£440,000 so far, and another £200,000 per year indefinately, which I presume the NHS would normally claim from the motor insurance policy, but in this case there was none, so I presume the NHS are trying to get it from the uninsured losses scheme? Either way, insurance will rise or tax will. Grrrr!
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Trust faces £200,000 care bill for illegal immigrant
THE Government was urged yesterday to pick up a £200,000 annual hospital bill faced by an NHS trust in the region to care for an illegal Iraqi asylum seeker badly injured when the stolen car he was in crashed.
Health chiefs in North East Lincolnshire warned last night that services would suffer if they were forced to pay for the care of the man, who has not been named. He entered the country illegally and was living in Grimsby while his application for asylum was considered.
It was rejected in May 2002 and he faced deportation at the time of the accident a year ago near Boston, Lincolnshire.
He was left paralysed and his treatment at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham and ongoing care costs have so far totalled £440,000. Now the trust faces an "indefinite" £4,000-a-week bill for specialist care at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in Surrey, which specialises in brain-injured patients.
Health chiefs have been in discussions with the Department of Health and the Home Office but so far the Government has refused to pay for the round-the-clock treatment.
Peter Melton, chairman of North East Lincolnshire's executive committee, said a range of health developments could not be funded if the authority, with an annual budget of £160m, was saddled with the bill. "Doctors and nurses in the area feel frustrated because we feel this cost should not be borne by the people of North East Lincolnshire.
"We have a clear statutory responsibility not only to maintain financial balance but also to improve services and there is a lack of clarity in this case about whether we have a similar level of statutory responsibility."
Great Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell said the Department of Health should pay for the care, adding: "Unless we get help from central government it's going to exacerbate racist and anti-asylum-seeker feelings."
A central pot to pay for healthcare for foreign visitors had been distributed to local health services on the basis of historic payments. Grimsby had few foreign visitors and had received little of the money.
"I'm not disputing the fact he should receive treatment by the NHS but it's quite disproportionate for a comparatively small health authority which is already facing difficulties balan-
cing its budget. It's going to lead to cutbacks in other services."
A Department spokesman said it "does not hold special allocations for special cases or hold contingency funds". Money was allocated according to a form-ula weighted according to levels of deprivation and including provision for asylum seekers.
mike.waites@ypn.co.uk
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ST - you can rest assured insurance and taxes will both rise since there's increasingly less people paying in and more people taking out. I don't know what the answer to this is but something must be done about illegal drivers :-(
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Noticed that this week the trial started for the three asylum seekers who killed that lady teacher on the A5 in Northants. They were driving a BMW apparently and didn't stop. Makes you wonder how they managed to afford to buy the BMW, tax and insure it etc......It would be nice if the police got out and about a bit more and periodically pulled some of these character over for a check.
Also in today's Independent I read the article about the guy who made £50k taking driving tests for other people. He did it at least 150 times!! He was only caught because an examiner noticed the same Vaux. Cav. continually turning up for tests. Nice to know the system is vigilant!
I guess he's an extreme case - but I'll bet there are plenty of cases of a brother/sister taking driving tests.
Friend of mine is a consultant oncologist at local hospital. Apparantly it occasionally happens that a patient turns up at hospital with some advanced disease or other, but blood group or medical history doesn't match records. Invariable it turns out to be a person from abroad assuming the identity of UK-resident relative in order to get good quality free treatment in UK.
Let's bring in identity cards with biodata. They have them in Germany and it works just fine. I suspect we won't get them though - they would open up a truly horrible can of worms for the politicians to deal with.
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At the educational establishment where i work, there was an asylum seeker at the reception getting his 'hardship fund' which is what we give them ffor petrol for the car that we bought them as they claim to be called names on public transport! Anyway, the security guard came in and asked who had parked the BMW in the disabled bay, and the asylum seeker sheepishly said it was him, git his money asnd went in an N reg BMW 3 seies.
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Seems to me that the message of this thread is an anti asylum seeker rant and that it is ripe for deletion by the mods?
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Simon, Perhaps you'd like to redress the balance and offer some good samaritan, asylum seeker stories?
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Seems to me that the message of this thread is an anti asylum seeker rant and that it is ripe for deletion by the mods?
>>
More like justified outrage at the activities of others which will cost already overtaxed motorists through incompetence.
I sometimes wonder if there is a university course somewhere (in E. Europe perhaps) in screwing what there is of our 'system'.
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Seems to me that the message of this thread is an anti asylum seeker rant and that it is ripe for deletion by the mods?
I object to my post being called a 'rant'. The DoT estimate between 500,000 and 1 million drivers (out of 32 million) are 'illegal' (i.e. no license, insurance).
Asylum seekers are not allowed to work whilst their claims are being processed - almost by definition, therefore, any asylum seeker who is driving is likely to be illegal (have you noticed how much insurance, road tax, servicing cost? - can you imagine how much insurance costs if you have no UK driving or residency record?).
There have been several cases of unlicenced and uninsured asylum seekers who have killed people in 2003 - including the lady I mentioned above and one in London not long before Christmas where some guy ran over a 12 year old girl and left her screaming under his car and ran off. She later died. Thankfully he was aprehended.
We need a MAJOR crackdown on ANYONE driving without insurance/license/MoT - let's worry about the guys doing 36 in a 30 zone when we've sorted out the real villains (not that I condone speeding, BTW). I suggest random police roadblocks on major routes around certain cities. The Leicester police did this a couple of weeks before christmas and aprehended about 5 or 6 illegal drivers, including a couple carrying firearms.
