Top UK Official: Wales Should Become 'Nation of Sanctuary' for Migrants
Welsh Plaid Cymru leader Liz Saville Roberts makes call in Britain's House of Commons
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A top British politician has called for her entire home country of Wales to be converted into a "sanctuary nation" for the relocation of the world's migrants.
Welsh separatist party Plaid Cymru leader Liz Saville Roberts has made the call in Britain’s House of Commons.
Speaking to BBC's "Question Time" this week, the London-born ex-teacher told the audience, “We live on an island of Britain.”
“In terms of managing immigration this is way easier than for many other nations,” she added.
The United Kingdom does, in fact, already have the joint-highest illegal alien population in all of Europe, however.
“My party would like to see Wales as a nation of sanctuary for refugees,” Roberts added before warning the UK would “be in trouble” if it closed the door on immigrants.
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“[Immigration] has become desperately political," Roberts continues.
"Now, forgive me, now, to be referring to Wales again, but this is equally true for other areas in the United Kingdom…
"96 percent of people in Wales were born in the United Kingdom, and yet we hear this same argument there, but we’re dependent so much on people to come in for clinical staff, for food processing, for catering — we’re going to be in trouble if we don’t have these people still coming in,” she claimed.
Her comments appear to suggest in the same breath that immigration to Wales is both too limited to be of any concern, and also absolutely vital to the health service and for a steady supply of cheap waiters and factory workers.
“My party would like to see Wales as a nation of sanctuary for refugees”@LSRPlaid says the UK would “be in trouble” if it closed the door on immigrants. #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/S2ZymzE85J
— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) November 14, 2019
“Now, I am proud to see that my party would like to see Wales as a nation of sanctuary for refugees,” she added, passing over the fact that the economic migration to Wales which she initially mentioned has little bearing on the question of refugees, which in Continental European countries including Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden remain overwhelmingly jobless.
“But I think there is a time now, rather than [immigration] being a political football — and this is a political par excellence of our time, and it is ugly — that we start talking about immigration in terms of these are other human beings, and how we manage with that in the world, rather than using it as an excuse for closing down our doors, becoming more inward-looking, and more turning in ourselves,” she concludes.
"Because I fear for the future if we continue with this narrative."
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Despite the Plaid politician’s rhetoric, however, the reality is that Britain’s doors have not been closed or even closing for generations, with net immigration currently running at or near record annual highs and the country’s demographic make-up transforming rapidly.
Activists, it's us.
— Plaid Cymru (@Plaid_Cymru) November 14, 2019
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Quite how Wales, with a population of just over 3 million, could possibly retain any semblance of identity or even survive economically if turned into a “sanctuary” for tens of millions of global refugees, remains unclear.
