"I was a stranger and you welcomed me": the Kingdom of God sighted in Stoke on Trent

Abbas Massih from Iran is dressed in a smart pinstripe shirt, a large metal cross hanging from his neck. Massih closes his eyes as Smith makes a cross with the oil of the catechumens across his head. Massih, from Tehran, has been in the UK for six months. He says he wanted to be a Christian for a number of years and had only been a Muslim because he was born into the Islamic faith. He talks of secret Bible study meetings at his home and his pregnant wife being beaten and losing her baby after authorities in the hardline Muslim country became aware of his Christian leanings.

How the Church of England and the British government fell out over the ‘moral crisis’ of refugees

 

Read more

Speaking in Farsi via an interpreter, Massih, who is now estranged from his family due to his conversion, becomes very animated when discussing his faith. The 27-year-old, who lives in accommodation provided by the church, says: “They welcomed me with an open heart at this church. It was not so much about the material help but about the emotional help that I received and it has made me feel connected to Jesus. This religion is so much more accepting. In Christianity I feel peace.”

read the rest here, the inspiring story of one church in Stoke opening its doors to refugees. Wonderful picture of the Kingdom of God.

Yeovil Churches statement: 'hear each other rather than fear each other'

A joint statement from Yeovil churches, which went out this week:

“As followers of Jesus we are committed to loving our neighbours. This is foundational to who we are called to be; a community of diverse people who reflect a God whose sacrificial love reaches out to each person, irrespective of nationality, belief, behaviour, or any of the other differences that so easily divide us. His love is unconditional, freely offered to the apparently ‘deserving’ and the allegedly ‘undeserving’. That is why grace is amazing.

Whatever the politics, and whichever side of the debate people are on, we encourage our whole community to seek to disagree well, to be kind and to hear each other rather than fear each other. We also pray that in the local, national and international arena, wisdom, justice and mercy will be at the heart of any discussions.

Regardless of how we voted in the recent referendum, as Christians we are committed to loving those from other nations who are here. We declare emphatically that they are welcome. We are resolved to show the same compassion towards them as we seek to show towards all other members of our community. They are important in God’s eyes, so they are important to us. And we will stand alongside them, and against prejudice, discrimination and hatred.

Jesus consistently welcomed strangers and valued those whom others disliked.

He still does, and we stand with Him.”

Refugees: Head and Heart

Now we've had statements, petitions and an outpouring of 'something must be done', the question is 'what'? David Camerons 'something' is to offer sanctuary to a few thousand refugees from the camps around Syria, a tricky thing to do politically whilst trying to project an anti-immigration stance for the nation. However going to the first point of sanctuary in the journey is a good way of cutting the people smugglers out of the equation.

Already Calais is filling up with donations from UK citizens: the compassion is great to see, but as that link reports, not everything that's sent over is useful, and Calais needs people with time as well as people with spare blankets. As one church leader put it at the weekend "we need to be careful that we act well and not just out of a sense of panic". The wave of compassion needs to be harnessed to good information, or it will break on the beach and leave a flotsam of unused aid and unkeepable promises.

Being alongside refugees is hard work, here's one summary what the asylum process involves. If you're offering a spare room, then you will have to support an individual family through all of this:

Feelings of loneliness, anxiety and despair are often evident in the people we meet through Restore. Many asylum seekers have left family behind and crave word from them. For some, there is no knowledge of their whereabouts and we encourage them to turn to the International family tracing service of the Red Cross, though this takes courage when there is fear that the missing person may be dead. 

Asylum support is granted by the Home Office to those in the asylum system. Known as section 95 support, this amounts to accommodation, usually in a shared house, and approximately £37 per week. 

Section 4 support is granted when an asylum seeker has been refused asylum but has made a fresh claim and is awaiting the outcome of this new submission. Such support is cashless and amounts to £35 being topped up onto a plastic Azure Card, which can be used in mainstream supermarkets. No money is given for travel fares. 

Those who are refused asylum and unable to submit fresh representations have their Home Office support terminated and become destitute without recourse to public funds. Destitution is the plight of many an asylum seeker in our country. 

Asylum seekers are prohibited from working and are not allowed to attend English language classes in the first six months of their asylum claim – the rationale being that their case will be determined in six months and if refused, they will be removed from the country. Invariably the case determination takes much longer than half a year and only a small percentage of those refused are removed or return voluntarily to their home country. Asylum seekers are required to report to a regional Home Office centre. People often attend these reporting sessions with great trepidation as it is the place where they are most likely to be detained and sent to a removal centre. 

