Reader's letter

Some of your correspondents' views on asylum-seekers seem to be getting through to the Home Office. In the Independent a report reveals that Jack Straw is banning refugee children from receiving donations of toys, and has instructed supermarkets to withhold change due from food coupons spent for less than the full face value.

Apart from the questionable legality of these actions, are we so morally bankrupt that we target the children to get at the parents?

Remember the outrage over reports that refugees had been taking children with them when begging on the streets?

Why shouldn't they do a bit of begging? Lots of British people beg, it has become part of our culture since the Eighties, although British beggars take a dog with them, which is apparently all right.

If you think about it, refugees cost us very little in the scheme of things.

Nobody pulls up their roots and leaves a place where they are happy, and many of these people have seen horrors that are unimaginable to us.

If the world was more settled there would be a lot fewer refugees and we all have a part to play in that.

Andy Baldock,

Villa Grove,

Heworth Green,

York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.