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Bristol Post
Bristol Post
National
Tristan Cork

Bristol vigil to be held for child asylum seekers missing from hotels

One part of Bristol has been named as the only place where most people don’t believe that immigration levels are too high, a new survey has revealed. The Bristol West constituency ranked as the least likely place to agree with the statement ‘immigration levels are too high’ in the UK, according to polling from FocalData.

In fact, Bristol West, which currently covers everywhere from Clifton to Easton, was the only constituency in the entire country where more residents disagreed than agreed with the question posed to 10,000 people nationwide.

The news comes as a vigil is planned in the heart of the Bristol West constituency - the fountains in The Centre - for the 4,600 unaccompanied child asylum seekers who have been separated from their families and are being housed by the Government in hotels.

Read next: What happened when 100 asylum seekers arrived in a rural community near Bristol

The vigil takes place for an hour from noon until 1pm on Saturday, February 25, at the Cascade Steps, and will be held to remember the 200 or so refugee children who have disappeared from the Government hotels, amid fears they have been kidnapped to be used as child labour by criminal gangs.

“The UK asylum system is broken - hostile, under-resourced and understaffed,” said one of the organisers of the vigil, from the Bristol Defend Asylum Seekers campaign.

“Over 140,000 people are currently waiting for an initial decision on their claim, condemned often to years of poverty, worry and uncertainty. While they wait they are unable to work, put down roots and contribute to society. The cost to the public purse of this backlog stretches to £2bn a year. What a waste of lives and resources! These people are a solution not a problem. They are our future,” she added.

“Since July 2021, 4,600 separated children seeking refuge in the UK have been housed in government-run hotels without the essential care and safeguarding they need. There have been 440 incidents of children going missing. 200 children have disappeared and never been found,” she added.

This week, a FocalData poll commissioned by UnHerd found that most people in the UK agreed with the statement ‘immigration levels are too high’. There was only one constituency where that wasn’t the case - Bristol West, which also ranked as the constituency that most regretted Brexit, UnHerd reported.

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