Church of England Bishops Urge Govt Not to Turn Back Migrant Boats

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Twelve bishops on the more and more woke Church of England have penned an open letter to the federal government urging them not to flip again unlawful migrant boats coming from protected, EU member-state France, printed by the leftist Guardian.

The 12 senior clergymen, who described themselves as “bishops within the Church of England with a particular oversight of asylum and refugee issues” — a spotlight that comes amid the establishment at present experiencing a collapse in church attendance and perception — stated they had been “deeply concerned about the government’s approach to migrant crossings of the Channel.”

The Bishop of Bristol, Bishop of Chelmsford, Bishop of Croydon, Bishop of Bradwell, Bishop of Dover, Bishop of Durham, Bishop of Gloucester, Bishop of London, Bishop of Manchester, Bishop of Southwark, Bishop of Wakefield, and the Right Reverend David Hamid, Suffragan Bishop in Europe, claimed that the “new ‘turn back’ policy, which will see boats forcibly returned to France… raises significant moral concerns,” arguing it “starkly increases the risks at sea and endangers the lives of those attempting the crossing.”

The bishops had been referring to a supposedly powerful new coverage of turning migrant boats attempting to attain England round at sea in “very limited circumstances”, which border hawks have lengthy argued would really lower dangers at sea by discouraging folks from trying unlawful sea crossings within the first place, as occurred in Australia and, whereas it nonetheless had a robust coverage towards seaborne migrants, Italy.

Migrant Sea Deaths Plunge Thanks to Italy’s Salvini Closing Ports https://t.co/mJHEMXZHxx

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 25, 2019

The woke bishops additionally alleged of their letter that the Nationality and Borders Bill the federal government is placing earlier than Parliament “would criminalise not only attempts to cross the border irregularly” — i.e. illegally — “nor even simply people-smuggling, but even those who take part in the rescue of boats in distress at sea.”

They claimed that “This would require those who see asylum seekers at risk to choose between ignoring a moral imperative (also established in maritime law) to assist them, or to risk prosecution and imprisonment,” arguing that this was the equal to “criminalisation of the Good Samaritan who did not pass by on the other side, and an affront to justice to put the saving of lives under any sort of legal penalty.”

In truth, the invoice doesn’t seem to criminalise “the rescue of boats in distress at sea” however merely updates current, weakly-enforced laws “against unlawful immigration” to make it an offence to “knowingly” facilitate unlawful immigration, the place at current it is just an offence to accomplish that “knowings and for achieve“.

The authorities seemingly has in thoughts organisations such because the anti-borders NGOs which function migrant transports within the Mediterranean Sea, offering what they declare a official “rescue” service however which critics complain is effectively a taxi service for unlawful immigrants, given their customized of going many nautical miles out of their approach to ship their passengers to European ports, slightly than ports in North Africa a lot, a lot nearer to hand.