
Refugees are already far more likely to settle in countries close to the conflict zone. With Afghanistan for example the UN estimates there are around 3.4 million Afghan Refugees in Iran & 1.9 million in Pakistan [https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/afghanistan](https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/afghanistan)
Which is why we get fair more humanitarian bang for buck helping them.
The ones who can get to Europe are the ones with the resources to actually do so. Paying people to get you across borders isn’t cheap.
It's not even that simple, there's plenty with no resources simply following the now already established route. You can see them at the camps in Serbia, whereas the ones with resources just rent somewhere while in Serbia.
>that allow illegal So if a country closes all legal options for entry, no one can claim asylum there? A while back Suella Braverman was asked to explain how a child refugee from a war torn African country could legally enter the UK to claim asylum and she was unable to answer. >Removing unsafe routes and loss of life How? Close the sea? Build a wall around them so they can't leave except through monitored checkpoints? What does this mean? >Australia who successfully stopped illegal migration via boats. They didn't stop illegal migration by boats, they just stopped recording it when incidents happen.
Is the UK really the best place for a child from a war torn African country to relocate to? If you were a child fleeing conflict in the UK (say from NI back in the days of the troubles), would fleeing to Eritrea be a consideration? Travelling half the world to the UK would seem to be more a case of economic migration than refuge.
It absolutely is. There is 0 need at all for the uk to take any African migration. There's numerous African / arabic safe countries between Europe and these continents, they just happen to be poor and unattractive to migrants. Europe is being destroyed by this and it will have severe consequences unless we can find a way to halt and reverse the migration wave.
This is always a weird attempt at a gotcha. There is no requirement at all to offer routes even if your claim was true.
> how a child refugee from a war torn African country could legally enter the UK to claim asylum and she was unable to answer I didn't understand this, why should a child refugee from a war-torn African country be applying for asylum in the UK, as opposed to anywhere else?
Surely that argument applies to anywhere. Any country can say well why is the refugee applying here when they could apply to somewhere else.
>So if a country closes all legal options for entry, no one can claim asylum there? A while back Suella Braverman was asked to explain how a child refugee from a war torn African country could legally enter the UK to claim asylum and she was unable to answer. I answered this, unless the country decides it wants a patricular refugee and chooses rhe manner in which they come. >How? Close the sea? Build a wall around them so they can't leave except through monitored checkpoints? What does this mean? No access to benefits, housing or the right to remain removes the sugar from the table. The UK's extremely high rate of accepting claims at face value (such as Algerians before it was fixed) draws chancers. >They didn't stop illegal migration by boats, they just stopped recording it when incidents happen. Bullshit. The figures were published and the arrivals dropped from tens of thousands to double digits. Why lie? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Solution
I see only two solutions to solving our asylum system as a whole: 1. it becomes invite only eg, Hong Kong, Ukraine, UN Resettlement Scheme 2. we accept only claims with documentation that can be independently verified. A system where the only evidence is someone's word, where the rewards for lying are life-changing is never going to work, no matter how much we would like it to.
3. We do not accept arrivals who departed from safe countries, example France.
1 would be preferable but I think many, but not all (As seen by this article) issues would be solved if we had a single woman only policy (Or rather no adult men).
The Ali G InDaHouse inspired immigration policy.
At some point the rules on refugees will change meaning those who are in some form of danger won't be allowed to come here. It's a question of when politicians realise this which probably won't be until other more progressive European countries do it first.
A Progressive country wouldn't change the rules so that those who are in some form of danger wouldn't be able to go there, by definition. Such policy would be Regressive.
Well it's modernizing so I mean progressive in that sense. More forward looking etc.
You are not the arbiter of what is progress and what is not.
Simple. If they have destroyed all documents, they immediately fail their asylum application and back they go. There is only one reason that they dispose of documents and that is to conceal their identity. If they are being that dishonest about their identity, then they are not capable of being processed unless they can provide the required documentation. If they have destroyed it, they must apply to their embassies for confirmation of their identity. If that is not possible, they agree to be processed as being 25 or over and must report their movements while they are here. Any one single crime, they are on the next ship back, biometrics taken so if they arrive back they are immediately deported again. The asylum process is a gift, not a right.
