Clearly a very broken system
Last night I sat and listened to a BBC Radio 4 “File On 4” report into the secret life inside the UK Asylum Hotels. I wasn’t sure before I listened if it was going to be a bleeding heart report on how all the poor asylum seekers are being miss-treated or the opposite scare mongering media horror story.
I’m pleased to say that as per normal for BBC Radio 4 (if not the greater BBC) it was very balanced and I can 100% recommend you put some time aside and listen to it yourself and form your own views on what is reported.
For me, it’s very simple that the entire asylum hotel concept is floored at every level. From a UK government perspective it’s clear that the approach has been badly thought out and left open to “self regulation” or “lack of any rules” and we all know that anything left to self regulation is doomed to fail because it’s open to abuse and corruption by everybody.
This is evident by asylum seekers working in the black economy when they shouldn’t. Businesses from small local outfits to major national companies taking advantage of a cheep workforce that have little or no employment and safety rights. In other words modern slavery.
Organised Crime Groups (OCGs) who hook up asylum seeks with illegal jobs and who take cuts from all sides to the benefit of nobody but the criminal underworld. And make no mistake, this is not the criminal world of the council estate chav, no, this is the world of international BIGTIME crime who make millions off of the backs of their vulnerable victims.
The hotel chains. Let’s face it, they are onto a win win situation. Full hotels at guaranteed prices and when the government is finished they get their hotels fully refurbished at the expense of the good old tax payer.
And then there are the asylum seekers themselves. Be honest here, they are not always they helpless poor victims. They play the system to it’s maximum because they know that they can. They know that by being as difficult as possible they delay any due process years beyond what it should take to complete. They also know that no matter what they do, it will have little consequence for them.
Like I say, take some time and listen to the report and make your mind up for yourself but for me it is clear that this complete concept/process has been broken from the very beginning and it continues to be broken because nobody in authority wants to fix it.