The politics of immigration has lost its kindness

When I was a child, I was taught to welcome guests. I was taught the story of the Good Samaritan, who lent a helping hand to someone who was not his traditional ally, but whom nevertheless he regarded as his neighbour. I learned that, however much the world tries to persuade us that someone is our enemy, we should work hard to find our natural sense of kindness, and lend a hand anyway, whatever others say.

For a long time in my adulthood, politics reflected this. I became familiar with an immigration system that made allowance for other people’s difficulties, and reflected the tradition, immanent in many religions, of kindness to strangers. This involved another, related, principle – the benefit of the doubt. The idea is that we assume good motives until we have evidence of a sinister motive. We welcome until we experience hostility that we would be foolish to ignore.

In recent years, beginning on the right, and drifting to the left, there has been a shift towards treating immigration as an influx of enemy forces, by definition needing defending against. It has become a question of ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘us’ who allegedly have a right to be here, and ‘them’ who don’t. ‘They’ are judged as inherently bad until proved good; ‘we’ are assumed to be inherently good until proved bad.

This subtle change has happened under our noses, and many of us have changed sides, going with the flow. We have bought the idea that the UK is like a gated residential community. We are the rightful owners of this land, and everyone else should keep out unless invited in.

To this has been added the idea that only those who benefit ‘us’ should ‘come in’. Who declared this rule of selfishness as somehow unquestionable? When did national morality change so far as to become the macro version of a self-centred person?

So here we are, implementing more and more repellent rules for incoming strangers, not welcoming but rejecting by default. My childhood ethic of being kind to strangers has been turned on its head. It remains to be seen how far it will go, but I, for one, am disappointed with my own home state, and cannot join the new stance, or condone the politics of self-interest. If we cannot be kind to strangers any longer, then we have lost the best of ourselves. I hope we find it again.