Praying for Our Country to "Act Justly, Love Mercy and Walk Humbly before God."

I've just listened to today's full Statement to the House of Commons by the Immigration Secretary Robert Jenrick, and to an hour of the subsequent debate. The Statement set out Govt plans to create several more large bases to accommodate "illegal migrants" who have arrived via "small boats."

 

The blanket phrase "illegal migrants" recurred with almost liturgical import throughout the 7 minute speech. He was concerned about those who "abuse our generosity", and the "eye-watering cost" of hotel accommodation which would "act like a magnet to millions of people displaced and seeking better economic prospects."

 

Repeatedly he pitched the plight of those arriving on small boats against "the British people", emphasising the "cost to the hard-working British tax-payer", the "security concerns" the need to act in the national interests and "fundamentally alter the posture towards illegal migrants."

At no stage was there the slightest acknowledgement that the word illegal has no relevance to people seeking asylum and refugees. His tone in both the Statement and his responses was divisive and as good a demonstration of "othering" vulnerable people, as much else that is being spoken by Government ministers, all the way up to and including the Prime Minister.

 

He wants to stop "illegal migrants from breaking into our country". In reply to the response from the Shadow Home Secretary, “They would make the United Kingdom a magnet, there would be open doors, an open cheque book, and there would be open season for abuse.”

 

I came away from an hour of this wondering about the future of a country exposed day and daily to rhetoric that dehumanises, lacks the cogency of compassion, and is fuelled by anger and self-righteous claims about "standing up for the British people. A deliberate rhetorical strategy which chooses words carefully for their push-button effect on some of our most negative feelings towards those we are being encouraged to fear, resent and "other".

 

And as a Christian and a citizen, a tax-payer and one of those Mr Jenrick claims to be speaking for, I challenge the arguments he uses, and reject the discourse of division, and refuse to have my ethics so badly misrepresented.

 

Over the past 18 months, I and others in our church community have had much to do with numbers of people seeking asylum and housed in a hotel a few minutes walk from our church. I've listened to stories, looked at photographs, struggled over language barriers, talked of separated family, shared coffee and companionship, tried to find ways of making life less bleak and more hopeful. These are human beings, with inherent worth and a right to live without fear, people with hopes and gifts, deserving of at least a hearing, and until then, treatment under-written with dignity and respect.

 

I refuse to sign up to the language of "othering", the rhetoric of resentment, and policies aimed at making life harder for people already vulnerable. "He has shown us, every human one of us, what He requires: to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God." Aye, that.

Comments

[Dave Summers]

I hope you'll send a copy of this to Messrs Jenrick and Sunak.