Piers Morgan insists we need to stop ‘hysterical’ immigration debates after pandemic
Magazine, Immigration, Cydney Yeates
Piers Morgan has insisted that we need to break the stigma when it comes to immigration in the UK when the coronavirus pandemic is over. The Good Morning Britain presenter’s comments were prompted after he and co-host Susanna Reid interviewed a man who’d fled Syria and is now helping to clean a hospital in a bid to tackle Covid-19. ‘I really think this is a reset button for the country and the world – but for this country in particular, about what we should be valuing most,’ Piers began. ‘Let’s not continue to have hysterical debates about who we should let into our country when you watch interviews like that with people who are literally saving lives.’ He continued: ‘There are legitimate debates to be had about immigration, of course there are, of course you’ve got to have rules and the rest of it. ‘But the stigmatising that was going on and the demonising of many immigrants, when you watch Hassan there, who’s come from Syria, left his family behind, his mother, his grandmother, in a war torn country and he’s now cleaning Covid wards in his hazmat suit there, quite extraordinary.’
Piers echoed a similar sentiment on Tuesday’s show where he recalled speaking to a Filipino woman who works for him, who explained that all her friends work for the NHS. ‘A lovely Filipino lady who works for me, she was out with her friends on Zoom talking to them and she said all of them are in the NHS,’ he said. ‘I said what do they all do and she sent me this list. We forget about this extraordinary work force who comes from all round the world to help the NHS.’
