Certainly not the Wonder of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world based in Florida, twenty restaurants, nineteen pools, its own casino, a replica of Central Park, room service and capacity for seven thousand passengers spread over eighteen floors. The Bibby Stockholm, docked in a private port on the island of Portland, on the English coast of Dorset, appeals to another type of public: only men who are in the final phase of their political asylum process.
The British Conservative government does not know what to do with the immigrants, especially those who arrive by boat through the English Channel. Plan A consists of, as presented, sending them to Rwanda so that their cases can be processed there, but it is blocked in the courts awaiting the Supreme Court ruling and what the European authorities say. Plan B, meanwhile, is to get as many as possible onto barges, and into barracks and tents at disused military installations.
But there are all obstacles for the Ministry of the Interior on an issue that frontally divides society in this country, and which costs seven million euros a day to house immigrants in hotel rooms (at a rate of 125 euros a night, which block reservation as if it were a tour operator, and many of which remain empty).
Of the three barges that she had bought, believing that it was a great idea, she had to return two, like someone who gets the wrong size on the dress she buys on Amazon. Reason? No port in the country, like London, Edinburgh or Birkenhead near Newcastle, wants them. Some because they consider that they are a kind of floating prisons that go against human rights and will damage the image of cities. Others because they do not want conflict between the racist and xenophobic inhabitants (there are also here), and those who are more humanitarianly aware.
This confrontation is evident in Portland, in one of the most depressed areas of England, where there have already been demonstrations in one direction and another, often in the same place and at the same time, exchanging insults and a trifle from things coming to fruition. to the hands. The organization Stand Up to Racism (“Let’s face racism”) calls for a more humane treatment for asylum seekers (the queue of unresolved cases exceeds sixty thousand, some for years), while the extreme rightists of No to the barge display banners that say “I hope they rape you” and affirm that, with the presence of five hundred men in the town, their wives and daughters are not going to dare to go out into the street.
Of those half a thousand “special” passengers from the Bibby Stockholm, none have yet arrived due to a succession of obstacles and bureaucratic inconveniences. First, a few weeks ago, there were going to be two hundred, then fifty, later (just today) twenty-five. But for now the barge remains empty, in a private marina in Portland, run by a commercial company that has accepted the government’s money.
It is not the Wonder of the Seas or a five-star hotel, far from it, but for the millions of Britons reluctant to the arrival of immigrants, it offers too much luxury. The size of a football field, and although it does not have a swimming pool, it does have Internet, five lounges (one of them with computers and unlimited access to the network), its own doctor and nurse, a gym, a smoking area and another picnic area, and a prison-style interior courtyard with basketball hoops for exercise. Movie nights are organized, and each passenger receives eleven euros a month to buy food or second-hand clothes in the shop.
The Bibby Stockholm is reserved for male asylum seekers in the last year of processing their files, and who are therefore almost certain to be accepted in the UK. Upon arrival, they will be given an introductory course, like when one signs up for a gym, to teach them how things work and make recommendations on how to behave in public. It’s not a prison in the sense that you can get out when you want, and a bus makes the round trip from the marina to the town of Weymouth between seven in the morning and eleven at night. But it is because it is anchored in a security area, behind a fence, and to leave it requires permission and the activation of an electronic card. The integration of immigrants is stimulated by walking and cycling tours, football and cricket matches, fairs and festivals. They are encouraged to socialize with neighbors, but in small groups, so as not to intimidate them.
The arrival of the first residents of the Bibby Stockholm is expected any day now, once the barge passes its fire tests. Meanwhile, its maintenance costs the Government twenty-five thousand euros a day between some things and others, which means that it is not necessarily a cheaper option than putting the refugees in three and four-star hotels. But it is not a question of money, but of the resistance of the natives to live with refugees from Syria, Libya, Yemen, Eritrea, Afghanistan… All those whom they accuse of taking jobs away from them, saturating services and diluting culture.
If no port in the country except Portland welcomes the barges, no less problematic is the idea of ??cramming asylum seekers into disused military installations. One of them, in the county of Essex, has encountered an outbreak of tuberculosis among its inhabitants due to health problems, and the opening of another in Lincolnshire is blocked due to lack of access to electricity, running water and gas.
The Bibby Stockholm barge has been used in the past by the US Navy and the Dutch government, and to house personnel in charge of drilling for oil in the Shetland Islands. No one who has lived on it would mistake it for a cruise ship like the Wonder of the Seas.