Quality legal advice and representation is essential if an asylum seeker is to present a case with substantiating evidence, expert reports and relevant case law. Sadly, legal aid for asylum work is limited to a few hours and representatives tend to drop cases when they perceive a case is unlikely to be successful.

Three other pieces that are worth a read:
Ian Paul on 'thinking about migration'. Challenges some of the simplistic responses to the crisis, and recognises that the media have an agenda in this too.
A local blog on what Yeovil should do about immigration and refugees. Argues that being better informed is part of our moral obligation to the migrants.
The Archbishop of York on the opportunity we have as a nation to offer a generous welcome.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob spotted at Calais

"one can categorise Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the terms used by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. 

Abraham begins as a voluntary migrant, but then lives in Egypt as an environmentally induced, externally displaced person.

Isaac is born to immigrant parents, and he subsequently becomes an environmentally induced, internally displaced person. 

Finally, Jacob is a third generation migrant who involuntarily migrates to seek asylum for fear of physical harm. Jacob does eventually repatriate by choice, but he lives out the remainder of his life as an immigrant.

It is no stretch to say that migration and the experience of being an immigrant among foreign groups forms these patriarchs’ identity and is, in this way, inscribed into the very foundations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam." (Casey Strine 'The Old Testament as a Resource for thinking about Migration')

So when God introduces himself to Moses as 'The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob' in Exodus chapter 3, God is introducing himself as the God of 3 generations of immigrants. He does this to a man who himself is an asylum seeker, to call him to lead a mass migration across the Middle East. And that's before we even get to Jesus and Paul.

Lots more food for thought at the very timely 'Migration' special of The Bible in Transmission, a journal produced by the Bible Society.

Labour Manifesto - Working Hard for The Kingdom of Ed

I wonder if its ever struck politicians that if 'hard working families' are as hard working as they're cracked up to be, most won't have the time or the energy to read an 86 page manifesto, even if a lot of it is pictures. They/we are too busy working hard, getting on, doing the right thing, or whatever it is the Stakhanovs do most of the time.

Maybe Labour knew they wouldn't get beyond page 1, so they stuck this on the cover:

Britain only succeeds when working people succeed. this is a plan to reward hard work, share prosperity and build a better Britain

Odd that they pitch the manifesto to a minority of the British population, given that over half of us aren't working, being too young, too old, too ill, or too busy volunteering (of which more later)

It's a clear pitch to be the Labour party, the party of working people, but with a lot less socialism and toff-bashing than in the good old days. There's a brief swipe at the Conservatives, and no mention of the LibDems (keeping the door open for the coalition negotiations which are bound to begin on 8th May).

There's plenty of commentary elsewhere, but a few things really stuck out to me:

1. There are pledges to increase the number of GPs, nurses and midwives. Unless there's a big change to GP training in the pipeline, it takes longer than a single parliament to train a new GP. So, where do they come from? Will Labour be trying to get health professionals who have quit the NHS to return, or (as under Blair) will they be recruiting overseas? There is a massive moral question mark over this, we have one of the best health services in the world, most other countries need their doctors and nurses more than we do. The Labour manifesto makes much of the UK re-engaging with the world, promoting the Millenium Development Goals (good) but if we poach doctors from developing countries then white man speak with forked tongue. 

2. Kids, wave goodbye to your parents. You'll see them again in 18 years. Labour wants an education system that starts with 25 hours free childcare at age 3 (provided by your renewed Sure Start centre), extends to 50 hours by the time you are 4 (yes, 50 hours. schools will have to provide access to 'wraparound' childcare from 8am - 6pm), and continues until you are 21. Out of work benefits won't begin until you turn 21, prior to that it's a Youth Allowance dependent on whether you're in training. Some of this will be welcome news to parents who need more flexibility so that they can work to bring in the pennies, some of this will simply mean families spending less time together. It's bizarre that in a document which declares Labour believes a decent society grows out of family life and relationships the main policy direction is one which will mean families seeing less of each other. Does Ed Miliband not get on with the rest of his family? 

3. The wraparound school clubs are all going to be provided by volunteers. Really? How? It's a nice aspiration, but there's no suggestion of how it could be achieved. Worse, if it is achieved, where do those volunteers come from? There's no national strategy for encouraging volunteering, so they will have to come from the existing volunteer pool. That's the folk who look after the elderly, run playgroups, staff foodbanks, pop in on neighbours etc. Good luck on either score. We can't even find the handful of adults needed locally to keep a single council youth club up and running for one evening a week.

