Paul Nowak Column: ‘Fixing Britain’s migration system starts with fairness, compassion and common sense’

Whenever migration is leading the news – as it has been much of this week – I think about Jozef Nowak and Ching Tsang.

Both of my grandfathers came here during the Second World War, Jozef from Poland and Ching from Hong Kong. They found work, got married, had children, and built their lives in Britain. I am proud of the contribution they and millions like them have made to this country, and proud too that Britain has, for decades, played its part in providing sanctuary, support and a home to those fleeing war and terror.

Let’s start with the positive in what we’ve heard this week. I welcome the Home Secretary’s decision to open up new safe and legal routes for people to claim asylum in the UK. It’s the right thing to do, and essential to prevent people from making dangerous journeys across the Channel and to spike the business model of the people traffickers. The government is also right to prioritise investing in processing claims quickly and fairly, to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers and to look to safely return those whose claims fail. These measures can help rebuild public trust in an asylum system that was discredited and brought to its knees by the previous government.

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But, alongside these positive measures, there are real concerns about the real-world implications of some of the other policies announced this week. It’s vital the government listens to these concerns and ensures its approach is fair, evidence based and rooted in decent values. Labour can’t allow Nigel Farage to set the political weather. That won’t deliver politically, and won’t fix the real problems in our immigration system, our communities and workplaces.

The Government has talked about contribution. They’re right that people who come here often have the skills we need and want to play their part. But contribution requires opportunity. That means ending the arbitrary rules that stop people from working for months or years while they wait for a decision. And it also means cracking down on the bad employers who exploit migrant workers and undercut everyone else. I want to see MPs across the political spectrum talk about the dodgy employers who exploit workers, not just those they employ.

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Contribution also means offering stability once people are allowed to stay. No one who has lived here for years, worked here, and raised a family, should be left in limbo every two and half years. My grandparents could never have built a life, bought a house, or had children if they thought the Home Office might suddenly uproot them. Would my grandad Joe have been expected to take his Liverpool-Irish wife and six kids (all of whom were born and raised in Liverpool and spoke fluent Scouse rather than Polish) back with him to Poland? What will it mean for kids faced with the prospect of being uprooted from their schools and communities and returned to places they have never been, and from which their families fled?

Likewise, people who move here can fall ill or face personal tragedy. We cannot have a system that leaves them destitute through no fault of their own.

And then there is the issue of language. We know the far and populist right, from Tommy Robinson to Nigel Farage, have weaponised the issue of small boat crossings. They use language to demonise not just asylum seekers, but anyone who doesn’t fit their narrow view of being what bring British means.

Like me, the Home Secretary has a personal, as well as a political stake in this debate. One of the most powerful parts of her statement to the Commons on Monday was her personal testimony of being racially abused – something  I, as a white bloke, am lucky enough to have never experienced. But it is an everyday experience for many of our black and Asian members. Speak to those members, and they will tell you how language that would have been deemed unacceptable a few short years ago, has become normalised by the far and populist right. That’s something none of us who care about community coherence – and basic decency – can afford to ignore.

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Yes – our migration and asylum system needs fixing. And alongside that, we need a grown-up conversation about migration more broadly. But most people in this country are  fair minded. Most are compassionate. We need a fair, managed, values-based approach to migration that reflects that innate decency. The challenge now for the Government is to show it can deliver that.

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