LAST week The Northern Echo ran a series of features on the plight of refugees. Today we ask two of our region’s community leaders, who have strong opinions on either side of the debate, if more migrants should be allowed to find sanctuary in the North-East.

Kath Sainsbury helps refugees through her work at Justice First in Stockon. She argues the UK should take more asylum seekers

WHEN the harrowing, graphic image of little Aylan al-Kurdi invaded the safe comfort of our living rooms, our collective consciences became exercised by the humanitarian crisis unfolding on the doorstep of Europe.

Since the barbaric conflict in Syria began, thousands of men, women and children have lost their lives, yet to our shame, it has taken the death of one precious child to focus the eyes of the world on Syria and more broadly on the desperate plight of those fleeing from the continuing savagery in Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves what risks we would be prepared to take to protect our families if faced with the same terrifyingly unspeakable horrors? Wouldn’t we hope that someone, somewhere would take pity on us and open the door; at least until the crisis was over?

Of course there need to be limits, but we must play our part in a European-wide programme of resettlement.

Let us also not forget those courageous individuals, who have defied oppression and been forced by vile regimes to flee their homes, who are already with us in our neighbourhoods: they too need our support.

I believe that we should never underestimate the goodwill that thrives in our communities. There is a positive warmth of spirit amongst ordinary people across the North-East who want to welcome refugees and treat them with dignity and respect. It is already happening in many parts of our region with the proliferation of drop-in centres run by caring volunteers. They will tell you that their lives have been enriched just by knowing these brave, resilient people and sharing their stories, and we all benefit from the skills that settled migrants bring and the contribution they make, once they are allowed to work. And 2012 figures showed that just 0.08 per cent of the region’s population was made up of asylum seekers.

As anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce once said: “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.” How unjust it would be if a vocal, mean-spirited minority view engendered by the tabloid press was allowed to stifle that kindness and deny us our humanity with their emotive arguments that we are being "swamped". It is just possible that the consequences of having looked away from the suffering of others will resonate for years to come in more ways than we can imagine.

Jonathan Arnott is the North-East’s Ukip MEP. He argues against the region taking more refugees

The Northern Echo:

THE humanitarian situation in Syria is a disaster, and we should do what we can to help.

But I don’t believe that we should be taking in any refugees from mainland Europe. Every single time we do, we make the current crisis worse rather than better. We don’t want to encourage yet more people to pay traffickers (and who knows whether the money will end up in the hands of terrorists?), to risk their lives on travel from safe country to safe country, and to leave the most vulnerable behind in countries like Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Ultimately, people are dying because we’re encouraging dangerous and completely unnecessary modes of travel.

Please, let’s do things in the right way. When we see the heartbreaking images on our TV screens, it has an emotional impact. But unless we resist the urge to take the wrong decisions, we will end up killing people by trying to be helpful. The poorest, most vulnerable people – the old, children and those in poverty – these people can’t afford to pay smugglers. They’re the four million Syrians in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey alone. They’re the people in the greatest need, but how easy it is for them to be forgotten by society because they don’t turn up on Europe’s doorstep.

Who are the people coming in to Europe? The European Union’s statistical agency says that only one in five are fleeing war-torn Syria. We know that ISIS are using the chaos to send terrorists into Europe. We know that economic migrants are throwing away and burning their passports so they can pretend to be Syrian and claim asylum.

I’ve spent long enough explaining what we shouldn’t do; there are positive steps we could take instead. We should step up efforts to provide essential supplies and medicines to those in the three worst-affected countries. We should be prepared to accept some Syrian refugees – not from Europe, but from countries like Jordan which simply can’t cope. Just one in 25 of immigrants coming to the UK are refugees. The other 96 per cent are economic migrants. We need to dramatically cut back the number of economic migrants we allow in to the country. If we didn’t have over 600,000 economic migrants coming into the UK, I suspect that the move to take more refugees would have greater public support than it does.