A campaign advising illegal immigrants to go home has been branded “racist” by a charity.
Home Office posters on display in Glasgow state: “Is life here hard? Going home is simple”.
Meanwhile, another showing a photograph of an aeroplane reads: “This plane can take you home. We can book the tickets”.
Positive Action in Housing, which works with asylum seekers, yesterday branded the posters “shameful and deeply offensive”.
The charity’s director Robina Qureshi said: “As we all should know, ‘go home’ is a well-known racist taunt that has been used for decades in this country by fascists and racists against those of us from immigrant communities.
“That a government agency should decide to take up the same racist and xenophobic refrain while processing would-be refugees to this country, is shameful and deeply offensive.”
James Dornan MSP said he had written to Home Secretary Theresa May demanding the poster campaign be stopped immediately.
“There is no room for this type of abhorrent xenophobic campaign which will only serve to make already vulnerable people feel unwelcome and fans the flames of racial bigotry,” the Glasgow representative said.
