By John Battle, Commission Chair
It’s again peak channel crossing time for small boats carrying desperate asylum seekers from the coast of France. This week violence broke out just offshore between rival groups of Kurdish, Afghani and African smugglers in attempts to take over leaving boats. Reports of “overwhelming numbers” dominate media coverage.
Internationally, here nationally and locally the Catholic Church has a long, highly respected and valued contribution to supporting migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. In 2004 The Vatican published “The Love of Christ Towards Migrants” stressing the “ministry of welcome”. In 2006 our Catholic Bishops issued “Mission of the Church to Migrants” opening with the words
“Across the country in all our Dioceses we have migrants from nearly every continent in the world adding people and vibrancy to our parishes. We the Bishops are calling for a more visible culture of welcome hospitality and solidarity with our migrant sisters and brothers“.
In 2016 our Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission produced “Welcome the Stranger”, a handbook of what that means in practice. Bishop Marcus contributed an encouraging spiritual introduction.
With Catholic Care, the Commission set up what has become the St Monica’s Housing Trust – two houses providing support and refuge for single asylum-seeking women “with no access to public funds”.
More recently the Catholic bishops Conference has issued “Love the Stranger” setting out Catholic social teaching on migration and refugees and underlining Pope Francis’s constant emphasis that “every migrant has a name, a face and a story“ that we cannot reduce to numbers.
Moreover, we are reminded of Leviticus 19 that we should “love the stranger as ourselves as we too were strangers in Egypt”, a message with the loudest echo in our islands in which we historically are all migrants as modern DNA illustrates. A visit to the Kent Hugenot museum reveals the small boat refugees from religious persecution in France which included the family Farage!
In Practice our parishes are places of welcome. The contribution of Catholics to supporting migrants and refugees in our Diocese is quietly understated. Asylum seekers put in hotels are visited and helped to resettle as refugees in our neighbourhoods with visits and practical material support not least by members of the SVP parish conferences.
The St Vincent’s Centre in Leeds is a major support base providing practical assistance, regular teams of volunteer hotel visitors and led by the education and refugee coordinator, Julie, delivering the city’s free educational (including ESOL) support and asylum and refugee advice and referral.
Recently a well-attended open “briefing session” on asylum and refugees was organised to challenge the myths and misinformation starting again to dominate a media approach addicted to alarming rather than informing. Notably, around the city graffiti is appearing “Illegals are criminals” echoing the Trump tropes.
Clarifying the difference between migrants (immigrants and emigrants who come and go worldwide and mostly in the global South) and those forced out of their homes to seek refuge is crucial. Notably most fleeing conflicts violence or persecution become “internally displaced persons” within their own country. (Over half of the 118 million forcibly moved in 2024).
Recently, those fleeing are from Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Sudan. The main historical countries have been Iran, Turkey, Germany, Russia, Pakistan and Uganda, who each took in between 2 and 4 million asylum seekers.
In 2023 the UK received 500,000 legal immigrants (in a total population of 69.1 million), the post Brexit “Boris-bounce”. Last year immigration added 350,000.
But too often the language of legal legitimate migration slips into the loose term “illegal” migrants.
The UNCHR opposes this damaging description recommending the term “Irregular ” migration pointing out (as does Catholic social teaching) that defining people as “illegal ” denies their basic humanity. What’s more people can become irregular in numerous ways (and through no fault of their own) that are not “criminal”, such as overstaying work permits or educational visas, not possessing proper or updated documentation, historical lack of paperwork (cf Windrush generation).
“Irregulars” contrary to the Trump language, are not all criminals, terrorists or disease carriers. Moreover, the recent Trump ban on migrants from primarily 12 African countries blocks any refugees among others from Afghanistan, Eritrea or Sudan applying to enter America and totally undermining the UN 1951 Refugee Charter.
Closer to home, harsher migrant entry and refugee application rules (not to mention a bureaucratic backlog) are compounded by an arbitrary system of a very few “safe routes”. There have only been secure access routes for refugees applying recently from Syria, Hong Kong and Ukraine who make up the majority of refugees coming into the UK and are the only legal routes.
All other irregular migrants including asylum seekers who apply to become refugees and those granted asylum and “leave to remain”, in total only adds up to 0.6% of the UK population.
In other words, the UK takes far less refugees than other European countries and far less than neighbouring poor countries in Africa. Our contribution of welcoming the desperate stranger is presently far exaggerated.
Changing the perceptions generated by negative exclusionary language to one of welcome, hospitality, solidarity and celebration to be practiced in our parishes is now a priority challenge and judging by the positive response at St Vincent’s, encouragingly, our Church is prepared to continue to lead.