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What Can We Do About the Refugee Crisis?
Annika Hernroth-Rothstein’s post about the fate of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose lifeless body washed up on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey, gave rise to many passionate comments about Europe’s refugee crisis. Understandably so.
I would prefer the term “the crisis of Middle East State failure,” but on this thread, I’d like to step back from discussions of nomenclature, the exact nature of the crisis, and who is to blame for it. There’s more than enough blame to go around. I don’t mean to say that assigning blame for it isn’t important: to fix a problem, we must understand how it came to be a problem; likewise, we must understand the cause of a problem if we’re to ensure it doesn’t happen again. So yes, we must assign blame. But we can assign it at leisure. The immediate problem needs immediate solutions, for without them, many more children will die.
On the podcast yesterday, I said something to the effect of, “There’s no solution,” or “There’s no easy solution.” I regret saying that. That a problem is hard does not mean it’s insoluble. To say that nothing can be done is obviously absurd. I only meant that I had not yet thought of a good solution.
I wanted to open this thread to put the collective intelligence, creativity, practical experience, and morality of Ricochet to work on this problem. I’d like people to come up with ideas, even if they might be silly — and I’d like to ask that no idea, however outlandish, be shouted down or mocked. Let’s just entertain any idea that comes to anyone’s mind to see if a part of it is good or might be bettered.
Among the principles I’d like us to use:
1) Half the refugee population are children. Keep that in mind.
2) We can grumble endlessly that other countries should be responsible for them; that they aren’t doing enough; that none of this should be our responsibility. I would argue that the latter point isn’t true: We’re been a significant actor in the region since the Second World War, and thus do share some of the responsibility for its condition now; but more importantly, we have limited power to change the policies of other countries; whereas we, the United States, are a sovereign nation that has the full power to change our own policies.
Finally, let’s acknowledge the countries who have done far more to shelter refugees than we have and far more than could reasonably be expected — Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. Even if they have not solved the problem, and even if, in the case of Turkey, they have also contributed to causing it. There is much blame to go around. There is also much praise to go around. But none of that needs to go around on this thread: Let’s just figure out how we could save lives.
3) Even if an idea results in saving only one life, to have and implement an idea that saves a life is more than many of us will achieve in our lifetimes, and thus a good idea.
4) An idea that saves “a few people” is infinitely better than one that saves none. There is no reason to reject an idea because it isn’t “a comprehensive solution.” A “comprehensive solution” might not exist. Or it might: If you’ve got an idea for one, bring it on.
5) Let’s say the obvious: Most Americans would unhesitatingly say, “Let’s admit every one of those refugees.” We are a vast and rich country. We are anything but a cruel or an ungenerous people. But we are concerned that admitting millions of refugees from a culture very different from ours will further strain our own social order, which we sense to be unusually fragile right now. We’re concerned that we have lost the genius we once had for assimilating refugees. We are concerned that we no longer know how to integrate immigrants and make of them patriotic, productive Americans. We are concerned they will be a drain on our already-strained public finances. We are concerned, given the region from which they come and the fact that many of them are Muslims, that among these refugees may be terrorists or people whose religious beliefs are incompatible with the political principles we most hold dear.
6) None of these concerns are frivolous. No one who expresses them should be shouted down as a heartless bigot. These are risks that must be taken seriously: We can’t accept a very large number of refugees absent a full awareness that these are the risks we’d face, and a good, workable plan to minimize the risks.
7) Let’s also begin by saying something else that’s perhaps less obvious, but very true: In the past, America has admitted massive numbers of refugees, even from very different cultures, and has exhibited a historically unprecedented genius for integrating them. My grandparents were part of the wave of Jewish refugees that came to America fleeing the Nazis. As Zeynep Tufekci pointed out on her Twitter feed, This is what was said in America, at the time, about people like my grandparents:
But America did prove capable of integrating wave upon wave of Jewish refugees, most of whose children became fully American within one generation, and most of whose descendants are, like me, more loyal to America precisely because we understand that America was the country that opened its doors to us and saved our lives; it was the country that gave us opportunities to thrive that few people in all of human history had ever enjoyed. We were the flotsom of humanity — that’s what the hashtag #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik means — but Americans made us Americans, fully equal citizens, just like them.
I was born in Stanford hospital in 1968, the best place and time in all of history for a Jewish girl to be born, and when I think how America embraced me — do you know that I literally never heard an anti-Semitic comment until I was 16? Not once? And never heard another until my early 30s? — I do, truly, regret that I have but one life to give to my country. If America could do this to wave upon wave of Jewish, Scots, Scots-Irish, German, Irish, Italian, Chinese, and Vietnamese refugees — and it did — it shows that it is theoretically possible to this, so long as we remain committed to the ideal that permitted this to happen: e pluribus unum.
