Archbishop: It's Not Racist To Fear Migration

Britons have a "justified" fear of mass immigration, the Archbishop of Canterbury has declared.

The Most Rev Justin Welby said it was "absolutely outrageous" to condemn people who raised concerns about the influx of large numbers of migrants as racist.

He said the scale of Europe's migrant crisis meant such anxieties were entirely reasonable.

"Fear is a valid emotion at a time of such colossal crisis," the UK's most senior cleric told Parliament's The House magazine.

"This is one of the greatest movements of people in human history. Just enormous. And to be anxious about that is very reasonable."

He added: "There is a tendency to say 'those people are racist', which is just outrageous, absolutely outrageous."

The Archbishop said it was essential the "genuine fear" some people felt was listened to.

"In fragile communities particularly - and I've worked in many areas with very fragile communities over my time as a clergyman -  there is a genuine fear: what happens about housing?

"What happens about jobs? What happens about access to health services?" he said.

He said British people had shown they were able to deal "brilliantly" with such challenges.

"It is simply a question of the scale on which we are prepared to act, in a way that spreads the load so it can be managed," he added.

"Fear is justified, I wouldn't want to criticise that for a moment, but so is hope wholly justified, because we have the capacity. We're those kind of people, we always have been."

He said the Church would remain neutral in the EU referendum debate, but was highly critical of Europe's response to the refugee crisis.

"You can't say 'God says you must vote this way or that way'," he added.

Figures released last month showed 323,000 more people arrived in the UK in the year to September 2015 than left - a 172,000 net increase from within Europe and 191,000 from outside Europe.

Read the whole article at: http://news.sky.com/story/1657704/archbishop-its-not-racist-to-fear-migration

Source: http://news.sky.com/ Photo: SkyNews