We need to welcome many more refugees than Cameron suggests
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Version 0 of 1. Terrible things are happening across our continent. On just the other side of the Channel people are living in destitution, scraping together an existence as they wait and hope to come to Britain. In the Czech Republic people are being rounded up on trains, their forearms marked with felt tips before they are held in detention. In Hungary the police are stopping people with tickets from boarding trains to Germany. In the Mediterranean people are floating through night and day on vessels that are barely seaworthy. Many of those vessels sink, and the people on them, like the child washed up dead on Turkey’s shores this week, never make it to the other side alive. These are people – treated differently from me only because of the country in which they were born. Related: UN calls on European Union to take 200,000 more refugees The majority of those who have crossed the Mediterranean are from Syria (according to figures from the arrival countries that have published them). It’s impossible to imagine what it must be like to flee the dangers of that country and arrive on a continent where you’re herded like cattle, left to rot in camps on borders and denied access to transport because of the country in which you were born. And that’s those who even make it to Europe: the number of people who have died on Mediterranean migration routes so far this year is more than 400 higher than the figure for the same period in 2014. This continent – so scarred itself from the blood spilt in conflicts of the past – is utterly failing to extend solidarity to the victims of the violence ripping through countries on the other side of the Mediterranean. Britain has been one of the worst offenders. It has taken enormous public pressure for ministers to finally commit to taking in more refugees – but it seems likely that this number won’t even reach the tens of thousands. I can’t help but wonder how the prime minister can have seen the pictures of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach, yet take so long to commit to doing the one thing that would immediately help people like him to safety. His bowing to public pressure is a positive first step – but his initial reluctance to do what’s right is deeply worrying. Perhaps Cameron felt trapped by his own spinelessness when it comes to standing up to Ukip’s rhetoric on immigration. For years now the British people have been told by politicians of all the major parties that people coming from abroad are to be feared, creating the toxic situation where our own prime minister feels unable to help those in need. People in my home city of Brighton and Hove want to welcome refugees There isn’t a perfect solution to this crisis. Our own country’s history has played a part in many of the atrocities we’re seeing today. We drew the borders of many Middle Eastern countries and went on to bomb them under false pretences, helping to set the scene for the civil wars of today. But we can’t change the past. Instead we’ve got to learn lessons and focus on practical measures to alleviate people’s suffering. The first thing we must do is welcome more refugees into Britain – far more than Cameron seems to be contemplating. An exact number will need to be worked out that reflects our historic responsibility and our relative position in the EU, but perhaps a good starting point for discussion is the 240,000 suggested by the Guardian’s Patrick Kingsley. Crucially – and immediately – Cameron should be talking to other European leaders to ensure that each country in the EU takes its fair share of refugees. Related: This refugee crisis was a test for David Cameron. He’s flunked it | John Harris Second, we need to do what we can in our neighbourhoods. People in my home city of Brighton and Hove want to welcome refugees. We take our status as a city of sanctuary seriously, including trying to coordinate the huge number of people offering time, money and space in their homes to those seeking refuge in our country. And I am working on a cross-party basis to urge David Cameron to properly resource local communities wanting to support refugees – as well as to demand he fulfil the UK’s responsibilities. It’s been incredibly heartening to see people up and down Britain responding so generously to this crisis. From more than 350,000 people who are calling for the government to let in more asylum seekers, to the people travelling to Calais to donate essential items to those living in the so-called “jungle”. The pressure has begun to work: Cameron wouldn’t have changed his mind otherwise. The fact is that we’re better as a country, and as a continent, than the political establishment who purport to represent our views. It’s time that governments right across Europe came together and take the urgent action needed to make us proud of the way we treat those in peril. |