The asylum system of any free nation should, if it is to be fair, primarily benefit those who are from communities or cultures that are genuinely under threat. This was how it worked in the past with the relatively modest numbers of people who escaped from the Iron Curtain countries after the erection of the Berlin Wall. Those who could prove that they were persecuted or at risk of persecution in the Communist states, such as Christians, Jews or political dissidents were often given sanctuary in the free West.
Since the Iron Curtain fell, and prior to that via the writings of authors such as Solzhenitsyn, enough information has come out of this formerly enslaved area to show just how bad things were in the so-called ‘workers paradise’ and it is plain to see that most of those who sought sanctuary were indeed at risk of oppression. There were, as I recall, very few of what could be called the oppressor class of hardened Communists from the Soviet Union during the Cold War given leave to remain in the United Kingdom. The exceptions to this rule would be those who had second thoughts about Communism and defected to the West, along with those defectors with relevant and useful knowledge of the actions of the Soviet government or those British intelligence assets in the Soviet administration who were at risk of being exposed and thereby killed by the Soviets or their allies.
We in the West did not, to any appreciable extent during the Cold War, open our doors to hardened Communists who did not denounce Communism or those who would promote Communism in the West. To do so would have been the equivalent of leaving ones front door open and inviting the local burglars to come in and take what they wanted. Unfortunately today Britain is ignoring those who could reasonably be described as being at risk of genuine oppression when it comes to asylum and I speak here specifically of the Syrian Christians
The reason that I bring up what is now the ‘ancient history’ of the Cold War is that Britain now seems to have an asylum policy regarding Syria that unlike its previous policies, ignores those members of groups that are without a doubt being oppressed there. Instead Britain has brought in thousands of people from what could reasonably be described as the oppressor Islamic culture in that benighted land and has ignored almost completely the plight of the Syrian Christians.
Whilst I knew that there was an imbalance between the number of Syrian Christians, who made up approximately ten percent of pre civil war Syria and the number of Muslim Syrians who were being brought to the United Kingdom, I had no idea that the the imbalance was as bad as it has been revealed by Christian journalists and campaigners. According to a report on the British Christian radio station Premier Radio and research carried out by the Barnabas Fund an organisation that monitors the oppression of Christians, not a single Syrian Christian has been given asylum in the United Kingdom in the first three months of this year. This is a complete inversion of morality as asylum should primarily be given to those members of Syrian minority communities that are the target of baseless hatred such as Christians. Britain, acting on the advice of United Nations refugee agencies, has opened its doors to Muslim Syrians, who by dint of being the majority group, are and were at less risk of religious oppression than others such as Christians or Yazidis. This is a complete scandal and may well indicate a pro-Islam bias in Britain’s asylum system that needs to be tackled as it means that this system is open to abuse by those not oppressed and is not helping the people who it plainly should be helping.
Premier Christian Radio said:
The Home Office has admitted that not a single Christian was among the 1,112 Syrian refugees resettled in the UK in the first three months of this year.
The four Christians out of 1,358 Syrian refugees recommended by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), for resettlement in the UK were rejected. Only Muslim refugees from the war-torn country were granted permission to resettle.
The information came to light following a freedom of information request by the Barnabas Fund – a charity that supports persecuted Christians.
In a statement, the charity said: “As Barnabas Fund recently reported, of the 7,060 Syrian refugees the UNHCR recommended to the UK in 2017 only 25 were Christians (0.35 per cent). However, the Home Office only accepted eleven of these – meaning that Christians made up only 0.23 per cent of Syrian refugees resettled in the UK last year.”
The charity explained it had to “go to considerable lengths to obtain these figures in the face of what appeared to be a sustained attempt by Home Office officials to avoid their release”.
The information was provided following the charity taking the “extreme step of obtaining an order from the Information Commissioner’s Office threatening the Home Office with contempt of court proceedings in the High Court”.
I find the Home Office’s position to be morally abhorrent. Any decent asylum system should, if it is trying to be ethical, should prioritise a) those people who are from groups that are being oppressed through no fault of their own such as Christians who have been subjected to the baseless hatred of Jihadis and b) those from cultures that are not going to negatively impact the host society. It appears that the Home Office has met neither of these standards. The Home Office has consistently ignored the plight of Syrian Christians even though there is ample evidence that Christians have been specifically targeted for violence and oppression by Islamic jihadis. The Home Office also doesn’t seem to have cared whether or not bringing in 7000 more people from the inherently violent culture of Islam will negatively impact on either the majority Christian/Atheist population of the UK or on settled and loyal non Muslim migrants to the UK.
Having read the full article on the subject of the lack of Christian refugees allowed into the UK I find myself getting more and more disgusted with the behaviour of the Home Office. At best they seem to have been lazy and have subcontracted out the screening of potential refugees to the United Nations, an act that is foolish in the extreme as it removes control of choice of asylum seeker from the hands of the British government. At worst, the actions of the Home Office gives the impression that the Home Office has an active anti-Christian bias. The Home Office obviously know that the release of these figures will cause anger among the population or they would not have fought against the release of these astounding figures so vehemently. It should not take the threat of a High Court contempt of court action to release figures that should be public knowledge. The lengths that the Home Office have gone to prevent the release of figures does suggest that something is badly wrong with Britain’s asylum system and that is not helping those who are either deserving of help or acting effectively where such help can be morally justified.
The primary duties of the British Home Office are to keep the country and the subject safe via its responsibilities for policing, securing the border and by barring entry to the UK of those who will or may endanger the lives of British subjects. By having a ‘no Syrian Christians allowed’ policy, which is something that is becoming increasingly obvious, the Home Office has failed to live up to these duties and responsibilities.
The Home Office has been badly run for many years and its immigration departments have been described by previous Home Secretaries, such as Labour’s John Reid in 2006 as ‘not fit for purpose’. It appears that little has got better since then and as we can see from the scandal over Christian refugees and asylum seekers in some areas it has got vastly worse. Not prioritising those Christians who are without a doubt the targets of oppression and allowing in thousands of Syrians of the oppressor caste of Muslims is completely wrong. It is an act that is both monumentally stupid and one that inverts completely the moral code that we should help those in distress and punish those who cause such distress.
It’s plain to see that both we the ordinary British subject and those such as the Christians of Syrian who are genuinely fleeing murderous oppression, deserve much better than we are getting from our Home Office. The information uncovered by Premier Christian Radio and by the Barnabas Fund show that there is an urgent need for root and branch reform of the Home Office, which should include the urgent removal of those civil servants and ministerial advisers who have allowed such a situation to develop. Normally civil servants are not held to a similar level of accountability as Ministers are but the situation in the Home Office has now become so bad that maybe it is time to revisit this custom and make civil servants more accountable to both Parliament and to the public for the decisions they make and the advice they give to Ministers. Twelve years on from John Reid’s famous denunciation of the Home Office things have not improved and as we can see from these latest revelations they seem to have got worse.
What the Home Office is doing is the moral equivalent of a Cold War era Western government giving shelter to some of the worst and most dangerous of Communist agitators and it is something that needs to be challenged. There is a moral sickness in our great departments of state and nowhere is this sickness more plain than in the case of the Home Office leaving Christians to die at the hands of a Muslim oppressor caste whilst simultaneously allowing potentially dangerous Muslim ‘refugees’ from Syria to enter the UK. I’m sickened and disgusted by the behaviour of the Home Office over this issue and I hope others feel the same way too.
