Patrick Christys: Britain's response to the Ukraine refugee crisis does not show we are a racist country

We maintain being informed that our response to the Ukrainian refugee disaster reveals what a racist little nation we're. In actuality, the alternative is true.

The We Coronary heart Refugees gang can’t appear to make their minds up about what component of our method to refugees they do not like. However they gained’t let that cease them, will they?

So far as I can inform, they are saying we’re racist as a result of we’re both too gradual to soak up Ukrainian refugees, or as a result of persons are extra inclined to need to take a Ukranian refugee into their properties than one from the Center East.

Let’s cope with every of these in flip – why are we ‘too gradual’ to soak up Ukrainian refugees?

Effectively, may it presumably be as a result of we’ve already accepted lots of people from different elements of the world?

Might it's that we now have round 37,000 asylum seekers and Afghan refugees dwelling in inns at a value of £4.7m-per-day?

Might it's that we now have 84,000 pending asylum circumstances on prime of that?

The irony right here is that we might not have as a lot room as we’d like for predominantly white Ukrainian refugees as a result of we’ve already taken-in a great deal of folks from completely different ethnic and spiritual backgrounds.

That hardly screams racism to me!

In 2020, the highest 5 most typical international locations of nationality of individuals searching for asylum within the UK had been Iran, Iraq, Albania, Eritrea, and Sudan. Of all refugees resettled within the UK from January 2010 to December 2020, round 70% had been Syrian.

When it comes to typical migration, India fairly often tops the rankings. Pakistan and Bangladesh additionally often come close to the highest of our lists. That doesn’t look like too racist so far as I can inform.

After which there’s the notion that we’re racist as a result of some folks would reasonably take a Ukrainian refugee into their properties than one from, say, Syria. Effectively, I don’t put that all the way down to racism, I put it all the way down to quite a lot of very affordable, comprehensible and pure elements.

The Ukrainian inhabitants is overwhelmingly Christian, by way of LGBT rights – gays, lesbians and bisexuals are allowed to serve within the army, transgender persons are allowed to vary gender and there are protections towards discrimination within the office… though there are different areas reminiscent of adoption and marriage the place they lag behind the UK.

Crucially, although, they do not have sections of society who need to throw homosexual folks off buildings or execute them…

When it comes to girls’s rights, Girls in Ukraine have equal constitutional rights as males within the financial, political, cultural and social fields, in addition to within the household.

So I believe there may be extra of a way of a shared worth system there, maybe extra cultural similarities after which once more, it’s pure to be extra accepting in direction of that.

And the overwhelming majority of those refugees are girls whose identities are utterly identified – examine that to the vast majority of these coming over the Channel. On the finish of the day we're asking folks to take whole strangers into their properties.

Would you're feeling safer taking a person or a girl? Once more, is it unnatural to recommend that individuals could also be extra inclined to throw their doorways open to the Ukrainians?

As well as, we now have to ask why these girls are alone? Effectively, in lots of circumstances that’s as a result of their husbands have stayed at house to defend their nation, the implication being that they want to return someday.

So for these extra inclined to soak up a Ukrainian than a Syrian refugee, may that properly be as a result of it seems like a extra short-term charitable gesture with the Ukrainians? Once more, that’s not an unnatural means to have a look at issues. And there’s definitely no racism concerned in that.

There are logical, sensible and affordable explanation why a) we might have been a bit gradual to accommodate Ukrainians, and b) why folks might really feel extra inclined to open up their properties to this specific group of refugees. These causes are usually not racist, as a result of we're not a racist nation.

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