Nigel Farage is right about Syrian refugees, but asylum should not be permanent

There has been a stagey sort of surprise at the news that Nigel Farage has called for refugees from the conflict in Syria to be given asylum in Britain. He’s anti-immigration, see, so his call for generous provision for refugees of war has, at least for our major broadcasters, a paradoxical element.

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Michael Simmons

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But it doesn’t quite follow that if you are in favour of curbing immigration that you are therefore Scroogish on asylum. Paul Collier, the Oxford academic whom I interviewed for the Speccie after the publication of Exodus, his interesting book on the effects of migration on poor countries, was emphatic that countries had a moral duty to be generous in the provision of asylum. But only so long as the asylum is temporary; the deal being that once the conflict is more or less over, the refugees return to help rebuild their country.