Journalist Carole Malone and former Labour adviser Scarlett MccGwire clashed over the conditions on the Bibby Stockholm.
Bibby Stockholm is berthed at the port of Portland in Dorset and holds around 500 men while they await the outcome of their asylum applications.
Speaking on GB News, Scarlett MccGwire explained: "If we process people properly and we send the people home who shouldn't be here, then the people who are here, we need to look after them.
"Once they started sending people back to Albania, the Albanians stopped coming.
Scarlett Mccgwire said that the asylum seekers need to be "properly processed"
GBNews
"So, if you're talking about things that work, it's having a proper process.
"Of course, you can't send people back to a war-torn country. I've had a refugee from Yemen living with me. I've got somebody moving in from the Sudan next week. Those people cannot go back."
"There is no question that those people who come over are quite desperate and what's incredible about them is they try and go to college and within a few years they'll be taxpayers."
Malone responded: "It's fantastic what you're doing but people we've got to stop pretending that the Bibby Stockholm is hell.
The Bibby Stockholm has been controversial PA"It's not, they have everything they need on there."
MccGwire said: "What I'm trying to say is, the problem is a lot of them are very traumatised. They shouldn't be in a place like that."
GB News host Andrew Pierce then waded in: "Come on, be honest, deep down, some of these are economic migrants, young men in their 30s."
To which MccGwire added: "That's why I'm saying they should be processed."
Carole Malone said they need to "stop pretending that Bibby Stockholm is hell"
GBNews
There are understood to be about 300 male asylum seekers on the barge, which the Home Office claims has capacity for 500.
Up to four people are expected to share each cabin.
Women and children are not in the barge, but there have been calls for it to be closed after an asylum seeker being housed on the vessel is believed to have killed himself.
The man, said to have been in his 20s, is understood to have been found early on Tuesday morning by his roommate.