There are more refugees today than at any time since WWII. The few global agencies that aid them have paltry budgets, and a long history of creating squalid refugee camps that breed despair, fail to teach the skills or values required to succeed in modern economies, and incubate radicalism.
So what ideas might work?
A comment on Annika’s thread jumped out at me:
Douglas: Anyone clamoring to bring these people in should have to open their own homes to them. THAT would be humanitarian.
While I think Douglas meant this to be sarcastic, he’s absolutely right. Douglas, would you be willing? I certainly would. I owe it to the generation who took in my family; and even if I didn’t, what better use could I make of my home? It would be cramped, but I could take in a family of three. I don’t know if the French government would let me, but I can ask.
What if we could start a program to match refugees with families willing to sponsor them for, say, ten years, to take responsibility for them, to guarantee that they will not be a burden on the state, to educate their children, to teach them English, to teach them about America and the responsibility of citizenship, to help them train to do useful jobs, and keep careful watch on them to be sure they don’t slip through the cracks?
I think many Americans would be willing, don’t you?
A private initiative like this, launched in cooperation with State and the INS — what are the obstacles? Could it be done? Is it a good idea? How could we make it work?
What other ideas come to mind?
Published in General
I like this idea. Could this be done by a private organization? Get permission from a foreign country to “start” a city run by American Expats and protected by Voluntary American soldiers (of the retired sort helping the the Kurds) with the express acknowledgement that it would not become American soil in the end but would simply be a “sanctuary” city (ironically enough) for refugees?
Muslims are connected to the Umma, their concept of a global muslim nation which to many (most?) of them supersedes any other nation. That makes integration more difficult. In addition, most of the ones I have spoken to have no visible love for this country and tend to be critical instead. Maybe the next generation will be different, or maybe not.
I think so. I don’t see why there couldn’t be: It’s a very reasonable bargain: I think there’d be a lot of public support for the idea that if you break the compact, you can’t stay. But it needs to be very clear what the compact is: To come to America you agree that you’ll be fully committed to leaning how to be an American, take no public assistance, and break no laws — or you’ll be deported at the expense of the person who sponsored you. I have a feeling very few would fail to live up to their side of the compact: They’re not risking their lives that way to get to safety for no reason, are they?
I assume some would fail, yes. And the optics of deporting them would be bad. But what are the “optics” like now?
If it could be followed to the letter regardless of how much the left squawks in the event of an individual “failure” I’m pretty sure I could support this.
On the current optics, that’s is a good (and somber) point.
I know this is off topic but it would be an easier sell if, after pulling out the refugees, part 2 of the plan were to go in and kill off the ISIS cockroaches, giving them a place to go home to that wasn’t full of homicidal psychos.
The rest of the world is what non-Western life is like. This is humanity at its default. This is what you get without the long Western traditions of self-rule, and Judeo-Christian values. In fact, it is only those values that make us even care about the refugees in the first place.
The world is full of tribal, pre-enlightenment, non-states. They have borders and use Western Technology, but they are not really nation-states as we understand them. It is the “3rd world”, and they just don’t think like us. The most libertarian American is closer to the most left-wing socialist in France, then either of them are to the typical thug in power.
Tribes do not consider members of other fully human. The whole idea that every human is special and fully endowed with rights by a creator is one of the most radical ideas ever put forth. Believe in Christ or not, but his message is alien to humanity in a profound way.
There is no solution that will work, unless these cultures pull themselves into Western ways of thinking, and we do not have the cultural confidence anymore to force them to do that.
This edges into Government involvement, but I think this is brilliant idea if you sweeten the deal for the cities or countries involved (there are very few empty spaces around on which to just found a city) by linking resettlement of refugees (full civil rights, possibly a reasonable pathway to citizenship and political rights) with some sort of free trade access to the West. That way people could earn and support themselves and have a real stake in their new home.
Jordan and Lebanon suggest themselves for Syrian refugees, but it might work well in North and West Africa as well.
I disagree. I do not think that someone coming from an non-Western culture would integrate well at all. The thinking is too different.
We should import no non-Western thinking people into America. And let me clarify here: Someone from Japan or India now is “Westernized” in their thinking. Those nations were conquered and converted.
America does not need one more non-Western thinking person in it. Nor, is it our job to save the rest of the world.
Claire, you correctly raise the point in the OP about blame and/or where does this problem begin so we can correct it and prevent it.
