It shouldn't take Peter Tatchell to tell us our asylum system is broken
Asylum seekers are gaming the system. They're pretending to be gay to stay in Britain. These bogus homosexuals are exploiting our kindness – or our weakness, some might say – to get a foot in the door of our nation. Who's been making this claim? An old-style Tory, perhaps, the sort who has sleepless nights fretting over our porous borders?
Actually it's Peter Tatchell, the famed agitator for gay rights. Yes, one of Britain's best-known Left-wing rabble-rousers, a man who loves nothing better than a noisy protest, is raising the alarm about phoney asylum-seeking. When even a Leftie like Tatchell worries out loud that people are lying their way into the country, it's time to pay attention.
In an interview this week Tatchell warned that some foreigners are play-acting as gay to win the sympathy of woke Britain. These fauxmosexuals – if you will – are applying for membership of organisations like the Peter Tatchell Foundation in order to pass as gay.
Tatchell clocked a spike in 'small donations' from Pakistani men. Some give as little as £3 and then speedily request membership cards or letters to support their asylum applications. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to see what's happening here – these men are seeking 'proof of homosexuality' to swindle the Home Office and make it believe they'll be strung up if they're sent home.
Tatchell says his foundation sometimes receives as many as 30 small donations a day. They're literally playing 'the gay card.' These fake gays crave a piece of paper with their name alongside Peter Tatchell's in the hope that a Home Office bureaucrat will stamp 'APPROVED' on their applications.
One wonders how many foreigners are cosplaying as oppressed to win asylum here. We already know about the scourge of fake conversions to Christianity. Last year a whistleblowing priest said there is a 'veritable industry of asylum baptisms' in the CofE.
There's a 'conveyor belt' of such sacrilegious stunts, he said, with asylum-seekers pining that splash of baptismal water that might convince the Home Office they were repressed back home. And too often, he said, the Church is complicit in the pantomime Christianity of these cynical asylum-seekers.
Tatchell has proved himself a braver voice than many of the nation's bishops by calling out the 'fake conversions' to homosexuality that are also taking place. Asylum seekers who pretend to be gay or Christian are being deeply dishonest. Falsehoods are not a good foundation on which to build your residency here, far less your future citizenship.
But the real problem is the system itself. It's too soft, too gullible. There will always be asylum seekers playing tricks – what we need to ask is why the Home Office is so trickable. There have been some mad cases lately. Like the Albanian criminal whose deportation was halted because his kid is a picky eater. Or the Nigerian rapist who's still here because European judges ruled that he has the right to 'family life' in the UK.
If some foreigners think Blighty is a soft touch, easily hoodwinked, can we blame them? The horrible irony is that some of the fake gays will likely be homophobic. Coming from Muslim countries, they may well feel hostile towards gay people. If the Home Office is letting in homophobes wearing the mask of homosexuality, that is unforgivable.
There are genuinely oppressed people who could do with Britain's help. Real gay people in countries like Pakistan. Women who hate the hijab in Iran. Christians suffering harassment under the Taliban. These good people lose out when we let phonies bring the system into disrepute.
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