by Kathy Gyngell, TCW
YESTERDAY the Daily Mail reported one of those stories that make you despair about our country. A Pakistani drug dealer – an illegal immigrant since 1998 who’s already served four years for possessing heroin and cocaine – has dodged deportation after a judge said he played a key role in teaching his son about Islam and his culture. It is but the latest in a series of bizarre decisions such as that of an Albanian criminal whose deportation was halted partly due to his son’s aversion to the type of chicken nuggets served abroad.
The insanity – or could it be a perverse form of prejudice – was underlined by a sharply contrasting case that had landed in my in tray earlier in the day. A press release from Christian Concern told the story of a Christian woman who had fled forced conversion and abduction attempts in her country of origin to friends in the UK, only to have her asylum application twice rejected by the Home Office. That was until Christian Concern stepped in to help. Seen together the reports raise worrying questions about exactly who is making asylum decisions. Who if anyone checks the Home Office investigators? Who are the judges who decide that ‘identity’ is so important that it trumps criminality? Do any have religious preferences or prejudices? We need to know.
As Christian Concern noted, this is the same Home Office that has welcomed 20,000 Syrians between 2014-20 under the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme.
Read Christian Concern’s report here
Read also: Is the asylum system biased against Christians? by Tim Dieppe, The Critic