Start charging asylum seekers here a levy to build better refugee camps in poorer countries - Yorkshire Post Letters

I thank Canon Storey for his invitation (Yorkshire Post, 15 December) to suggest a fair policy on asylum. As he notes, it isn’t easy and Archbishop Cottrell (Yorkshire Post, 12 December) doesn’t seem to have managed it.

The Archbishop challenges our ‘exceptionalism’ for refugees from Ukraine, when he must know this is an expression of our solidarity with that country. Equally exceptional is our supplying them with large quantities of armaments free of charge. Both exceptions reflect their being the only one of the many groups threatened by “evil” to be putting up effective resistance.

His acknowledgement that “we can’t take everybody” is quickly followed by his proposal that we “simply provide safe and legal routes for everyone” to seek asylum. This would include not only the existing tens of millions of refugees and displaced people but the many more who would become such if they saw anywhere acceptable to go.

The fairness required is many dimensional. There is that difference between ‘genuine asylum seekers’ and ‘economic migrants’. Our priority is safety for those in danger. Yet if we provide a step-change in affluence for those who were formerly in danger, while denying that to those who were not, then we can hardly expect the latter to regard this as fair.

There is fairness between asylum seekers accommodated in countries with greatly differing levels of affluence. Would it not be fair if the extra income of those fortunate enough to have reached a rich country like ours were to be shared with those remaining in a poor one?

How does our spending per head on asylum seekers in the UK compare with that on others offered a tent in some desert? How do we justify this diversion of resources from the many to the few?

There is fairness between host countries. On the face of it, some of the poorest countries bear the greatest burden in terms of numbers of refugees. But the greatest impact, neglected in our usual short-term perspective, is from permanent settlement. Only from poor countries is there any prospect of refugees eventually returning home. In many of these cases the border crossed is of little significance. The people on both sides of it are of the same ethnicity, religion and culture.

So, my suggestion is that we provide a little more financial and practical support to refugee camps in poorer countries, on the condition that those countries accept voluntary arrivals from the UK. We would fund this in part through levies on asylum seekers and irregular arrivals in the UK, calculated to nullify any financial advantage of their coming here. They would retain this restrictive status for as long as they are here, with no path to citizenship.

This is clearly not equality of treatment between the existing population and newcomers, but how could such a thing be possible in an unequal world with significant freedom of movement? My alternative involves us giving away some of our money but not our country. That may not satisfy those with a psychological need for some greater atonement.