Anxiety over public reaction to refugees

The government is not saying when the 20,000 refugees Britain is taking in from Syria will arrive because it is worried about local reactions, according to the head of a group working to resettle them in the UK.

Neil Jameson, director of the community-organising network Citizens UK, also believes the Government is “uncomfortable” with civil society playing a ­significant role in the programme and that working with the Home Office on accommodating ­ the refugees is not proving straightforward. 

Many Catholic parishes and schools already support refugees through Citizens UK, which has launched the #refugeeswelcome initiative backed by the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. It enables private landlords to pledge properties. Citizens UK is encouraging local authorities to take in 50 refugees each and to set up welcoming boards to make contact with new arrivals.

Those on the government scheme, which will operate over the next five years, will have housing, access to public funds and the right to work straight away, unlike asylum seekers. But Patrick Kinsella, public affairs officer of the Caritas Social Action Network (CSAN), said it was vital that the new arrivals also get pastoral support, especially if they are traumatised.

The Catholic Church has long assisted asylum seekers and refugees through charities such as Housing Justice, the Jesuit Refugee Service, or through local initiatives such as the Cardinal Hume Centre in Westminster.

Meanwhile Methodists in Kent have pledged an empty manse for refugees; in Sussex, a family of Syrian Christian asylum seekers moved into a redundant vicarage in Hove and in Brighton the Sisters of Mercy are considering making available their recently shut nursing home.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols was due to host an Advent reception attended by the Prince of Wales and members of the Iraqi Chaldean Catholic and Syriac Catholic Community. At the reception on Thursday 17 December, the prince was due to meet representatives from ­charities working to help Christians in the Middle East.

(See Timothy Radcliffe and Abigail Frymann Rouch, pages 4-5.)