Church Criticises New Proposals for Asylum Seekers

Recently, the British Conservative leader Michael Howard announced that his party believe that the UK should make stricter laws on asylum seekers and immigration. This has been described as “alarming” by Churches across the country.

Conservative leader Michael Howard in a keynote speech at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, claimed that nowadays the government is exercising a “chaotic and out of control” system for immigration. He said, “...and we have a home secretary who believes that ‘there is no obvious legal limit to legal immigration.’”

Howard signalled that he thought it should be Britain’s intention to pull out of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention on the Status of Refugees, that is, the international agreement under which member states of the United Nations provide protection and safety for those fleeing persecution and in many cases certain death.

“And in month one, we’ll set out plans to enable parliament to put an annual limit on the number of people who come to Britain,” he added.

Secretary of the Churches’ Commission for Racial Justice (part of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland) the Rev Arlington Trotman said, “It is absolutely alarming and dangerous, that the Tories could even contemplate refusing to protect desperate, frightened and often violently abused men, women and children. This is particularly alarming at a time when significant numbers of people are fleeing persecution and the real threat of death because of the “war on terror” and its consequences, and because of civil instability in so many other parts of the world.”

”The Convention offers a measure of protection to those seeking refuge, but CCRJ believes that, as Christians and people of faith, Britain has a moral duty to offer compassion, justice, and at the very least a modicum of peace to those who are oppressed and pushed out of their homelands,” said Rev Trotman.

Rev Trotman added, “As the minimum ‘guarantee’ that tortured and abused people would eventually find safety, the Convention needs to be strengthened, not weakened or abandoned.”