Adil Ray did not hold back as he discussed asylum seekers on Thursday's episode of Good Morning Britain.
The 47-year-old was hosting the show alongside Charlotte Hawkins when the conversation turned to reports that the UK government plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Adil and Charlotte invited Sonia Sodja and Cindy Yu into the ITV studio to discuss the story, and things got rather heated at one point.
As Cindy argued her point, Adil admitted that he hates the term "illegal refugees" but said he thinks they are "essentially desperate refugees".
"Yes, some of them will be economic migrants, but it was interesting because it was reported that over half of the claims last year were approved, over half of them are legitimate asylum seekers, so why are we not finding them safer methods?" Cindy said.
"I appreciate that channel crossing is not good, people smugglers, we shouldn't be offering people those options, but I'm not really sure Rwanda is the way forward."
As the conversation turned to the costs of the situation with migrants, Cindy said the government are "not allowing them to contribute back".
She then touched upon the differences in culture and said "there is a reason we treat Afghan refugees differently to Ukrainian refugees".
"As someone who's come from China, culture does matter," she explained.
"The similarity of culture that the UK has as a European country to Ukraine will matter in how we treat them."
Sounding confused, Adil asked Cindy: "What elements of culture?"
Cindy replied: "Like the Homes for Ukraine scheme for example, I think we should open that up to all refugees and allow any family that wants to to offer themselves up but I don't think the uptake for that will be as high in the UK for Afghan refugees as it would be for Ukrainians."
But Adil strongly disagreed and when Cindy mentioned cultural appeal, he asked her: "I don't understand your point, what's the cultural appeal?"
"I don't think we're talking about appeal here, we talking about affinities, we're talking about similarities. Likely to be Christian, likely to eat the same kind of food..." Cindy responded.
"I just think it's a really dangerous world we're in, we're looking at refugees and judging them by their religion or their colour or their creed or their background, they're human beings," Adil said, sounding even more frustrated.
Cindy then continued: "To have someone living in your home, I think is slightly different and we are talking about this kind of can we apply the Homes for Ukrainians scheme wider to other refugees but I think we should offer it."
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV and ITV Hub.
