Drawing comparisons with the first Christmas, when Mary and Joseph were offered shelter in a bustling foreign town, Sir Philip Bailhache urges Islanders to ‘welcome newcomers to our clubs, societies and homes’ and offer ‘the gift of hospitality to the strangers in our midst’.
But the Bailiff also expresses the hope that new arrivals to the Island will identify with Jersey and become proud of their adopted home.
‘Our national identity as Jerseymen and women is important,’ he says.
‘It makes for social cohesion and helps us all take pride in our successes and responsibility for our failures.’ By making immigrants welcome, they will ‘come to feel as if they are Jersey people and cheer our brilliant badminton players, yachtsmen and other sportsmen and women as they conquer the world’.