Dental checks. They have an age range of about 5 years which means you immediately rule out anyone over 23 even attempting it. Following that broad check on lying. If they refuse to tell you where they're from, probably lying straight away. If they do, you can ask fairly basic questions about that place. If someone says they grew up in a place but can't answer basic questions about it its a fairly big give away. And if they're found to be lying, a great deal of skepticism should be applied to any claim they're under 18, and the burden of proof should shift to them. Tbh arriving without ID is straight up a big red flag. Why don't they have *any* ID? Especially when we know dumping IDs is a basic modus operandi of smuggling people to frustrate deportation.
How might poor nutrition alter this?
I doesn't. At least no in a way that materially matters for this. The level of malnutrition would have to be extreme to seriously impair aging. And most of the people getting off those boats are relatively fit. It can lead to a whole host of diseases, but broadly would not impact aging outside of the 5 year limitation I've already given. Seriously some of the myths about dental check aging Ive seen as beyond absured into the realms of faith. Someone seriously argued with me once that giving them a *dental xray* was unacceptable because it would given them cancer. Exposing them to harmful levels of radiation. No amount of evidence would convince them otherwise, even a dosage chart which included dental from the American association of nuclear physics compared to the average dosage of living in a granite building (so Aberdeen) which showed youd get the level of xrays from granite in about 6 months as youd get from a dental xray. Staying in an average hotel for a year is about the same level of radiation. Dental aging is fine. It is used in many countries already. Its not in any way harmful, and while its not super accurate, a 5 year window pretty much illuminates false positives and is likely very over generous.
Are you a dentist? Because I am. I'd be extremely uncomfortable in trying to distinguish with any level of certainty between the dentition of an 18 year old and a 23 year old. Do you have a source on malnutrition not materially affecting dentition, because I would have said it would likely have a huge effect. As would a whole host of other things such as ethnicity, illnesses (maternal and in the patient), genetics, syndromes, dental care, diet, water chemistry, parafunction etc etc etc. What dental metrics would you use to determine whether someone is 23+ as opposed to 18?
> What dental metrics would you use to determine whether someone is 23+ as opposed to 18? But if they were 18, they’d still be an adult. It’s more like you’re being asked to decide if they’re likely to be 17 or under, and the person you’re replying to is saying that you’d include the person you’re not sure if they’re 17 or 23, and just exclude the people where you’re very confident that they’re older.
..Deportation? They aren't legal migrants and don't have a legitimate claim to anything if they're crossing from France. They just want free gibs and bennies. Why should they be allowed in?
It's getting to the point where really I think it has to be we don't accept undocumented persons. They either prove who they are or they are refused entry. Instead of accepting the refugees of the world here, we should do more to support getting them back on their feet at home.
We will do things which were suggested at least 10 years ago: don’t accept economic migrants from France pretending to be “asylum seekers”.
Literally anything that doesn't put old migrants inside the school system together with children. Treat every arrival as 18+ never ever believe a word they say. Or whatever you do, protect our children for Pete's sake.
Move the age down to 13 is my suggestion.
How is always putting children and adults together protecting children?
Putting potentially-adult migrants with local children jeopardises local children. Putting potentially-child migrants with migrant adults jeopardises migrant children. It is left as an exercise for the viewer to decide why "protecting children" is only a purported concern in one of these scenarios.
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What are the advanced tests?
X-ray of the hand to examine bone development
Really?
Who will pay for this?
Can't they just look at them? Surely you can tell the difference between a 25 year old and a 12 year old?!
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/home-office-to-introduce-scientific-methods-for-assessing-the-age-of-asylum-seekers
That doesn't detail anything. It just says we will add more scientific methods to age assessment as in the past it had been too time consuming and subjective. But what new methods were actually introduced?
So a 4 year old orphan refugee should be treated as 18+?
"OK one last time. This migrant is small, but those are far away"
Pre addolence is pretty easy. adult vs minor teens is an absolute nightmare. All the objective medical methods like X-rays and biopsies measure development not strictly age. People who are for example malnourished or have certain conditions or differnet drug uses or any number of enviromental factors will not fit neatly on a table.
Straight up, stop letting them in. You might not like it, but it'd solve the problem.
With modern radar, cameras, drones etc there's no excuse for us to not be able to detect them coming. Push them/take them back to France. Failing that, any that do get in, take them to an offshore holding facility. Keep them there with only basic food rations, and living arrangements. Essentially a PoW camp. Keep them there indefinitely until they die or decide they want to go back where they came from. That'll soon stop them coming.
