SNP Plan for Refugee Amnesty Denied by Labour

I have been involved with the SNP for a long time. I first got involved as a fresh faced teenager at university and quickly learnt that one of the jibes that would be thrown at me by Labour student opponents would be that somehow as a member of the SNP, seeking independence for Scotland I was narrow minded. Some would even use the spectre of racism against me and my fellow SNP activists in Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association.

Of course this was something I never accepted then or is it something I accept now.

It is plainly a nonsense to characterise the SNP in such light, and news out today demonstrates that far from the SNP being narrow, perhaps those Labourites who make such accusations should look a bit closer to home.

This story in the Scotsman (http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1219312007) indicates that the Labour Immigration Minister in London has point blank refused to accept the case of the SNP government that those 1,400 refugee families who have been based in Scotland since March 2006 or before should have been granted an amnesty.

This would make a lot of sense, and follows hard on the announcement that the SNP government will treat those refugee children who have been in the Scottish education system for three years or more as if they were Scottish domiciled students for the purposes of entering higher education (more evidence for the narrow viewpoint of the SNP no doubt for those Labour students I was at university with). Having 1,400 families tangled up in the asylum seeker process is a nonsense when they have been based in Scotland for so long.

It cannot make any sense to deny families that are bedded into Scottish communities the chance to play a full part in those communities. It is more costly to the state to maintain them in that asylum seeker system rather than allowing these families to get work and pay taxes and play a normal role in day to day life.

The SNP government can see this (surely defying the allegations of a narrow world view) yet the Labour government cannot. The SNP recognises that there are those in the world who have no option other than to flee their homeland for their safety and that of their families. The greatest tragedy about these people is that they would give anything to be home, yet they cannot return for fear of their own physical safety being compromised. So it is right that we offer them a chance to build a new home somewhere they can live in safety.

It is a shame that the Labour government seems too narrow to accept that.