4. Also on family policy, there are warm words about 'strengthing the institutions that help individuals, families and communities to thrive' but nothing about strengthening families themselves. Sure Start will be resurrected, but mainly as a national childcare agency. 'Early years intervention' is fine, but there's no suggestion of tackling the reasons why this might be needed. Family breakdown remains the elephant in the room, responsible for vast levels of misery, mental illness, educational failure, substance abuse etc. Labour wants a constitutional convention to look at how the UK can hold together, but when did it (or any other party) ever give serious thought about how to hold families together?  

5. One oddity: Labour want to abolish Police and Crime Commissioners, but set up an equivalent version in education, a local Director of School Standards who monitors performance, intervenes in underperforming schools and can commission new schools. Local authorities will continue to be players in the school system, so I'm not quite sure where that leaves LEAs. The roles of PCC and DSS are slightly different, but it seemed odd to be scrapping one and inventing the other!

6. 200k new houses a year won't go very far if 300k people are being added to the population each year. There are no targets for sensible immigration, just a few policies around benefits and controls. This is a real problem. Yes we need immigrants, but there is surely an optimum rate at which people can be assimilated, and infrastructure be put in place? We are adding a new county's worth of people every 3 years to the UK, but short of a specific cap, I haven't yet seen a policy that amounts to more than hoping the problem will go away if we look tough. That hasn't worked yet.

7. Foreign policy: Labour propose a 'global envoy for religious freedom'. Good. Gordon Browns next job perhaps? It would be good to see a specific role though: they also propose an envoy for LGBT rights whose goal will be to secure the decriminalisation of homosexuality worldwide. I'd be thrilled if the goal for the religious freedom envoy was to secure the decriminalisation of conversion to Christianity.

8. Labour seem to be taking climate change more seriously - there's a welcome goal of a zero-carbon electricity supply by 2030, and interest free loans for energy improvements will reboot the domestic solar energy market. Right noises, but I don't see enough on, for example, public transport (most of the policies are devolved to local level) to see a thorough response. There's a welcome commitment to keep the 0.7% aid target and refocus it on the poorest countries.

9. Mental health: will be 'given the same priority as physical health'. I wonder what that means in practice? The document says there'll be the same right to psychological therapies as to drugs. If true, that means free, lifelong access, rather than 8 weeks after a 5 month wait, as is the current (approximate) situation. Do they really mean that? Access to drugs doesn't stop after a set number of weeks, so if that's what's really being promised for talking therapies, then that's a very hefty commitment. And please, not just CBT, it doesn't fix everything. And if you do offer CBT, please lets have proper professional counsellors, not a nurse who's done a short course. Labour wants more access to counselling at schools (good) and there's a suggestion of putting mindfulness on the national curriculum. There's no extra money committed here, only a promise that a higher % of the mental health budget will be spent on children. That, of course, means a lower percentage on adults, so without a significant rise in the overall budget, there's the prospect of a cut to adult mental health funding. Surely not?

Overall Labour are trying not to frighten the horses, but I'm not sure whether the horses will be very inspired either. I guess a proper rationale for the policies (e.g. the 50 hour school week), or proper details of how they'll work (adult mental health) would have needed a longer document. Labour seem more aware of the vulnerable - disabled, users of food banks, low wages - than the current government, but I don't see much of a great vision here. It's a bit more of an engineers budget, how do we make this system work better, and produce more of what we want (houses, good healthcare, clean energy at affordable prices). I can't see it setting many pulses racing, and as the first page states, its a 'plan...for a better Britain'. The P-word again. The 2015 election is the Battle of the Plans.

Close the borders

With todays news that net migration to the UK has risen to over 1/4m, here are a few things that need to go back where they came from.

Black Friday: US capitalist tradition of monetising a popular festival (see Christmas, Hallowe'en), being imported en masse by the UK high street. Except in this case, we don't even get the festival. No  Thanksgiving, just more shopping. Because clearly we don't shop enough. At it certainly doesn't look like it's bringing out the best in our national character. (Update: the following day is now officially called What On Earth Did I Buy That For? Saturday)

NHS Staff: sure, we can't do without them, and we've failed so badly at training our own that we need to import about 30% of frontline staff for hospitals. But are we seriously suggesting that the UK has more need of these trained staff than, say, Pakistan, the Phillipines, Romania? We no longer have the Empire but we're still just as rapacious when it comes to stripping other countries of their assets, in this case, highly skilled medical staff. 25% of doctors from sub-Saharan Africa are working in the West. Meanwhile our own specialists are busy administering botox. Who cares if a few more kids die in Uganda so long as we keep those celebrity wrinkles at bay?

