Refugee family plans "will deepen suffering"
Faith leaders from across the UK, including Quakers, have written to the Home Secretary warning against permanently restricting refugee family reunion.
The Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other faith leaders, alongside Adwoa Burnley, clerk of Britain Yearly Meeting, urge Shabana Mahmood to demonstrate "the moral leadership that this moment demands."
She should champion compassion, such as that shown to Ukrainians in 2022, rather than yield to the loudest calls against it, they say.
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We are called to speak truth to power, and the truth is that separating families fleeing persecution is cruel and wrong.
- Adwoa Burnley
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Furthermore, Mahmood must abandon proposals that would remove family reunion rights for most refugees and introduce steep new financial barriers for those fleeing danger.
The measures "represent a profound departure from values that have long shaped our national life and are deeply embedded in our faith traditions", they write.
Restricting safe routes would push desperate people toward the criminal smuggling networks "we all wish to dismantle", the leaders warn.
"Family reunion is not a marginal element of refugee protection and resettlement; it is central to it."
The signatories also reject the framing of refugees as a burden on public services.
Asylum seekers are only a small number of those coming to the UK, they note, and many anxieties arise from existing pressures on housing, health services and local infrastructure.
The letter recalls the Home Secretary's 2017 advocacy for wider family reunion rights, when she argued that unaccompanied refugee children should be able to bring their parents to the UK and that aligning with European standards would not create a "pull factor".
Signatories include Mike Royal, general secretary of Churches Together England, Syed Razawi, chief imam, Scotland, and Indarjit Singh, director of the Network of Sikh Organisations UK.
Adwoa Burnley said: "These proposals deny the humanity of some of the world's most vulnerable people and strike at the heart of what it means to live with integrity.
“We are called to speak truth to power, and the truth is that separating families fleeing persecution is cruel and wrong."
Quakers have supported refugees for centuries, most notably helping thousands of Jewish children flee Nazi persecution through the Kindertransport.