• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Joint Public Issues Team

Churches working for peace and justice

  • Home Page
  • Who We Are
    • Six hopes for society
  • Issues
    • Economy
      • Tax Justice
      • Reset The Debt
      • Living Wage
    • Environment
      • Net Zero In My Neighbourhood
    • Poverty and Inequality
      • The Cost of Living Crisis
      • Universal Credit
      • Truth and Lies
      • Enough
      • Rethink Sanctions
      • Faith in Foodbanks
      • Housing and Homelessness
    • Asylum and Migration
      • Refugees
      • End Hostility
      • The Asylum System
    • Peacemaking
      • The Arms Trade
      • Nuclear Weapons
      • Drones
      • Peacemaking resources
    • Politics and Elections
      • Elections
      • Meet Your MP
      • Art of the Possible
      • Brexit
    • Other Issues
      • International Development
      • Modern Slavery and Exploitation
        • Forced labour in fashion
  • Get Involved
    • JPIT Conference 2022
    • Newsletter
    • Events
    • Walking with Micah
  • Resources
    • Advent
    • 10 Minutes on… podcast
    • Politics in the Pulpit?
    • Stay and Pray
    • Season of Creation
    • Prayers
    • Public Issues Calendar
    • Poetry
    • Small Group Resources
  • Blog

Act now: Tell your MP you object to refugees being sent to Rwanda

You are here: Home / Issues / Asylum and Migration / Act now: Tell your MP you object to refugees being sent to Rwanda

In April 2022, the UK government announced plans to deny people the opportunity to seek asylum in the UK, and instead take them by force to Rwanda if they arrive here via any ‘unofficial’ route. The Churches have been vocal in their opposition to this policy.

Click here to read our responses to the Rwanda plan

If you share these concerns, please write to your MP today. It’s always more effective if you can put your views in your own words and draw on your own experience. We’ve put together a template letter to get you started, which you can download below.

Click here to check who your MP is and find their email or postal address.

On social media? If you use social media, you could contact your MP by tagging them, and use the hashtag #StopRwanda.

Template letter

Dear ____________ MP

I am writing to express how appalled I am by the plan to send people who are seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda. I believe that those fleeing war or persecution should be treated fairly and compassionately irrespective of the way in which they arrived here.

Everyone has the right to seek asylum. People seek asylum in the UK because they want a chance to rebuild their lives where they feel safe, where they have family, or where the language is familiar. Under the government’s plans, instead they will be forcefully removed to a country they have no connection to, with no way back – simply because of how they came to the UK, and not because of their need for protection.

To export some people seeking asylum to Rwanda is a denial of the UK’s responsibilities, and of the rights and dignity of refugees. It will tear families apart, destroy lives, and undermine the principles of the UN Refugee Convention which the UK helped to create after the horrors of the Second World War.

The generous public response in the UK to those who have had to flee from Ukraine and Afghanistan over the last year shows that our communities are keen to welcome refugees and help them rebuild their lives, not turn them away. Many refugees go on to make a huge contribution to their new communities.

While the government claims that its policy is designed to deter people from making dangerous journeys across the channel, it has itself created the situation where people are forced to take unsafe routes if they want to seek asylum here. Rather than sending people to Rwanda, the government should be working with other countries to expand the number of safe routes and resettlement programmes that will enable people in need of protection, including unaccompanied children, to seek sanctuary in the UK.

I would be grateful if you would pass my views on to the government, and ask what it is doing to establish workable, safe and welcoming routes for asylum, through which the UK can play its part in meeting its international responsibilities and responding to need.

Yours sincerely

[Add your name and full postal address]

Click here to download the letter as a Word document

Primary Sidebar

Search

Recent Posts

  • What does Government Support for Asylum Seekers really provide?
  • God with Us – the Refugees of Calais and Dunkirk
  • What are the stories we should tell about the humanitarian crisis at Manston Airport Asylum centre?
  • Afghanistan and the UK – One Year On from the Fall Of Kabul
  • Five things you can do to mark Refugee Week (20-26 June 2022)
  • Nationality and Borders Act 2022
  • Senior Church leaders write to Peers ahead of House of Lords vote on Nationality & Borders Bill
  • Nationality and Borders Bill – What’s next?
  • Nationality and Borders Bill: Update from the House of Commons
  • How can we help Ukraine?

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter

Footer

Follow us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Quick links

Stay and Pray
Politics in the Pulpit
Faith in Politics podcast
Public Issues Calendar
Useful Links

Our work

About Us
Meet the Team
Join the Team 
Internship
Our Newsletter

Contact us

25 Marylebone Road
London NW1 5JR

Tel: 020 7916 8632

enquiries@jpit.uk

Copyright © 2023 · Showcase Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in