Female 'pop star's: take your pick - Madonna, Kylie, Katie Perry, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Beyonce, Miley Cyrus etc. Is this what a feminist looks like? Judge a woman not on the contents of her character but on the absence of her clothing.

Weather: stupid rain, coming over here all the way from Mexico and the US, without a visa, raining on our hills, running down drains built with British money, causing floods that the British taxpayer has to clear up. And there's been more this year than ever before, we're being literally swamped with the stuff.

If Jesus ran the Home Office (and the railways)

The YouGov website invites you to imagine what Jesus would think of immigration, gay marriage, and rail nationalisation. Because obviously, these are the 3 things he's most bothered about in the UK at the moment. When you put in your opinion, the results of a recent poll are then revealed:


   
YouGov note that Jesus would be strongly out of step with public opinion on the death penalty (the majority are in favour of it) and on immigration (the majority favour tighter controls). But as the table shows, we still have a tendency to think Jesus agrees with us, whether we're Libdems on marriage or Kippers on immigration. It's a reminder of our tendency to make Jesus in our own image. (For another excellent example of this, read 10 sins we take less seriously, and work out whether Christians are just relaxing about stuff that we were too uptight about, or letting the world and the culture mould us instead of Jesus).

Full tables are here, which also has a breakdown of the results by declared religious standpoint. Not surprisingly, those of 'no religion' think Jesus would be more likely to support gay marriage than either Christians or those of other religions. And I can't get my head around the 1 in 20 'Christians' who think that Jesus (refugee to Egypt) would want no immigration at all into the UK. I suspect we are dealing with a spectrum of understandings of what 'Christian' means!

The unasked question was 'how much does this shape your own view?' I also wonder whether the sizeable number of 'don't knows' for all questions represents the historical and cultural distance between us and Jesus, or (in the case of Christians) the legacy of several generations of privatised spirituality which doesn't give people the tools to think through issues in the public square. Immigration is a big issue, how do we as churches help people to think Christianly about it, rather than leaving it to a bidding war between Farage and Cameron?

Ht political betting.

How ethical is immigration?

I'm neither a fruitcake or a closet racist: I hate currants and one of my best friends is Welsh. But there's a bit of the immigration debate I don't hear a lot about.

During my time in Darlington I knew a chap whose job included travelling around Europe recruiting NHS nurses from other countries. If you've been treated by a Spanish nurse in the NE, that's probably his doing. I'm grateful, truly I am. There is rumoured to be one ethnically British NHS dentist operating somewhere in the country, our treatment has come from Romanians, Portuguese, and someone whose nationality we haven't quite made out yet. Our local hospital relies heavily on consultants and nursing staff from overseas, as do local nursing homes. We'd be in a mess without them.

But how ethical is this whole set up? Is it fair that other countries pay for the training of 1/3 of our consultants, and then we poach them with the offer of better salaries? 2 out of 5 NHS nurses were born abroad, is it really right that they are practicing here, rather than in India, the Philippines, Eastern Europe? Or is it ok that the countries which can bid the highest, get the workers, no matter who has paid for the training, or what the needs are in their home countries.

We can be rightly proud of hitting the target of 0.7% of Gross National Income being spent on overseas aid. But do we give with one hand and take with the other?

Now it may be that there is a massive global surplus of medical staff, and we are simply doing our bit to make sure that they don't languish on Hungarian dole queues, or ending up serving in the New Delhi Macdonalds. If so, please put me right.

If that means a shortage, there's one place to start looking immediately for trained staff. The market for cosmetic surgery grew 17% last year. Here are hundreds of surgeons and nurses squandering their training and talents on vanity and marketed procedures to conform to media portrayals of 'beauty'. Tony Campolo relates the story of a doctor friend who was employed doing breast enhancements for women. "Without thinking what I was saying, I asked him 'but on judgement day, what are you going to present before the Lord?' " (The guy had originally wanted to become a doctor to save children overseas from dying)

How do we justify stripping poorer countries of their trained medical staff to make up for shortfalls in the NHS, when some of those could be filled by the medical training and gifts currently squandered on vanity surgery? I hope nobody in UKIP has had botox or a boob job.

