non-EEA probably means illegal immigrants too. You can’t really contribute into the social security system when you are not allowed to work legally. That doesn’t mean that you don’t contribute to the society through your hard work.

I’ve met people with refugee status who did receive some benefits and worked hard illegally. I’m not going to count them as a cost, they were working in construction jobs, making honest living and not taking the benefits was not an option for them because they would have had to explain how do they sustain themselves. A Palestinian guy that I met who was in this situation is now doing real estate development, now legally since he eventually got a legal status. There are plenty like that.

Do you know how expensive UK is? You can’t have a life on benefits, unless you are rich you have to work.

It doesn’t make any sense to go to UK to spend your life in a room barely being able to buy food using the state benefits.

That last point is always been the way I've seen it - especially here in Australia, the idea that anyone would risk their lives and travel half way across the world in subhuman conditions just to be able to spend their life bumming off social security seems pretty laughable. Indeed they're exactly the sort of people I'd think we need more of in this country, yet neither side of politics is budging from this absurd (and probably illegal) position of not allowing anyone that arrives by boat an option to even apply for asylum on our shores.