No Room in the Nation?
A census... compulsory registration... being sent home 'to where you belong'... the problem cases falling foul of the system, sleeping rough, losing their dignity ...
Those who live in our forward-thinking society and deem anything a generation old - let alone 2,000 years - necessarily out of date, need to read Luke's birth narrative in the light of the current asylum debate. All too little has changed.
Governments still yearn for control. They need to know the number, location and wealth of their citizens. Whether through national censuses, asylum registration cards or biometric identity cards, knowledge is and remains power.
'Aliens' are still suspicious. Strangers are considered a threat, no matter how pathetic and needy they are. The accent gives them away. 'The Balkans! Can anything good come from there?'
And the vulnerable still fall through the safety net, whether it is the teenage mother-to-be stumbling under the weight of her silent burden or the young Afghani, first tortured by the Taliban and then attacked and killed in Southampton in February this year. 'We're full. We don't want your sort here.'
An aptly timed report from the Greater London Authority has suggested that the Government's asylum policy has resulted in 15,000 people being denied any form of support and a large increase in homelessness this Christmas.
Many people will be indignant at this but we should not allow indignation to suffocate thinking. The issue of asylum is not black and white. Unpalatable and politically incorrect as it may be to say so, the UK asylum system has been and still is widely abused by the unscrupulous.
Some things, at least, have changed. David Blunkett is right. He is not King Herod. In spite of the opprobrium we like to heap on our supposedly self-serving politicians, the vast majority both want and work hard for the common good, facing decisions daily which demand the wisdom of Solomon. A better society requires our involvement not our moral superiority.
Yet, the sympathy we extend to our politicians should not blunt our criticism. The way we treat 'the other' is fundamental to who we are. Suspicion, rejection and alienation not only brutalises others but dehumanises us. We must love the alien, even if he appears uninvited at our door with his pregnant fiancée.
Nick Spencer
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