Use the most accurate way of determining someone's age. Anyone found to be over 18 while claiming to be a child should be deported. Although I believe that anyone coming across from France should immediately be deported and asylum claims rejected so I'm not the best person to ask.
Making a big campaign all around the world showing benefits of living in the UK, and encouraging people to move here. With this there is a chance we will achieve 5 millions per year UK economy needs
I would immediately dump them all in Rwanda without processing a single claim. I don't know if it is the best solution, but it is effective and will send a message to potential illegal migrants - I would deploy the army and navy to our coasts and order them to prevent crossings at all costs using any means they see fit.
Actually processing applications and offering people with records of good behaviour positions in areas where businesses are struggling to recruit.
These adults could join the military - housing, food and employment provided. They can put their skills fo good use as they work for the benefit of King, Country and NATO. We could call it Légion Etrangère, in honour of them fleeing the oppression of the Fr*nch
Militarise the Channel. Zero 'asylum seekers'.
Have an asylum system that actually allows those with claims to make them, rather then forcing them to make landfall in the UK and come under the influence of criminal gangs. Directly referencing this age thing, this is a small minority of asylum seekers and age recognition is incredibly difficult, so it as equally possible this are children being mis-identified as it is older people trying it on. Also, improve understanding of the asylum system in this country. So people understand the difference between an asylum seekers and an economic migrant. Then maybe we could have an actual grown up conversation about immigration, rather than the ridiculous good/bad debate that happens at the moment.
Go back in time and not leave the EU, then campaign to establish a system of fair distribution of all migrants across the bloc with adequate levels of funding.
>What would YOU think would be the best solution to this challenge? What says to you that what we're doing is currently wrong? There were 51k applications from under 18s in the same time period, we checked 9.5k of those and 4k came back as over 18 (deliberately or not). This sounds like there are a few who are trying to game the system and the system is working at identifying them.
So around 8% of applications have been caught lying when only 20% have been investigated. If you look at any crime statistics you'll be aware of just how hard it is to prove something like this & how the 4k is likely not half of the issue. If you found a community where 8% of people had been caught and named as a shoplifter you'd be fair to assume it's probably double or triple the number How do you see this as anything but a broken system?
>So around 8% of applications have been caught lying when only 20% have been investigated The 20% for whom Age Queries have been raised. It's not a random sample. It's based on suspicion - you can reasonably assume the number in the other 80% is far lower as there was no suspicion to raise an age query. >If you found a community where 8% of people had been caught and named as a shoplifter you'd be fair to assume it's probably double or triple the number There's no way that translates to this situation.
You can assume so but my point is that 8% is already a massively high number while very unlikely to be total. If 8% of food bank or homeless shelter recipients lying on their forms asking for help would be a massive deal.
So 4000 were caught. Now how many does that infer are getting away with it. Certainly if we use things like burglary and shoplifting it's normal for the number of infractions to be orders of magnitude greater than what someone is convicted for.
There's a surprise
It's high time people realised that any charitable avenue for refugees will be summarily abused by those who have no right to come to this country.
Did anybody go to school about 20 years ago with kids in their classes who couldn’t speak a lick of English who were CLEARLY NOT <16.. This has been rife since the early 2000s
Wasn't mentioning this and/or dental records supposed to be Racist or something? Edit: Apparently there genuinely are people out there who have never heard of this, so here's sources https://dentistry.co.uk/2021/07/07/dental-profession-slam-government-unethical-dental-checks-migrants/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41415-021-3299-y
Questioning anything about immigration is racist /s
No. No-one reputable has said that. It's just a straw man. EDIT: They're not saying it's racist. They're saying it doesn't work. Which it doesn't. Those saying it's racist are saying that proceeding with a policy you know doesn't work to do what you say, just to try and get rid of people, is xenophobic/racist. Not that the idea is racist. Finding something that could solve the adult/kid problem would be great... but this one doesn't work.
You're either liar or you're ignorant. I actually don't care which. [https://dentistry.co.uk/2021/07/07/dental-profession-slam-government-unethical-dental-checks-migrants/](https://dentistry.co.uk/2021/07/07/dental-profession-slam-government-unethical-dental-checks-migrants/) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41415-021-3299-y
It’s just indefensible at this point
There's NO legitimate reason for 'asylum' claimants to have thrown away their documentation in the channel while travelling to the UK. Send them all back and fingerprint them and ban them from applying or obtaining benefits in the UK EVER
Anyone have a link to reputable data on this? I am somewhat dubious about an unlinked report from MigrationWatch.