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Lucky we live in a country where we are unlikely ever need to seek asylum from and that we are free to speak our minds, to a certain extent.
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Lucky we live in a country where we are unlikely ever need to seek asylum from and that we are free to speak our minds, to a certain extent.
I know a Mr Kilroy-Silk who might not agree with the last part of that statement. ;-)
Incidentally, I think the issue is *asylum seekers* driving illegally. Once they have been accepted into the country they become regular immigrants and can work and should be able to afford to have driving lessons, buy cars and insurance etc.
I would like to know how someone who enters the country and is forbidden from working whilst their claim is processed can go on to learn to drive in the UK and afford to buy a BMW (even an old used one), tax and insure it. Can you imagine the horrendous cost of their insurance for a BMW E34 5-series involved in the accident I mentioned above? Maybe they have generous relatives already here?
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Going back to the original question.
What advocated here - kicking him out of the hospital/country ?
So much for a libral democracy.
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Totally agree with Aprilia's posts.
Illegal drivers must be dealt with whether they turn out to be geunine asylum seekers, economic migrants or UK residents. When caught they should be treated appropriately, which in the case of EM's may well mean deportation
in addition to anything else.
Please let's not try to stifle genuine debate by introducing race. Also, for PU, let's acknowledge that there are different grades of free speech and some people are allowed far more than others. Let's also acknowledge that whilst genuine asylum seekers need and derserve our full support, many are bogus and here solely for economic reasons and seemingly able to disappear in vast numbers into a shambolic system which allows serious problems like this to arise, aside from the obvious national security issues.
Yes PU we are lucky to live in a 'free' country and of course it's a much nicer place to be if you enjoy a good job/salary, nice home and everything that goes with it. Not so good when you're reliant on benefits and can't get a council house because you're at the back of an ever growing queue. The fact is that an increasing number of ordinary decent folk are deciding to quit the UK because they're fed up with being treated like second class citizens in their own country and deprived of their right to speak freely.
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Aprilia,
My comment was general, not personal. This country should be proud to offer Asylum to the persecuted. Inevitably criminals will use that as a tool to their ends, and we are right to apply to them the full rigour of the law. My issue is that we then tar all those seeking shelter with the same brush, an objective the media are all too keen to follow.
The A5 through Potterspury towards Weedon is on my daily commute, and I suspect I passed by only shortly after the road was reopened after the incident to which you refer.
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Mr Butterworth - very eliquently put.
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Nice sentiment SB and in my experience most people are sympathtic to genuine asylum seekers. It neither serves us (the tax payer) or the genuine asylum seeker to have a 'system' which is so open to abuse that virtually anyone can come here (except Ian that is), be looked after for years (at considereable expense to the tax payer), be refused permission to remain after umpteen costly appeals (all good stuff for the lawyers you know!) but allowed to stay by virtue of there being no effective monitoring or deportation system. Surely it is this cynical abuse of a generous system which is the real cause of resentment and hostility.
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Another good argument for mass deportation of these wasters.
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Pah! Typical! Here I am living in the World's newest democracy, with a brilliant constitution which protects everyone's rights, so there's no way I can come to UK and claim political asylum.
I mean, a bright lad like me could claim all kinds of persecution 'back home', and next thing I'd be driving one of those Subaru thingies which I covet so much...
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There is a 'school' for asylum seekers (fakers?) in Lagos. The people who run it advertise using handbills, the Nigeria manager of the company I used to work for had one framed in his office...
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Yep - saw them last time I was up in that delightful part of the world ...
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Same thing in Slovakia - it's been going on for years!
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In Romania, the state used to pay their airfare here to get rid of them. With the enlargement of the EU in June this year, we are expected to take 1 million more (EU citizens) people from Eastern Europe? (Only UK & Eire didn't Veto out of the whole EU) So the roads and everything will become busier, and no doubt more and more illegal drivers will be on the roads and oppression of us in a veiled attempt to deal with the problem as usual.
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In Romania, the state used to pay their airfare here to get rid of them. With the enlargement of the EU in June this year, we are expected to take 1 million more (EU citizens) people from Eastern Europe? (Only UK & Eire didn't Veto out of the whole EU) So the roads and everything will become busier, and no doubt more and more illegal drivers will be on the roads and oppression of us in a veiled attempt to deal with the problem as usual.
LOL!, yes.
Last time I was in Germany they were discussing their 7-year veto on residents of the new EU countries moving to Germany.
Apparently the UK is not applying any such veto - the government believe that there will not be many people wanting to move here, and the few that do will help 'boost the economy' (i.e. drive down wages for those at the bottom of the labour market to the benefit of those at the top).
Thankfully I don't live in the South East (where most of these people will move to and thus help bring the day of total gridlock even closer).
Incidentally I have nothing against people from Eastern Europe. I have been to Poland a few times on business and they are really great people (in fact Poland in a nice country - good place for a holiday) - but the SE UK's infrastructure seems to be at breaking point already and I have doubts whether it can handle much more.
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It is reported on Ceefax today that over 75% of people questioned would like to emigrate from the UK (yours truly being one of them).
Wonder why?
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Ok, this has run for long enough. It's not motoring and I'm not sure why I let it run for this long.
Locked.
No Dosh
mailto:Alan_moderator@honestjohn.co.uk
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