Chameleon Magazine

For years we’ve been told that housing asylum seekers in hotels is the compassionate answer. Now the Government wants to move many of them out of hotels and into a former army camp near Bicester, and suddenly some of the loudest campaigners are objecting.

We’re told the camp is too isolated. There aren’t enough amenities. It could be distressing. It might create tensions.

Interesting.

Those concerns barely seemed to matter when asylum seekers were being placed in hotels across the country at enormous expense to taxpayers. But when the accommodation is closer to home, the conversation changes remarkably quickly.

To be fair, campaigners say their concern is about the suitability of the site rather than its location, arguing that isolated camps are not a humane way to house people seeking asylum. That’s a legitimate position to hold. But it also raises an awkward question.

If hotels are unacceptable because they’re expensive, and former military sites are unacceptable because they’re isolated, what exactly is the alternative?

Every proposal has to exist somewhere. Every location has neighbours. Every community will eventually have someone saying, “Not here.”

It is easy to demand generosity when someone else is providing the space. It becomes much harder when the consequences arrive on your own doorstep.

Britain needs an asylum system that is fast, fair and affordable. Genuine refugees deserve decisions quickly. Those with no right to remain should also receive decisions quickly. Endless delays, costly hotel bills and arguments over where people should be housed benefit nobody.

Perhaps the biggest lesson is this: principles are easiest to defend when they don’t affect your own postcode.