That's just propaganda. It does matter if you are legal or not a lot. It's extremely hard for an illegal immigrant to have a life in EU.

Free housing is some shithole where you have to stay all the time until you are processed and that can take years, healthcare is something very basic if you get injured and welfare is some very basic food or money to buy food. Some countries with enough resources may provide something slightly better or use you as a method to transfer money to local businesses by putting you in a hotel room and giving you pocket change instead of running proper immigration camps.

If you think that its so great being immigrant burn you documentation and enjoy the experience. You understand that you can too claim that you lost your ID, right?

I don't understand why people are this gullible, its widespread to believe that its a lifehack to be an illegal immigrant. If you like it that much, just become one.

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curtisblaine 10 hours ago | parent [-]

But the "life hack", as far as I understand, is not living in Uk's govt temporary accommodation waiting for a decision, it's rather leaving your temporary accommodation without any way for the government to track you, then work illegal, cash in hand jobs, which are still more remunerative than what you had back home. In this case, seeking asylum is not the goal: it's just a loop-hole to not get deported immediately.

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mrtksn 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Everyone can do that if its that great.

Some years ago I met a Palestinian guy in who was staying in hostels in London, receiving something like 800GBP as aid and illegally working his ass off in constructions for something around the min wage. I've seen him only in the late evenings as he was working all the other times.

He was living the dream I guess. Hacked the life.

Anyway, I have him on Facebook and occasionally check on him and he eventually he became properly documented and the last time I checked he got into real estate business.

Immigrants are not life hacking, they are just trying to build a life on hard mode. The end game is to become legal, which is the the default state of the people who feel like they are the victim and immigrants are having it good.

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curtisblaine 9 hours ago | parent [-]

That is beside the point. The point is that they are using a loophole in the asylum process to stay illegally for more time than they're allowed. After they successfully do that, they of course have to work illegally (endangering themselves and others), they don't (can't) pay taxes, and they end up sending all the money they earned abroad. All attempts to close this loophole by various governments have been unfruitful, mainly because of strenuous left-wing opposition: Italian government tried to fingerprint them years ago (in order to make them more easily identifiable) but the law was killed. British government tried to move them in other (third world) countries during the asylum process (to make escaping their accommodation less appealing) but they couldn't do that. Now they're trying to shorten the asylum decision waiting window (which is ~1 year iirc), but that again is something that will be appealed to death.

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mrtksn 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Instantly fixable by letting people work legally.

	▲	curtisblaine 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Countries have a right of controlling immigration in their territory. Letting illegal immigrants stay and work essentially negates that right.