With 150,000 Britons offering their homes to Ukrainian refugees since a new scheme was launched on Monday, the government is drawing up plans to capitalise on British hospitality by looking to resettle other refugees people’s homes, too.
Britain’s Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is reportedly considering asking Britons to open their homes to refugees other than Ukrainians, including those from Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria, in an effort to cut the costs associated with housing them in hotels.
Currently, the scheme offers homeowners a monthly payment of £350 for a commitment to house a Ukrainian family for a minimum of six months.
It was revealed in early February that the cost of housing 37,000 often illegal migrants in hotels cost the British taxpayer £4.7 million a day, with 12,000 Afghans accounting for £1.5 million per day.
The Home Office has so far struggled to house the Afghans with local authorities short on homes for British people reluctant to provide them housing in their communities. Only 3,000 have been resettled so far, The Times reports.
It is unclear how practical this scheme would be, however, as Afghan families are typically far larger than their British and Ukrainian counterparts.
The average Ukrainian family is comprised of 2.58 people, while the average Afghan family is comprised of 6.7 people.
A second major hurdle for the Home Office is that some major insurers seem to be reluctant to cover non-Ukrainian refugees, with RSA (MoreThan) and LV not including non-Ukrainians in policy updates allowing homeowners to host refugees as “non-paying guests” without imposing an insurance premium.
Speaking to Breitbart London, Nick Buckley MBE, the Reform UK party’s candidate for Manchester and founder of the Mancunian Way charity which helps prevent young people from becoming involved in crime, expressed grave misgivings about the government’s reported plan to expand schemes for having refugees hosted in people’s homes.
“This sounds like a good idea until the first assault, rape, or murder of a British citizen in their own home by a refugee,” Buckley warned.
“The UK cannot keep its door open for anyone in the world who wants to come here for a better life. Stay home and fix your own country,” he said continued.
“Asking the public to help fix the government’s incompetence over immigration cannot be the answer. Secure our borders and support people in need as close to their original home as possible.”
It is unknown how many Ukrainians will be housed under the government’s new scheme, with Lord Harrington of Watford, the Refugees Minister, revealing that Ukrainian MPs had informed him that they believe the vast majority of Ukrainians will remain in countries neighbouring Ukraine as they intend to return to their homes after the conflict.
In 2021, 28,526 illegal migrants were recorded to have crossed into Britain illegally via small boat, with 90 per cent of registered boat migrant arrivals being male and three-quarters aged between 18 to 39.
Others entered Britain through alternative clandestine methods, such as smuggling themselves or breaking into vehicles travelling through the Channel Tunnel, while tens of thousands more simply overstayed their visas.
The already very low number of people deported by Priti Patel’s Home Office collapsed by a further 44 per cent in the year to June 2021, to just 2,910.
2022 is set to be a record year for illegal boat arrivals alone, with over 2,200 migrants known to have arrived already.
It is believed that as many as 65,000 could land in Britain by the end of the year, more than doubling last year’s record figures.
Source: GOV.UK