That prize is a powerful incentive to make Britain one’s home and to honour its values – including tolerance.
For as long as the UK remains a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), backed in domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998, there is an unrestricted right to claim asylum – irrespective of how anyone arrived.
A slightly more genuine issue is raised by the recent ruling by a judge that a Palestinian who came to the UK in 2007 – and is now a British citizen – could use the Ukrainian settlement scheme in order to claim asylum for six members of his family in Gaza.
There are so many outstanding citizens and their descendants who arrived in the UK as refugees – or, for that matter, economic migrants – by means of a visa or more irregular methods that to question the eventual and conditional right to citizenship is absurd.
Editorial: Multicultural Britain has been built by diversity over many centuries and all have earned their right to be granted the privilege of British citizenship.
