OPINION: Jewish asylum seekers are coming to our shores too
Rabbi Alex Goldberg describes how "the 'migrant crisis' is not about numbers, but about people" - one of whom is Miriam, a young Jewish refugee
It used to be the home of darts. Crowds packed into smoke-filled halls to watch Jockey Wilson and Eric Bristow, tanked up on beer, take aim for the World Darts Championship. That stage has long since gone. The “World of Darts” is today a derelict site on the edge of town. Three hotels stand nearby, their glory days behind them.
One of those hotels now houses asylum seekers and refugees.
If you believe the far-right, this is a symbol of Britain being overrun. They tell us that “our” culture has been lost, that the presence of asylum seekers is the reason for local decline. But the truth is very different. Those hotels were struggling long before the first refugee walked through their doors. Hit hard by years of shutdowns and COVID, they were rescued by government contracts, not by tourists. They are not the Ritz or the Danieli in Venice. They are faded, functional, and for those inside, they are not havens but holding pens.
Step inside, and you discover that the “migrant crisis” is not about numbers, but about people.
I met one of them: a young Jewish woman from a Central American country. Let’s call her Miriam.
She was once a businesswoman, ambitious and independent. But she was harassed by gangs who demanded protection money. In a 2022 report it was claimed hundreds of millions of dollars per year are brought in by gangs extorting funds from entrepreneurs in her country. Refusal to pay often leads to threats, kidnappings, or killings.
Gunmen threatened her life. She fled her home, her family, her business. She made it to Britain, hoping for safety and a chance to rebuild.
Instead, she found herself in a hotel room with no certainty about tomorrow. Her asylum case was frozen in the backlog. The Home Office changed the rules around her, tried to force a roommate on her, and left her young life suspended in limbo.
Our weekly meetings of Jewish learning took place over coffee and Kit Kats. That mattered. It was a way of humanising the process — just seeing another person as a human being, not as an “asylum seeker” to be processed or harassed. She spoke no English at first, so we used a Spanish-translated Torah. From it I learned to say: ‘La Torá fue dada en el Monte Sinaí’. The Torah was given at Mount Sinai. And also: ‘No cocines al cabrito en la leche de su madre’. Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk. Ancient commandments, translated into her tongue, while her future here remained untranslated by the system.
Miriam wanted to contribute. She dreamed of starting a new business here, creating jobs and wealth for her new country. Instead, she was locked into a system designed less for welcome and more for deterrence, its bureaucratic obstacles intended to dissuade others from coming after her. She waited over a year before they allowed her to attend an English language course and over two years before hearing her case.
She should not be made a scapegoat — not for the failures of government in her country, and not for the failures of government here.
What would really reduce asylum seekers arriving on Britain’s shores? Not harsher rules, not ever poorer conditions, not more degrading treatment. The answer lies in building better conditions at home: stronger economies, better policing, less corruption, more peace and prosperity. People do not uproot themselves lightly. They do not cross continents and oceans for a budget hotel room in a Surrey car park. They do so because their lives depend on it.
Yet instead of facing up to this truth, we prefer to repeat old patterns. We turn the vulnerable into scapegoats. We let demagogues fill the air with slogans of “decline” and “invasion.” We forget our own history.
We were the ones who fled before. One hundred and fifty years ago, Jews fled pogroms in Eastern Europe. Eighty-five years ago, Jews fled Nazi Germany and Austria. And even today, Jews are among those seeking safety from threats abroad.
When we remember this, the picture changes. That hotel is not a sign of Britain’s decline. It is a reminder of our responsibilities — to others, and to our own story.
Miriam is not an anonymous “migrant.” She is someone’s daughter, someone’s neighbour, someone who could be a future employer, a future citizen, a future friend. She is a human being who has already endured more than most of us can imagine.
The question is not whether Britain is being “overrun.” The question is whether Britain can still remember its own decency. Whether we can look past the shouts of decline and see the young woman sitting in her room, frightened yet brave, clinging to her faith, holding onto Torah in Spanish, and waiting for her chance to build a new life.
If we can do that, we may discover that what is really at stake is not only the future of those seeking refuge, but the moral future of our own society
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