It is "outrageous" to label people who have fears about migration to the UK as racists, says Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
In an interview with Parliament's The House magazine, Welby said there is a "genuine fear" among some British people about the impacts of mass-migration on housing, employment and the NHS.
The Archbishop, who hasn't shied away from voicing strong political opinions in the past, said:
There is a tendency to say ‘those people are racist’, which is just outrageous, absolutely outrageous. Fear is a valid emotion at a time of such colossal crisis. This is one of the greatest movements of people in human history. Just enormous. And to be anxious about that is very reasonable.
Welby also praised Britain's "superb" humanitarian effort in response to the Middle East refugee crisis but urged the government to accept its fair of Syrian people fleeing from the war-torn region.
"I was in Berlin, and the churches there are doing the most extraordinary things, as are the German people," the archbishop said. "They took 1.1 million last year. And it does make 20,000 over several years sound really very thin."
The Archbishop, who was appointed to the Church of England's highest position in 2012, also spoke about the upcoming EU referendum.
Welby said the debate has failed to address key issues such as what the country would look like if it were to leave the 28-nation bloc and how would Britain would make the union more effective if it voted to remain.
He added that Christians are not expected to vote in a particular way on June 23, explaining: "I don't think there is one correct Christian view, one way or the other. You can't say 'God says you must vote this way or that way'."
Secretary for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith, who is one of many high-profile ministers pushing for Brexit, welcomed Mr Welby's remarks on migration.
Duncan Smith told the BBC:
These are rational comments from the archbishop - they're to be welcomed - but you wonder just how late they've come from various people in institutions, so I congratulate him. If you think back, for far too many years what's happened is that in a sense the elites have all said 'It's terrible to talk about immigration and if you do you're racist', so they've shut down the debate for many, many years.
Duncan Smith accused Prime Minister David Cameron of having a "low opinion" of British people and said the country would flourish as a non-EU member.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: How Marshawn Lynch — who hasn't spent a penny of his NFL salary — makes and spends his money