Tom Hayes

Oxford Mail:

Labour city councillor for St Clement’s

“I've come to Oxford to be safe. I can’t go back home.”

I was an immigration caseworker for one of Oxford’s MPs at the time, and the anguish on the face of this man, somebody who had left behind loved ones for a safer life has stayed with me.

One year on, the number of refugees fleeing bloody conflicts and oppressive regimes is growing so quickly that the situation is becoming one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our generation.

Yet all we are seeing from the Government is scaremongering and statements that strip away the humanity of some of the planet’s most vulnerable people.

The crisis gripping Calais is further fuelling an anti-migrant sentiment, which too many in public office are whipping up.

The Prime Minister’s description of migrants as a ‘swarm’ only swells his heavy-handed record.

‘Go home’ vans patrolled my East Oxford ward and plans to nearly treble numbers at the immigration removal centre, Campsfield House in Kidlington, were floated.

Oxford is a global city, with one in three people born overseas.

The city’s increased population over the last decade is down to immigration.

With the five most common nations of birth being Poland, the United States, India, Germany, and Pakistan, our city’s 43,000 foreign-born residents reflect a fantastic array of backgrounds that enrich our communities.

I’m proud that our city had as its Lord Mayor last year Mohammed Abbasi, somebody who came to Oxford from Pakistan 50 years ago.

Dryly repeating these immigration statistics will never be enough. As a city, we do a good job of creating space for people to talk about their immigration experiences.

But a stronger defence of the positives of immigration is needed.

The looming referendum offers a good chance to make such a defence.

I’m looking forward to standing up for European Union membership as one of our city’s two European Champions in South-East MEP Anneliese Dodds’ campaign.

Oxford has been hard-hit by the hardline changes of the Government.

About 8,000 international students from 139 countries are represented at Oxford University.

With a significant student population living in my ward, I regularly meet foreign-born students who ask why they should stay and study, giving a lifeline to cash-strapped institutions, when tough rules and rhetoric make them feel unwelcome.

We need the Government to explain why it’s doing this to them, but also to ourselves.

Immigration isn’t just something that happens to foreigners – the case of the stranded spouse is one of the saddest of our time.

Where a British citizen or permanent resident wants to sets up life with a non-EU spouse, they sponsor them on a visa.

But that visa is granted if the British citizen earns at least £18,600 a year, and more for each child that they raise.

£18,600 is a far higher sum than that earned by a full-time worker on national minimum wage.

We have an immigration system dictating to low-earners that they can’t settle here with a non-EU spouse, effectively splitting up families.

We can change our immigration debate by celebrating the positive benefits of migration.

One is the hard work of many migrants, who pull themselves up rung by rung.

Yet, a murky pall hangs over us because some British-born people feel left behind, that migrants are coming here to take their jobs, and undercutting their wages.

We need to listen to everybody’s concerns and stop pulling punches with the political firebrands and human gunboats fanning their unhappiness.

I’m the son of an Irish migrant, somebody who landed in Liverpool at an early age but remembers, 50 years on, the impossibility of sleeping away a journey on a cattle boat.

I’m grateful that welcoming arms took in my dad, I’m even more grateful that many of those arms went on to cradle me a few decades later. I’m thankful that Oxford, like my home city, has no truck with anti-immigration politics and rhetoric. With our fate as an outward-looking country in the balance, I hope all of us come together to stand up for our global diversity.