Strangers at the Gates: Welcoming the Migrant & Refugee

The Lampedusa Cross – made of wood from broken boats washed up on the shore on the Italian island. A constant reminder of the plight of refugees.

Last month I addressed the Gibraltar Archdeaconry Synod. I was grateful for the opportunity to speak on one of the most pressing ethical and political issues of our times. When we agreed the diocesan strategy in 2015, we included striving for the creation of a just society by defending the poor, the disadvantaged and those in need. Since then, our concern for work with migrants and refugees has become a real priority. Many chaplaincies throughout the diocese are involved in this work one way or another. At a European level, the crisis over refugees has been one of the most difficult and divisive questions that the EU has had to face in the last decade.

It has mostly been assumed that responsibility for welcoming and integrating refugees is mainly a state responsibility. But one of the most interesting developments in the last few years has been the creation of humanitarian corridors or humanitarian admission schemes in which private individuals or groups work together with government agencies to enable refugees to immigrate. This model is particularly well established in Canada, which has over the last 40 years welcomed some 300,000 refugees through private sponsorship programmes. In recent years, nearly half of all refugees to Canada have been privately sponsored. About 75% of Canadian sponsors are churches or faith-based NGOs.

The community of Sant’Egidio has been a leader in this field. In collaboration with the Italian Protestant Churches it has established a humanitarian corridor from Libya to Italy. UNHCR, in dialogue with the Italian Government, identifies families living in a camp in Libya who are eligible for relocation, perhaps because they are especially vulnerable or there are children at risk. Individuals in Italy sign-up with Sant’Egidio to sponsor and receive a migrant family. Welcome contracts are entered into, and the refugees are then flown legally and safely from Libya to a home and support network arranged for them in, say, Milan.

A humanitarian corridor is also being developed in France with Catholic and Protestant partners, and there are schemes underway in Germany and Ireland. In the UK, the Home Office is very interested in this kind of arrangement and is working with the Church of England amongst others on these kinds of partnerships. Three schemes are underway: the Gateway Protection programme, the Syrian Vulnerable persons resettlement scheme and the Vulnerable Children Resettlement Scheme.

In Belgium, where I live, all the main faith groups, including the Anglican Church, have committed to working with the immigration ministry to bring 130 vulnerable families from camps in Lebanon into Belgium. We Anglicans are a relatively small group, so our church has committed to sponsor one family, at a cost of €17,000. Just before Christmas the first two families from Lebanon arrived at Brussels Airport under this scheme, amidst a lot of excitement and publicity. Their arrival felt like a contemporary Christmas story!

The first two Syrian refugee families benefitting from the humanitarian corridor arrived in Belgium in December 2017. News coverage here.

Jesus said, “Come you who are blessed of my Father, for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.” As a Diocese in Europe we are committed to making a difference for the lives of the refugees we find in our communities. Bishop’s Appeals have supported work with refugees. The last Advent appeal supported the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center, connected to our Episcopal sister church of St Paul’s Within the Walls, Rome. This year’s Lent appeal is going to our own new project in Calais. Here we are working with the Diocese of Canterbury and SPCG to fund a project officer and new chaplain to the Calais chaplaincy.

There are still many refugees and migrants in the areas around Calais and Dunkirk.

The photo above shows an Iranian family living in the woods near Dunkirk. Their story was reported here. The man is severely disabled and unable to walk or speak. The woman tells journalists that police had slashed their tents whilst clearing the woods overnight. She shows cuts in the fabric of the tent, which they have now abandoned. They are desperate to get to the UK where they think job prospects are better, but they seem to have no idea of border and migration policy.

I want to end with this thought. After Easter last year, I visited a refugee camp on the Serbia-Croatia border and was introduced to some of the children living there. The Serbs are very welcoming to refugees, because many of them know in their recent history what it is like to be displaced from your homes. These children are the future. We want the best for them, and what each of us chooses to do now will have long-term consequences. May God give us welcoming hearts to meet the strangers at our gate, and then invite them in.

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The full text of my address to the Gibraltar Archdeaconry Synod is available here. In addition to the topic of private sponsorship, it deals with the confusion of definitions around ‘migrant’ and ‘refugee’, explores some relevant biblical material and outlines five broad principles for engaging with the European refugee crisis.

The EU (Withdrawal) Bill: Debate in the UK House of Lords

Whichever side of the Brexit debate you are on, one of the nefarious consequences of the referendum has been the debasement of public discourse in the UK. ‘Brexit’ has lowered the tone with which people talk to each other. And it has made sayable things which, for good reason, were previously unsayable.

Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds, leads the Church of England’s bishops on Europe issues in the House of Lords. He recently gave a powerful speech on this subject. It is reproduced below, and can also be read on Bishop Nick’s own blog here.