Teresa May teams up with Richard Dawkins

A new lease of life for the agnostibus. After all, it worked so well last time, all those buses driving round London telling people there's 'probably no God' and what happens? Yup, the church in London grows faster than anywhere else in the country. However, as one of the main drivers of this is immigration, here's an obvious common cause for the Home Office and the Humanists.

UK Border Agency: Gene Hunt is Alive and Well and Working in Cardiff?

Yesterday the Guardian had a piece on allegations about the UK Border Agency office in Cardiff, which has resulted in an investigation by MPs.

Claims that asylum seekers are mistreated, tricked and humiliated by staff working for the UK Border Agency are to be investigated in parliament.

The home affairs select committee chairman, Keith Vaz, has called for an investigation following allegations that officials at one of the government's major centres for processing asylum seekers' claims express fiercely anti-immigration views and take pride in refusing applications.

Louise Perrett, who worked as a case owner at the Border Agency office in Cardiff for three and a half months last summer, claims staff kept a stuffed gorilla, a "grant monkey", which was placed as a badge of shame on the desk of any officer who approved an asylum application.

The whole thing sounds like Life on Mars. I sincerely hope it's not true, but that might just be mindless optimism. The realist in me puts this alongside the conditions at Yarlswood , the practice of child detention, and the other issues with UK Borders Agency, and wonders if it's fit for purpose. Yes this is just one office, and yes we do need border controls, and a functioning structure for sorting out genuine asylum seekers from people who just fancy our benefits system. I wonder if politicians are afraid to tackle this because they don't want to be seen as 'soft' on immigration?

Ht Split Horizons.

Other reports
BBC
Wales Online
No Borders South Wales campaigning group who've been picketing the Cardiff office for a while now.

Church of England: "end the 'shameful practice' of detaining children of asylum seekers."

This has just popped up on the official CofE website:

Children are detained through no fault of their own. They are often removed from familiar settings in sudden and alarming circumstances leaving behind friends, toys and personal possessions. Detention is a distressing experience. Child detainees experience insomnia, bed wetting, weight loss, speech regression, depression, and are known to self-harm. The children of asylum seekers are a vulnerable group, made more so by this policy which has no regard for their mental health. The experience of detention often evokes the trauma they have experience when flees their country of origin.

With the Children’s Commissioner, Royal College of Psychiatrists, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Royal College of General Practitioners, the Children Society and many other bodies concerned with the well being of children I believe the continued incarceration of children to be a shameful practice for our society in terms of child welfare and human rights and must stop.

The continued detention of children must stop. I call on the Secretary of State to introduce humane-community based arrangements for children and families which recognise the need to put the welfare of children first, at the earliest opportunity.

from the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, full statement here, representing the 'Urban Bishops Panel' of the CofE.

To be honest it doesn't matter who says it, as long as somebody does.

UK Border Agency: Invasion of the Baby-Snatchers

The thundering knock came early in the morning. It was 6.30am. Without waiting for an answer the security chain across the door was smashed from its fittings. Feet thundered up the staircase. The five children, all under the age of 10, were alarmed to be woken from their sleep by the dozen burly strangers who burst into their bedrooms, switched on the lights and shouted at them to get up.

This is not a police state. It is Manchester in supposedly civilised Britain in the 21st century. There is a clue to what this is about in the names of the children: Nardin, who is 10; Karin who is seven; the three-year-old twins Bishoy and Anastasia, and their one-year-old baby sister Angela.

Their parents, Hany and Samah Mansour, are Coptic Christians who fled to the UK after a campaign of persecution by a group of Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt whose friends in the secret police tortured Hany. But even though six Coptic Christians were shot dead by Muslim extremists only last week in a town not far from their home, the British Government has decided that it does not believe them. And so Britain's deportation police have launched another of their terrifying dawn raids on sleeping children.

Paul Valleley on the fate of another family who fell foul of the UK immigration system, and the inhumane treatment of children and families within the detention centres. It's a long piece, but the detail is necessary - over 1300 children were held in immigration centres in 2008-9, centres which have been condemned by a number of independent reports into child welfare. The Royal College of Paediatrics and the Royal College of Psychiatry recently investigated the mental health of children held at detention centres:

It shows that every single one of the children seen in Yarl's Wood by a team of paediatricians and psychologists displayed some signs of distress and 73 per cent of children they examined had developed clinically significant emotional and behavioural problems since being detained. None had previously had such problems..... All the children seen by clinical psychologists presented as being disorientated, confused and frightened. More than half, who had previously been well behaved at home and in school, had developed conduct problems.

