The year is 2029 and Nigel Farage has just been elected as the new prime minister of the United Kingdom. 

As one of many sweeping reforms in his first few months in office, the new PM has deported thousands of asylum-seekers to countries including Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iran.  

Upon return to these countries, it has been reported that several of these asylum-seekers have faced arrest, torture, and even execution. 

Now of course this is only a fictional depiction of one possible future, but it is a future that would appear at least conceivable, given recent polling and the pledge of the Reform party leader to deport every individual who travels illegally to these shores, whether or not they may face a risk to life upon their return home. 

Such statements would have been almost universally lambasted not so many years ago, but the current status of our immigration system - and politics - has seemingly rendered them palatable to a growing number of Brits. 

“I don't think it's about hate,” said one caller to BBC Radio 5 Live when Reform’s plans were announced last week. “I think it's about the way [immigration’s] been handled up to now by this government and the previous government, [which has] created a lot of unease.” 

Another caller admitted the issue had divided opinion, but provided a contrasting perspective: 

“This is Nigel Farage all over,” she said. “It's what he's done since before Brexit. What does he need to win in this country? He needs division. And what's the most divisive issue we can come up with? Immigration. And what a privilege we have to live in a safe country where, God forbid, none of us will ever have to pick our children up and flee persecution!” 

All of which brings us nicely back to the particular - and certainly complex - issue at hand: namely, what should be our response to those asylum-seekers who have genuinely fled from persecution and may face more of it should they be returned home? 

The safeguarding of such individuals is at the very heart of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which all Western democracies (including ours) have ratified and long defended, and which includes the principle of “non-refoulement”: prohibiting "the forcible return of refugees or asylum-seekers to a country where they are liable to be subjected to persecution”. 

“Our values have always been that where people are under a real and substantial risk of physical torture or persecution … then we as a country have always been prepared to have them,” former head of the judiciary Lord Thomas explained on another BBC Radio show last week. “I don’t think we should abrogate values embodied in the convention … because that’s part and parcel of our history and our tradition and our standing as a liberal democracy.” 

And yet, as Lord Thomas’s interviewer correctly pointed out, this is precisely what Reform are pledging to do, should they come to power.  

Indeed, an increasing number of politicians here and elsewhere now argue that the Refugee Convention and other similar treaties, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, must be reformed - or even ignored - in light of a much-changed world. 

We are not the only country facing an immigration crisis, of course; nor are we the first to consider drastic measures to stem the tide of asylum-seekers arriving on our shores. 

In his own first few months back in office, the US president, Donald Trump, made good on his own pledge to tighten up America’s borders by, among other things, deporting illegal immigrants. 

Among them were several Iranians who claimed to have a reasonable fear of persecution should they be returned home, given their expressed conversions to Christianity. 

In May, a US congresswoman proposed that legislation should be amended to protect such religious refugees from deportation, naming her bill, the Artemis Act, after one of the Iranians who had been deported to Panama. 

In June, the issue returned to the headlines when another Iranian asylum-seeker was filmed having a panic attack as her husband and fellow Christian convert was taken away by the US’s immigration enforcement agency, ICE. 

In July, the couple’s pastor - another Iranian Christian who had arrived in the United States as a refugee some years ago - travelled to the White House to conduct a three-day hunger strike in protest against the detention of his church members. 

And in August, in an interview with the director of the advocacy organisation for which I work, the pastor called for “deep reforms” to the immigration system, saying that “most [Iranian Christian asylum-seekers in the US] tried many times to come through a legal way, like a refugee pathway, but there is no legal way for Iranians to become refugees in the United States.” 

A legal pathway for religious refugees is also something that has been called for in the UK, including by the frontrunner to be the next leader of the Church of England - another Iranian former refugee, Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani.  

So the need to reform the asylum system here and elsewhere is something that would appear to be agreed upon by all sides in the debate. 

Reporting on the plight of refugees was not something that was considered part of my remit when I first joined Article18 midway through Trump’s first term in office. Back then, our focus was only on documenting the persecution Christians were (and still are) enduring in their homeland.  

But as the years have passed and the numbers of Iranian Christians seeking asylum have grown while the opportunities for them to be resettled have drastically shrunk, the issue has become an increasing and ultimately un-ignorable concern. 

In the last two years alone, my organisation has released reports on the plight of Iranian Christian refugees in Turkey, Georgia and, closer to home, Sweden, while concerns have also been raised about Iranian Christian refugees in several other countries, including Armenia, Iraq and Indonesia. 

In each of these countries, as in Blighty, the common denominator appears to be simply that these refugees - however worthy their claims may be - are unwanted and untrusted by their hosts. 

During my research, I came across a refugee support group in Colchester, Refugee, Asylum Seeker & Migrant Action (RAMA), whose director, Maria Wilby, I had the privilege of interviewing, and whose perspective has stayed with me. 

Ms Wilby picked me up on a comment I had made, when I suggested that “one could understand why people may feel less sympathy for economic migrants, but surely not refugees”. 

Her response was not dissimilar to the words of the second caller to 5 Live: 

“If you were in the UK, and you had nothing to feed your children or grandchildren, what would you do?” she asked. “You’d go to the next country and ask them to feed them. And that’s what it means to be an economic migrant. It’s not about, ‘Oh, I’ve got a nice car, but I want a nicer car.’ These are people who are literally starving, and feel so disadvantaged that they think the next generation will also be equally disadvantaged. And of course then you try and move. 

“And back in the day, it used to be that if you had a child in another country, they would basically be a native of that country. We’ve changed the rules to mean that migration and borders grow and grow. And actually, we’ve created this system – all of us have created this system by standing by and letting it happen – and it’s not right. If I believed in God, God certainly didn’t intend there to be borders. Nobody would. Why would you? It’s an unnatural concept. We are one world, and we should share it.” 

I’m not sure Nigel Farage would agree, but whatever one’s perspective on the need for border control, surely we should all be able to agree that those with genuine claims to have fled persecution should be afforded our help, or at the very least protected from refoulement.