{"id":222536,"date":"2013-02-03T15:51:32","date_gmt":"2013-02-03T15:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/?p=222536"},"modified":"2025-02-25T06:01:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T06:01:55","slug":"ceri-owen-from-wales-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/?p=222536","title":{"rendered":"Ceri Owen from Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I thought I knew how messed up Britain\u2019s asylum system is. I\u2019ve been on protests about it, I\u2019ve stood outside detention centres waving placards, I\u2019ve signed petitions, I\u2019d met a few asylum seekers at church and soup kitchens, I\u2019ve done my bit for Stop The BNP. I thought I knew. But this is different. You can\u2019t understand how dehumanising a system is until you fully understand the humanity of the people trapped in it. I thought I knew the situation for \u2018asylum seekers\u2019 was bad. When it\u2019s a housemate and friend who has to formally prove risk to her life in a language she doesn\u2019t speak, without being given even the necessities of life \u2013 that\u2019s another level of understanding, not just intellectual awareness of injustice but a gut-level fear for a friend\u2019s safety. As a Christian I\u2019m called to love my enemies, and through the places I\u2019ve lived and worked I\u2019ve heard quite a bit of racism and BNP sympathisers in the last few years. I\u2019ve tried to understand their fear, that the places they feel rooted in are changing in ways they can\u2019t control, that the community they are a part of is becoming something different. Fear of the stranger is an understandable part of being human. But then I look at the guests at LCWF, and think \u2013 what if so much of the public discourse wasn\u2019t about \u2018asylum seekers\u2019, but about the toddler with the beautiful brown eyes, or the young woman I shared a silly film with last night? The media bogeyman of the \u2018asylum seeker\u2019 is easy to fear. It\u2019s only when you get to know people that they stop being just labels and stereotypes. It\u2019s easy to use words like \u2018asylum seeker\u2019 as a political tool, and whether that\u2019s to help or to demonise the people so labelled it\u2019s still using them as a means to an end. I thought I cared about asylum seekers. Caring for a person who is far from home and needs somewhere safe to live, an individual with their own name and story and dreams, is different. Sharing a home with \u2018asylum seekers\u2019, working with people rather than for them, is changing the way I think. You can fight for a cause, you can believe in it and give your life to it, but you can\u2019t love a cause or an idea. You can only love other people, and you can only grow into that by learning about them and knowing them as a person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I knew how messed up Britain\u2019s asylum system is. I\u2019ve been on protests about it, I\u2019ve stood outside detention centres waving placards, I\u2019ve signed petitions, I\u2019d met a few asylum seekers at church and soup kitchens, I\u2019ve done my bit for Stop The BNP. I thought I knew. But this is different. You […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-volunteer-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=222536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222537,"href":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222536\/revisions\/222537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=222536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=222536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatholicworkerfarm.org\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=222536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}