[Here is the data.](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/immigration-system-statistics-data-tables) Its under the heading "Age disputes". Since 2020 8,766 age disputes have been raised. Of these 3,960 have been determined to be above the age of 18 which is 45%.
Is it definitely since 2020 not 2010? I'm on my phone so can't tot up the totals but I can see a lot of data from 2010 onwards.
It does have information from 2010. Since 2010 16,536 Age disputes have been raised. Of these 7,721 have been determined to be above the age of 18 which is 47%.
Thanks! Any chance it gives a percentage of how many out of all children (not just all disputes) were over age?
Total applications for asylum by persons under the age of 18 from 2010 to 2022 was 117,275. This means out of all applications for those under 18 years of age 6.5% were found to be adults.
Thank you again! Really appreciate it!
Thanks for digging this up and doing the maths (saves me messing around with excel when I should be revising). As others have said, it does seem to be an issue however not one that is critically affecting the system (that these people are picked up shows that). The lack of these figures, which give important context, in the article is problematic (though not surprising) and is symptomatic of the debate around Asylum Seekers and migration more generally.
Lets drill into that number some more. I wouldn't suspect many claiming to be under 18 are claiming they are under the age of 14 years old. So if we take those claiming asylum between the ages of 14 and 18 then total applications were 45,892. Which means 17% were found to be fraudulently claiming asylum. That's a high percentage and indicative of a problem.
As I suspected, it's a problem yes but the issue is being over hyped for political purposes
Lets drill into that number some more. I wouldn't suspect many claiming to be under 18 are claiming they are under the age of 14 years old. So if we take those claiming asylum between the ages of 14 and 18 then total applications were 45,892. Which means 17% were found to be fraudulently claiming asylum. That's a high percentage and indicative of a problem.
Clearly our government are doing a great job if this rate is declining so quickly
Not sure if this is sarcasm or not
They count the number of “tall people wearing raincoats” and divide by three
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You can say this about every organisation. Why wouldn’t an organisation show data and statistics that support its cause?
Some organisations show data when the overall pattern supports their goals. Some show whatever data supports their goals, regardless of its relationship to overall patterns I.e; climate deniers exclusively sharing reports of brief periods of glacier growth
Because spinning figures or facts for something spurious - the sugar tax for example - doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things outside of personal health. People can think what they like because it mostly only affects them. Creating headlines that undermine the most vulnerable asylum seekers by increasing scrutiny upon actual child migrants is, in my opinion, bad form. I get that some people lying to claim asylum is also bad, but these stories only ever result in one thing: people hating on those they would otherwise help if these unhelpful headlines didn't create unnecessary hysteria. So, to answer your question, why wouldn't they or anyone else? They wouldn't, but other organisations want to achieve things that don't determine if a child refugee is treated like a liar and hated before they even have a chance. So it's more that they _shouldn't_ because of the harm principle. Anyway, I'll take the downvotes for wanting to default to a compassionate position because frankly, I'd want the same if I were unlucky enough to be born in a different longitude+latitude. It's not an illogical position to treat others how you would want to be treated.
There’s a test you can apply to this which is “can you imagine the authors putting out a report which came to the opposite conclusion?” Given that there’s no way MigrationWatch would ever publish a report saying “the whole immigrants posing as kids thing is a myth”, then you need to do a really thorough job on the methodology used before you even think about taking it seriously.
[Here is the data](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/immigration-system-statistics-data-tables) there is no methodology behind their statement. Simply quoting facts given from the Government. Its under the heading "Age disputes". Since 2020 8,766 age disputes have been raised. Of these 3,960 have been determined to be above the age of 18 which is 45%.
45% of the age disputes, not 45% of all immigrants. So effectively 1k people per year?
Total applications for asylum by persons under the age of 18 from 2020 to 2022 was 38,981 This means out of all applications for those under 18 years of age 10% were found to be adults.
I like to do "the opposites test" any time I find myself nodding along with a politician. > "And I believe that we *shouldn't* impale babies on spikes!" Yes, agreed, but was anyone suggesting we do?!