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Bishop Nick Baines:

This is the basic text of my speech in the House of Lords during the Second Reading of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill:

My Lords, many speakers will attend to the technical and legal details of this Bill, and they will be better equipped than I am to do so. I want to use my time, therefore, to pay attention to a question that lies behind the nature of this Bill and the choices we are required to make in scrutinising and attempting to improve it. This question applies to all sides of the argument, whether we think leaving the European Union is an unmitigated disaster or the best thing since Winston Churchill mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

The question goes beyond economics and trade deals, haunts constitutional matters, and refuses to be submerged by ideologically-driven assertions that promise what can’t be promised and ridicule arguments that are inconvenient. Brexit has unleashed the normalisation of lies, and rendered too easily acceptable the demonising of people who, with integrity and intelligence, venture to hold a contrary view. We are in danger of securing an economic platform at the expense of a culture of respect and intelligent democratic argument.

The question I allude to is simply this: at the end of this process what sort of Britain – and Europe – do we want to inhabit? I accept that this is almost an existential question – challenge, even – but as we debate the legislative detail, we must not lose sight of the point of it all. Existential questions can’t be determined by statute, but the shape of statute speaks loudly of what we think our society should be for, and for whom. This is why debate about discretionary powers of ministers to make laws with equivalent force to primary legislation is of such importance. When such powers are so wide that this House is asked to leave to the judgement of ministers the meaning of such terms as “appropriate”, it is only right to ask for definition. After all, history is riddled with the unintended consequences of what might be termed “enabling legislation”.

But, let’s be honest. Brexit is technically so demanding and complex that, if I were Prime Minister, I would want the authority to deal flexibly with anomalies and technical weaknesses as quickly and smoothly as possible as the consequences of Brexit become known. I understand the technical element of this; but, this Bill goes beyond legislative technicalities and impacts strongly on constitutional arrangements and the balance of power. Surely, if “taking back control” by Parliament is to mean anything, it must mean refraining from bypassing the essential scrutiny that Parliament is privileged and required to provide. Hard parliamentary scrutiny might be inconvenient, but the long-term consequences of granting ministers unprecedented powers (as set out in this Bill) must be considered as they will shape the deeper culture of our state and change our assumptions about democracy.

I think this suggests that, although any sane person will recognise the government’s need to have significant powers to ensure that process (and legal certainty post-Brexit) is as smooth as possible, there must be limits to the use of such powers – or, as a colleague of mine put it succinctly and colourfully, we must avoid Brexit Britain turning into Tudor Britain.

Clearly, there is a balance to be struck here. I do not believe that this Bill, as currently formulated, achieves that balance; nor does it demonstrate that the genuine fears of constitutional experts and lawyers have been properly heard.

I have two concerns about the culture in which this debate is being conducted in this country – looked on with incredulity by those looking at us from beyond these islands.

First, almost every paper, every debate, every statement about Brexit is clothed in purely economic terms. It is almost as if the economy were everything and economics the only Good. Yet, the economy – one might add the word ‘trade’ – is not an end in itself, but rather a means to an end … which is about human flourishing and the Common Good. The economy – trade – exists for the building of society, but society is more than the economy. It is not enough for us uncritically to assume that a market society (as opposed to a social market) is a given or an ultimate good. Culture is more than money and things.

Secondly, the referendum tore off the veneer of civilised discourse in this country and unleashed – gave permission for, perhaps – an undisguised language of suspicion, denigration, hatred and vilification. To be a Leaver is to be narrow-mindedly stupid; to be a Remainer is to be a traitor. Our media – and not just the ill-disciplined bear pit of social media – have not helped in challenging this appalling rhetoric or the easy acceptance of such destructive language.

Yet, beneath this lurks an uncomfortable charge articulated in a recent Carnegie report on tensions between Russia and the West by the deputy director of the Russian Institute for Political and Military Analysis in Moscow: if Russians would still die for the Motherland, what would we die for? Or, as Martin Luther King suggested: if we don’t know what we would die for, we have no idea what we would live for. Once we have ‘done’ Brexit, then what? What was it for? Who do we think we are?

If this debate on Britain’s future is to have any lasting value, and not just undermine long-term relationships of respect and trust, then attention must be paid to the corruption of this public discourse. Politicians could begin by moderating their language and engaging in intelligent, informed and respectful argument that chooses to eschew personalised or generalised vindictiveness or violence. My Lords, we must not allow our body politic to be defined by Brexit; rather, we will need to transcend the divisions currently being forced by the terms of discussion. Peers have an opportunity to model good ways of disagreeing well that might encourage others that there is an alternative to a political culture that appears sometimes to have been reduced to an unbridled tribalism where the first casualty is too often the dignity of the other.

My Lords, please let us not lose sight of the deeper question that lies behind the technical detail of this Bill.