By Joshua Nichol
Britain’s asylum system is “broken”, according to Home Secretary Suella Braverman. So broken, in fact, that the country faces an “invasion” on its southern border.
In her diagnosis, Braverman has adopted rhetoric which is divisive and dehumanises refugees. Showing these people as a threat, rather than fellow humans to whom we have a duty of care towards.
It is in this ‘othering’ that the flames of ignorance are stoked. This is not without consequence, as has been seen this week with the firebombing of a Dover migrant centre.
For any observer of British politics, the division is clear to see. The European Research Group of MPs, of whom Braverman is a member, stood one after another echoing similar sentiments. Ashfield MP Lee Anderson even went as far as calling for refugees to “get on a dinghy and go straight back to France.”
When dehumanising language takes the foreground, it places a power dynamic at the heart of how the issue is addressed – that these people are lower than us. When division is sought over empathy, it removes the sense of obligation that we should have for our fellow humans, not least the poorest among us.
In 2013, Pope Francis visited the Mediterranean island Lampedusa, addressing this unempathetic worldview:
“God is asking each of us: “Where is the blood of your brother which cries out to me?”… we have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters… We have become used to the suffering of others…”
“We are a society which has forgotten how to weep, how to experience compassion…”
A politics of solidarity needs compassion, not division. Debate on immigration, therefore, needs serious holistic discussion which acknowledges the human inside the boat, not cheap divisive headlines which leaves humanity on the other side of the Channel.
Picture: PA images/Gareth Fuller
Joshua Nichol is a Catholic political commentator.