←

Diary of a (Maybe) Retired Pastor

Tag: UK immigration

  • Hostile Environment

    mayberetiredpastor

    Hostile Environment

    5 For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love.

    2 Peter 1:5-7 New Testament, The Bible

    Recently, BBC News ran an article highlighting the struggles some people have had to prove their British citizenship even though they had lived in the UK all their lives and their parents were British Citizens (1). One man was happily employed in a well-paying job but on applying for his passport for a trip abroad he was suddenly told he was not a citizen and had no right to live and work in the UK. His employer had no choice but to sack him and he spent years in the wilderness having no official status, becoming homeless and severely depressed. It has taken years for his citizenship to be acknowledged and he has been left still traumatised by his experience. Other examples were given. Despite all the fanfare surrounding the “Windrush Generation” and how the Home Office would put right the unfairness suffered by that generation, their children and others still suffer. They suffer because of the “hostile environment” culture put in place at the Home Office by the then Home Secretary, and subsequently Prime Minister, Theresa May. The “hostile environment” means that instead of assisting applicants to determine their status the Home Office makes it as difficult as possible in the hope that people will give-up and leave the UK so “helping” to make the immigration numbers look “better”.

    The Bible passage quoted above would be familiar to most Christians who would generally seek to apply them to their lives as individual human beings. This is good as far as it goes, but the message of the gospel means that virtues such as these are not intended to be confined to a person’s private, religious life. They are intended to spill out of the individual and to shape society. Consequently, Christians seek to shape society so that it exhibits goodness, knowledge, love etc. The Bible is perfectly clear about the treatment of foreigners and immigrants. God defends their cause and we are to love them (Deuteronomy 10:17-19, Old Testament, The Bible).

    Theresa May is well-known as the daughter of a Church of England minister and has publicly stated that she is a Christian (2). It is difficult to understand, then, how she could have thought it was godly and Christian deliberately to develop a culture of hostility in the Home Office. We often bemoan the state of our society and the world in general, but if Christians, particularly those with worldly influence, ignore or refuse to seek to embed the virtues of the Bible into our culture and do the exact opposite we have no right to complain.

    We must not confuse virtues with issues. Issues are the matters of policy – gay marriage, assisted dying, immigration etc. – virtues are about the kind of society we want to be, it’s fundamental culture – goodness, gentleness, mercy, honesty etc. Christians may differ and divide over issues but about virtues we should be of one mind and heart.

    Christians say they desire to see God’s Kingdom come. When we  support or even promote a culture antithetical to biblical virtues we work against the Kingdom and betray our King.

    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresa_May
    2. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93lzl1vpeqo

  • Migrants – Who Are the Real Criminals?

    mayberetiredpastor

    Migrants – Who Are the Real Criminals?

    28 Every third year you shall bring out the full tithe of your produce for that year, and store it within your towns; 29 the Levites, because they have no allotment or inheritance with you, as well as the resident aliens, the orphans, and the widows in your towns, may come and eat their fill so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work that you undertake.

    Deuteronomy 14:28-29

    Last week, the BBC featured an article in which they tracked down the person who provided the boat in which a young girl was suffocated as her family tried (with scores of others) to reach the UK from Calais. This was but one tragic story amongst the many as desperate people risk all to reach the UK. This particular story stood out because video footage was captured of the little girl with her father  getting into the boat. They had been living in Sweden and the children had been happily settled there for years but then they were deported (1). The moving interviews of the distraught father were a illustration of just how badly wrong our immigration system (or lack of it!) is.

    The identification and running down of the smuggler (2) was an impressive piece of investigative journalism but one was left wondering what was the point?  It would not solve the family’s problems or the sadness of the siblings. It would not alter the fact that people will continue to attempt the hazardous journey across the Channel. Unquestionably, the smuggler and others like him are exploiting a situation where they offer hope to desperate people, but the smugglers have not created the situation – they merely exploit it.

    The language which is used of irregular migrants frames the issue as a legal matter. So, people providing the means of transport across the Channel are smugglers, migrants adopting irregular means of entry are illegal, and – under legislation proposed and carried out under the now last UK government – such migrants run the risk of immediate deportation to a third country (the Rwanda plan) and are treated effectively as criminals such that they are detained, denied work, and potentially, permanently denied the right to apply for entry to the UK. Making this a matter of criminal law conveniently provides a framework for justifying the exclusion of migrants regardless of circumstances and avoiding our moral responsibility to another human being. They are criminals and so they are at fault. We, on the other hand, have no fault and so are free of moral obligation.

    The UK, of course, is not alone in this approach. Europe and the US, bastions of the liberal, democratic order, take the same approach. It is a convenient washing of the hands, an excuse for refusing to develop decent, humane, well thought-out immigration policies that address the desperate circumstances of migrants and fairness to the resident population. It enables us to turn a blind eye to the underlying causes of international poverty, inequality and the impact of power politics by the self-same nations and their rivals.

    Returning to the specific issue of the Calais migrants, it baffles me that we (the UK) do not simply set-up a visa processing unit close to the migrant camps. Surely that would be cheaper than deploying boats to police the Channel, paying the French police to monitor (not very effectively) the beaches, and building a big fence! This would remove the need for migrants to make the hazardous crossing and eliminate the opportunity for the smugglers and, perhaps, no more little girls will need to suffocate at the bottom of an overcrowded small boat.

    1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68930088 acc. 6 Jul 24 13:26
    2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx77l5ej2yyo acc. 6 Jul 24 13:28