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John Saunderson's avatar

What no one is mentioning is the fact that as they are undocumented illegals ( not documented asylum seekers) they are not eligible for weekly allowances or accommodation . Therefore they are almost certainly either working in the black economy or simply leading a life of crime! Therefore no income tax or NI is being collected as they only use cash or someone else’s bank account. However no questions are asked to access health care etc.

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Simon Neale's avatar

I used to live in London, but left when my eldest child reached school age in the 1990s. I normally visit a couple of times a year, to see the same eldest child who has returned there to live and work, or to visit old friends.

About a decade or so back, I made one such trip and was met by a Londoner friend at a rail terminal, and we walked out onto the street chatting. One of the first things I saw was a group of black men who had built what appeared to be some facsimile of an African slum village in the portico of a magnificent Georgian church near the station. They were sat on strips of cardboard, surrounded by grubby belongings in flimsy plastic bags, around a large blackened steel pan over a fire. They were cooking what looked like chickpeas and a few scraps of meat. They were dressed in rags, had that matted Rudakubana style hair, and were bleary-eyed and lethargic-looking.

I asked my friend if this was some sort of project by the church to illustrate world hunger; role play to show the commuters the reality of Third World poverty.

There was a long silence, and I realised he was staring at me with a puzzled expression....

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