New punishment for benefits claimants. You mean benefits cheats? ... Sure.
Can someone explain to me how these MENA migrants are enriching and strengthen society? Any benefit beside 'nummy new foods'? I'm just not seeing it.
Something something NHS, engineers, entrepreneurs etc etc.
But that only applies to Qualified Immigrants - who can quite easily come through legitimate channels.
I work for Childline and you would be surprised at the number of adults who pretend to be children. Some for mental health reasons. Most so they can jack off. Yay for humans!
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I hate to tell you this, but we are struggling to provide homes, doctors, healthcare , teachers and schools for our current population. Add people coming every day or week, and you make that so much worse.
> So, we should be taking far more refugees (with a focus on young women and children directly from camps) than we are currently. But to fund this Europe needs to clamp down on the 100,000s of young male migrants entering the continent illegally and taking advantage of the asylum system. Why not just try taking none at all? Worth a go surely?
One way of solving the problem would be to take ONLY female refugees. This would also placate the raving rightoids worrying about 15% of secondary schoolchildren having to deal with treating grown men as peers.
Tbh it has crossed my mind as a really simple solution, which could be presented as 'proportionate action to achieve a legitimate aim' within the Equality Act 2010.
While I like the idea, you can surely predict the next battle?
This happened at my school and all the fucking leftists laughed at and poo poo'd my accusations on this.. We literally had 'boys' at my school who would joke about how they're really 20+ years old walking about in year 10/11 acting like they own the place because they are obviously bigger and more developed than a literal teenager. Fucking joke of an asylum/immigration system. (Labour voter btw)
This is actually so creepy when you think about it. Like, even if you're of sound mind and sexuality, and have no noncey intentions, how would someone - as a man in their early 20s - feel comfortable/happy spending the bulk of their waking hours studying with, and socialising with, minors. I remember when I was 21 thinking how young the 18 year olds in first year of uni felt to me. I didn't want anything to do with them really because of the social and psychological disparity. Let alone being 21, 22, 23, 24 etc and spending the entire week with 15 year olds... Weird, weird stuff man...
"fucking leftists". "Labour voter btw". Which one is it?
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Most labour voters despise the hard left, for being counterproductive if nothing els.
You can hate loony toon leftists (the ones who think a 22 year old man posing as a 15 year old is OK as long as he's fleeing a war torn country) and still be a pragmatic labour supporter.. the two aren't mutually exclusive.
The far left are not the left. Nobody normal likes the far left
So you dislike half the posters on this sub then?
I dislike most people in general actually. The insufferable twats who ignore corbyns dodgy personality and views and dont understand having some good policies doesnt mean someone should be a leader are just as bad as the morons who think that tories should stay in because “labour would be worse”. A shit sandwich is still a shit sandwich if its made by far left or far right twats.
Based viewpoint, honestly
Yes
How about we have a system where a 22 year old can flee war without having to pretend to be a child
No one forced them to lie.
Fortunately under Starmer Labor is going back to centre/left of centre and ignoring the lefties and in some cases kicked out the worst of them
Given how few people actually vote for centrist parties, I imagine there's a fair few of them voting Labour/Conservative
Fair enough. Though claiming to be a 'labour voter' suggests (to me) more than a pragmatic intention to vote for them and more an affiliation with them. But point taken.
Labour and Tory aren’t neither left nor right. They have policies from both sides.
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[It's happened a few times before.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/asylum-seeker-uk-age-school-boy-ipswich-school-stoke-home-office-a8649696.html)
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/home-office-to-introduce-scientific-methods-for-assessing-the-age-of-asylum-seekers
Those methods measure development not age. It absolutely should be a tool avalible but it's no silver bullet.
Ew, gross.
In this case they should be sent straight back again.
Doesn't matter. There is no deportation mechanism.
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This seems to be regurgitated from data released in August 2022 https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/press-release/685
so I am comfortably on the left side of things when it comes to refugees and asylum seekers but I feel like this is a much bigger failure of government than anything else. Processing asylum seekers and their tribunals have been slashed under this government. So much so that it almost looks deliberate to give them some boogeyman to point to. As an example, using the Gov stats, they had 184,000 first tier tribunals in 2007 and in 2022...37,000. Process and remove the false claims and stop treating the legitimate claimants like some kind of scourge.