Yvette Cooper's Powerful Speech on the Refugee Crisis Is Just Perfect
Refugees are persons fleeing armed conflict or persecution. Their situation is often so perilous and intolerable that they cross national borders to seek safety in nearby countries, and thus become internationally recognized as 'refugees' with access to assistance from States, UNHCR, and other organizations. Speaking on Tuesday morning, the shadow home secretary said Britain's reaction to refugees seeking shelter in Europe so far had been "immoral" and "cowardly".
This has become a humanitarian crisis on a scale we have not seen on our continent since the Second World War yet we seem paralyzed to respond. Stuck in the troubled politics of immigration when this is about asylum instead. Stuck treating immigration and asylum as the same thing when they are completely different and we should keep them so. Stuck hiding behind disputes over student visas, illegal working or European agency workers when none of that has anything to do with refugees. Stuck talking only about "migrants" when we should mean fathers, sons, sisters, brothers, daughters, and mothers.
Stuck in political cowardice that assumes British voters' unease about immigration means they will not forgive anyone who calls for sanctuary - even though our nation has given shelter to the persecuted for centuries - and sometimes moral leadership is needed. And it is not just us. All of Europe is struggling to respond. We can't carry on like this. It's immoral, it's cowardly and it's not the British way.
Refugees live the life of pain and hunger and they need our support to live the life in peace and dignity. Refugees are the one who have severed myriads of problems in their life and travel on different lands just to protect their family.
Refugees are persons fleeing armed conflict or persecution. Their situation is often so perilous and intolerable that they cross national borders to seek safety in nearby countries, and thus become internationally recognized as 'refugees' with access to assistance from States, UNHCR, and other organizations. Speaking on Tuesday morning, the shadow home secretary said Britain's reaction to refugees seeking shelter in Europe so far had been "immoral" and "cowardly".
This has become a humanitarian crisis on a scale we have not seen on our continent since the Second World War yet we seem paralyzed to respond. Stuck in the troubled politics of immigration when this is about asylum instead. Stuck treating immigration and asylum as the same thing when they are completely different and we should keep them so. Stuck hiding behind disputes over student visas, illegal working or European agency workers when none of that has anything to do with refugees. Stuck talking only about "migrants" when we should mean fathers, sons, sisters, brothers, daughters, and mothers.
Stuck in political cowardice that assumes British voters' unease about immigration means they will not forgive anyone who calls for sanctuary - even though our nation has given shelter to the persecuted for centuries - and sometimes moral leadership is needed. And it is not just us. All of Europe is struggling to respond. We can't carry on like this. It's immoral, it's cowardly and it's not the British way.
Refugees live the life of pain and hunger and they need our support to live the life in peace and dignity. Refugees are the one who have severed myriads of problems in their life and travel on different lands just to protect their family.