There is currently an early day motion in the Commons calling for an end to child detention, with over 100 signatories.

Valleley concludes his piece:
When a family is ripped so brutally from their home it is not just those who are carted away by the police to whom an injustice is done. Something is rent in the very fabric of the community. "The second time they were taken away was very disturbing for the rest of Karin's class," said Anna Ward. "The other children were all crying they were very shaken by it. It was as if they didn't know who to trust."

What would happen, I ask 10-year-old Nardin, if the family gets another sunrise knock on their front door. She cuts me off, mid-question. "Don't say knock," she corrects me, "because they don't knock. They just smash the chain off the lock and march in."

What kind of country allows that happen to innocent children as they sleep in their own beds?

Mine, I'm ashamed to say.

Robespierre "Terror is nothing other than justice: prompt, severe, inflexible."

Update: and things are going to get worse. The UKBA is restricting the number of cases where it's required to give 72 hours notice of removal, which gives people the opportunity to contact a lawyer.
The current 72-hour notice rule was imposed following strong condemnation by judges of the Home Office resorting to trickery and devious tactics in order to deprive people of the opportunity to challenge their removal - including inviting people to 'interviews' where they are detained, and swooping on homes after working hours to detain families for removal early the following morning.

Lord Carey on Immigration

5live this morning was reporting George Carey's call for more 'Christian' immigrants. A group of MP's has called for a cap on the UK's population of 70 million, thus ensuring that immigration is well and truly on the agenda for the General Election. Carey himself has signed the document, which calls for politicians to engage with what kind of society we'll become with continued high levels of immigration, and sees the popularity of the BNP as a warning sign which mainstream politics is ignoring. Full text here.

Carey is also reported as saying that there should be a preference for 'Christian' immigrants, according to 5live and various bloggers. But I can't find a quoted source for this anywhere: can anyone help?

He was interviewed on the Today programme this morning, clip starts at 2hr 49 mins in. "We welcome everybody, that's always been the general spirit of the UK population", but he does ask - quite reasonably - that people coming to the UK value the same things we value, including democracy, the English language etc.

Interviewer: "You're not suggesting that Christian people should be given extra points...." Carey: "No I'm not saying that".

So Carey isn't actually suggesting Christian immigrants be given preferential treatment. I'm not sure if 5 live, at any stage, clarified how they were reporting Carey's remarks. What he said on the Today programme sounded fairly sensible to me.

Update: Carey on 5 live with Nicky Campbell, "it's values that matter, not beliefs", but it's more likely that people from Christian countries will value what we value. That's probably just a matter of stats: are countries with a Christian background more likely to be liberal democracies than those which don't have one? Colonialism also comes to mind - several non-Christian nations which, when Britannia pulled out, were left with a legacy of democracy, some of which have done better than others. Is a Pakistani Muslim more likely to integrate into UK society than an Iranian?

Some of the key questions seem to be:
1. How many people can the UK sensibly accomodate?
2. What rate of population growth through net migration is the optimum? With an ageing population, we are going to have to rely on immigration to keep a balanced demographic.
3. How do we ensure that new UK citizens are integrated into UK society, rather than ending up in sub-cultural ghettoes? That doesn't mean people losing their own identity, but being Turkish/Jewish/Polish/Muslim/Chinese/etc. within British culture, rather than against it. It's also as much about us and how we relate to immigrants, as much as the migrants themselves.
4. How do we act with compassion towards those who are fleeing unjust treatment?
5. How do 'native' Brits learn from the good things other cultures bring with them? Many other cultures have a lot to teach us about hospitality, respect, family, community etc., and who in their right mind would want to fully integrate into a culture which prizes Big Brother, I'm a Nonentity Get me Out of Here, soft porn pop videos, and rampant materialism?

Carey seems to be dealing with question 3, but the original statement raises much wider issues. It would be a shame if the debate were narrowed down simply to whether immigrants should be Chrisitans or not. That's not the key point.

