Again
this comes down to whether you believe in human rights (and what those rights may be), whether you believe that you should defend other people's rights. Given that the UK, like most of the rest of the world, has said yes we believe in human rights (as defined by the UN conventions), and yes we believe that it is our responsibility to defend these rights, this decision is the logical conclusion.
There would need to be some fairly radical change to make this decision controversial at the levels where these decisions are made. The UK would either need to say we don't believe in human rights (or some particular rights) or that they don't believe that it is up to them to defend these rights for all or some people (such as non-citizens).
It would make a little sense to argue for human rights as "Human" rights, and then say that they don't apply in the same way to particular people. If the UK is to support human rights, then it has to defend these rights for all people and that entails, among other things, giving asylum to people whose rights as humans are not being respected. It also means that the UK (and the EU and UN among others) has an obligation to make other governments live up to their responsibilities to protect people's human rights.
The reality, of course is that, the ends are difficult to achieve without suffering in some shape or form. Any policy regarding asylum will necessarily be either to liberal (allowing in those who might not have a well founded fear of persecution) or to strict (sending back people to be persecuted and killed). Any diplomatic policy too generous (aid, talk) to those persecuting risks perpetuating that persecution and becoming complicit in it, and any policy too strict (war, sanctions) risks the very populations whose rights we are aiming to protect.
Britain is a popular destination for those seeking asylum, because Britain is the where the modern notions of liberty and rights were born, notions now extolled in the global mass media of the anglophone world.
If Britain and the British people believe in this cultural inheritance of liberty, then they must see that connection with that tradition from the Magna Carta, the peasant revolts and the end of serfdom, the civil war and the establishment of constitutional monarchy, the abolition of slavery, of universal suffrage, of active decolonisation and the support of parliamentary democracy, and the articulation of those rights we consider now not as our right as Englishmen but as our birth right as human beings.
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Sextant goes to him is emotionally erect, on this day, Wed 7 Jul 2010, 14:49,
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