The Home Office, Minister of Defence, and an inconsequential former-UKIP xenophobe called Nigel – want to make Britain Great again by building Fortress Britain with the armed forces patrolling the channel, building army bases around the world (the Caribbean and SE Asia are earmarked so far) – all this after reducing the armed services! Sajid Javid has declared it a “major incident”. In the big scheme of things and compared to our European neighbours like Greece and Italy, it is minor and not even an incident.

Presumably, we’ll be building a wall at Dover paid for by the French to keep out the vast invasion of 100 Channel migrant visitors each month. I mean, we are the 5th or 6th largest world economy and we can’t afford 100 more people? Anyway, we already have under Geneva Convention and EU laws rights to return them to their first port of arrival if we really want to be mean.

It’s the Christmas period, though, the season of generosity and yet there’s no room at the Inn. What happened to Christian hospitality and giving?

What Would Jesus Do? 

The Bible is full of declarations of how one should treat ‘foreigners’ because the Israelites were once wanderers too, at varying times in their history homeless migrants, and God’s idea of justice was one law for everyone – well eventually. It’s a salutary lesson for Jews and Christians alike to remember biblical edicts on hospitality towards the foreign-born and/or less fortunate, and of treating guests in your country or house as angels – in case they were!

“And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” – Deuteronomy 10:19

“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.” – Leviticus 19:33-34

Who Am I?

As a Christmas present to myself, and after watching the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, I’ve sent off for a DNA kit to prove my Britishness, since my Dutch partner who has been here 20 years will soon have to prove hers by paying £65-£1300 depending upon the degree of residency, rights and citizenship she wants post-Brexit. 

Actually, the Christmas present I really want is for Liam [sly] Fox’s scare tactic to be true when he announced that there’s a 50:50 chance of Brexit not even happening.

I’m fully expecting my DNA kit to prove what I’ve always known, historically, that I’m part Northern European ancestor, part Roman, part Anglo-Saxon, part Norman French, part Dutch immigrant etc. The latest research suggests I’ll be part Belgian and part Spanish (my heart and stomach always have been) too. One-in-eight of us are foreign-born and modern generations will have African, Asian, and Caribbean roots too, not to mention late-Victorian immigration from Eastern Europe and Russia.

“The first wave of arrivals crossed by land bridges, when sea levels were so low that Britain was attached to what is now northern Germany. This wave was dominated by people with genomes most similar to modern-day inhabitants of northern Germany and Belgium. In parallel, migrants from the west coast of France were arriving by boat. Traces of the combined DNA from all these three pioneer settlers forms the basis for the genetic-makeup of all white Britons.” – New Scientist

Even the idea of Anglo-Saxon purity is both a myth and ironically mixed up.

“In the US, this mixed up medievalism is associated with the white supremacist alt-right who use Anglo-Saxon and Viking motifs.” – The Conversation

We are all human

We are all related, all human, but some have forgotten to behave like it. Xenophobia is rife, racism on the streets, in football, even in cricket is still there to see and hear. 

“Whether people come to Britain fleeing war, terrorism, homophobia, transphobia, or poverty, they are all fleeing a threat to life, liberty, or livelihood. Even poverty is a slow death and until Brexit we were the 5th most wealthy economy in the world after Germany which has twice the percentage of migrant background population. We are fully able to sponsor and support asylum seekers, refugees and even so-called economic migrants.” Katy Jon Went

And we should be doing so… #RefugeesWelcome