As Suella Braverman has admitted, Tory immigration policy over the past 12 years has been an abject failure (Embattled Braverman insists she is not at fault for Manston crisis, 31 October). What saddens me is the whole way this debate is framed. Nobody mentions the individual stories of these people. Nobody mentions the war-ravaged countries they come from (thanks for your recent editorial on the forgotten war in Ethiopia). Nobody mentions the political and religious persecution they are fleeing. And nobody emphasises the positive contributions that many could make to British society.
I have the privilege of working as a volunteer with a group that helps refugees on the Wirral. They come from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Ukraine and many other places. They are accountants, teachers, civil servants and engineers, and they desperately want to work and contribute in this country. They are skilled, talented, funny, vulnerable, delightful people who have so much to offer.
I just wish that the immigration debate could be framed in a more positive light. Perhaps Braverman could come up to the Wirral to meet some real-life asylum seekers and listen to their stories.
Rob Pickstone
West Kirby, Wirral
• I recently attended the funeral of a nonagenarian, Dr Ernest Brent, an Austrian Jew who got to England as a child shortly before the war broke out. He was then interned for a while on the Isle of Man, after which (having taught himself English from the BBC) he got a place at a grammar school in Manchester. He went on to become a leading educationist, who played an important role in the establishment of the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (now known as Cardiff Metropolitan University).
If this is what members of an invasion look like, we should be opening the doors to them, not keeping them in places like the camp at Manston.
Phoebe Merrick
Romsey, Hampshire
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