Light Reading for Christmas Eve

Whilst you're waiting for the clock to tick round to 11pm for 'midnight' mass, or even just to pub opening time, a few bits and bobs:

Rick Warren on helping people to beat materialism at Christmas time.

Paul Walton, quoting a Faith Central piece about being a Muslim at Christmas
For Christians, Christmas is about celebrating the birthday of a sacred person: the embodiment of nobility, generosity, compassion and justice. These characteristics can be emulated by anyone from any religious background. Amid the media hype building up towards Christmas there is little focus on the great characteristics of Jesus and what we can learn from his life.

Even though I do not celebrate Christmas in the real sense – as a university student, for instance I would often work long shifts as a medical operator on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day enabling my non Muslim colleagues to celebrate the birth of Jesus, I do actually celebrate and cherish his birth and his life on this earth by truly loving him and trying to exemplify his noble characteristics in my own life.

Ruth Gledhill on John Sentamus seasonal message to the Ugandan government, and the UK immigration authorities.

A seasonal message from the Beaker secularists.

A New Labour carol service from Dungeekin
Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,
The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head,
And then Social Services saw where he lay,
And they claimed child neglect and they took him away.

Arrest on the flight to Egypt

Inspired by the UK Border Agency Christmas Card, Colin Alsbury has produced this, which is an early contender for the design for next years Home Office Christmas Card. Mary and Joseph flee to England, WWUKBA do?

However, it may fall foul of the unwritten policy of not having any references to Christmas on political Christmas cards.

Update: Ekklesia have a new version of the UK Border Agency Christmas Card.

A Seasonal Missage from the UK Border Agency

This is the kind of thing which makes satirists quit.

Phil Ritchie says it so much better than I can. Original source Ekklesia.

Next year's card will be a picture of a CCTV camera with the message 'Mary and Joseph, we know where you are', signed by Mr Herod at the deparment for community cohesion, with a 100 page insert detailing in complicated English how to work out your points score.

Talking of the Borders Agency, you can see video footage of St. Nicholas being turned away from the Yarls Wood detention centre, it sounds like they tried beforehand to arrange it but 'oh yes, what a great idea to brighten things up for the children' wasn't the response recieved back.

Mary & Joseph, don't you flee to England.

Following the Santa/White Witch incident a few days ago, more pressure for an end to the policy of imprisoning innocent children just because they happen to be related to asylum seekers. A new report from medical professionals has called for an end to the detention of children as part of our immigration policy:

Many of the children are held at Serco-run Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire while their parents await deportation.

Children in such circumstances were already among the most vulnerable in the UK and the harmful effects of arrest and detention only added to their difficulties, the report said.

It said almost all children seeking asylum suffered injury to their mental or physical health due to being detained, some seriously. The current provision of mental and preventative healthcare was inadequate, the report said, and made recommendations for improvement.

Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said children in immigrant families were already disadvantaged and vulnerable.
"Detaining children for any length of time - often without proper explanation - is a terrifying experience that can have lifelong consequences," he said. "As well as the potential psychological impact, these children invariably experience poor physical health as they cannot access immunisation and preventative services."

Full report here, one family's story here. It's a sobering thought that if Jesus family had fled to the UK in 2009, rather than Egypt in AD3 (or thereabouts), Jesus would have been locked up for up to two months in a privately-run prison. Welcome to the UK, land of the free and home of civilisation. Yes of course we have to protect our citizens against people coming here to do us harm, but there must be a better way than this.

Facebook group Maries Law was set up earlier this year to highlight the same issue.

Here's Why Alan Johnson isn't Education Secretary

I recieved this back from the Home Office this morning, after emailing Alan Johnson to ask him to intervene in Elizabeths deportation case last week:


Dear Rev David Keen

Thank you for your e-mail on behalf of Ms Elizabeth Kiwunga Rushamba concerning their immigration matters.< /FONT>
Yours support has been noted and will use for any future consideration of the case.

Yours Sincerely,< /FONT>

Public Correspondence Team
UKBA

All that formatting stuff is in the original email. A free plane ticket to Uganda for the person who can spot the most grammatical/composition mistakes.

This is the Home Office for goodness sake, the same department which makes asylum seekers take tests in English when they want to apply for citizenship. It's clearly a standard reply email, and ignores the fact that there won't be any future consideration of the case because the unjust machinery of the immigration system deported the poor woman and her children last week.

There is not a single part of the British system so far that has done as well as a Poor rating in this whole sorry saga. Maybe the Home Office is using Uganda as a benchmark.