I submit that at the core of the problem is Islam. There are merciless tyrants exploiting and killing these refugees, but we shouldn’t be shocked by that when they practice a cult created by a merciless tyrant and subjects its followers to merciless violence and genocide of non-believers.
We in the west view Assad and others as murderous tyrants because of our Judaeo Christian values including mercy and tolerance define them as such. Under Islam Saddam Hussein, Assad, and the litany of those before them and who replaces them are just the guys in charge.
It is hard to open our hearts and doors to refugees when they are only running from the guys in charge and not renouncing and running from the root cause of this crisis. If we bring them here with their religion and culture intact all we have done is bring the plague to its next continent.
If these and the refugees before them were running away from Islam for a fresh start, that would be a different story, but all we see are more mosques to preach hatred of America, honor killings of innocent girls, burkas, and terrorist sleeper cells.
iWe
“Or we could figure out a way to enable solutions that help in the short AND long term – neither of the above does the job.
Good ideas are powerful; let’s make them work”.
And “we” know something about this? Do “we” remember this after two weeks? Kim Davis is already bigger sufferer for many.
I agree, since at the very least the host government would have to be involved. I think the big issue would be convincing the host country that it really is a private thing and not some backdoor American Foreign Policy, but then again, with this President? :)
That’s true, even having lived in Europe I forget how crowded it can be. I didn’t even think about the idea of sweetening the pot the way you describe. It’s an unrealistic idea but could you imagine draining all the war torn areas of the Middle East of the souls that actually want to be free and live their lives? (I know, I know, it’s more complicated than that, but what a concept.)
What if I reject your underlying argument?
Canada allows some sort of private (ie non-Governmental) sponsorship of refugees by groups and organisations. Sponsors take on responsibility for the resettled family (not individual) for a period of time. Imho this is a great system because it plugs refugees into functional social networks, which help with integration – learning the language, finding a job, finding a place to stay, and all without an immediate burden on the public purse.
The most obvious groups that would do this and do it well are the Churches, though you might want to tweak the requirements.
All refugees still have to pass character and security clearances to enter Canada.
That’s the program I understand that the little boy and his family were trying to access – the drawback was that Canada used UN registration as a refugee as a measure of eligibility, and they were finding it hard to get registered. So there’s that.
My parents were immigrated here as DP’s from Austria (Displaced Persons) in 1950.
However, they received No government assistance, and had to ensure they would not be a burden on the US. Also no provision was made to do anything in their native language, they learned English within months. My parents received 2 weeks of lodging in a church hall, and then were on their own. My father, who was a chemist worked at Swift & Co moving pallets of meat into the smoke house. My mom took a job on the line at Brach’s Candy (picture Lucy and Ethyl). The understanding was if you came here you adapted to the language and the culture, and not the reverse.
The vast majority of these refugee’s want to go to Germany. Why? Because of the climate? The beer? Germanic Gemütlichkeit? Their desire to be Lutheran? Nope. Because that’s where the welfare is the best. This suggests that many are actually economic immigrants and not true war refugees. The proper response is to try and keep them as close to their country of origin as possible to facilitate their eventual return, screen out those who are economic migrants for immediate return, and demand those who are accepted not become a burden on their host country.
I have to admit that this is what gives me pause. Even with the current illegal immigration problem we have it should be noted that many of those leaving legitimately fear for their lives but leave little evidence that they see a connection between their culture and the problem (there are plenty of Americans that have the same issue) and as such bring it with them. It very well may be that some rightly fear being shot or beheaded and seek to escape but it doesn’t guarantee that they have even a passing resemblance to our ideas of a pluralistic Republic.
There are legions of evidence that proves specifically they do not want to integrate and even come here to eliminate our culture.
Claire
Refugee camps should be temporary, but I you wanna help, meet these people.
That’s true, some groups specifically state as much as their goal and I’m not sure how you would filter out such people.
Well and in fact delicately stated. This is what the world is like. That’s not going to change.
Whose? Sorry, not tracking with high fidelity.
What are you, some kind of anti- murderous-merciless-honor-killing-tyrant bigot?
I have to admit that I don’t know much about the legal immigration process as it pertains to that. Is there some kind of “filter” in place for this sort of thing already? To Claire’s point, hypothetically, if we could find people that were refugees who weren’t looking to actively attack American culture, did want to integrate, and would be willing to forgo all forms of welfare, and were brought here connected to a voluntary American citizen, it would be worth trying to save their lives, no?
(Yes, I’m willing to admit that nailing down those things is nebulous at best, we’re working with hypotheticals here)
What Can We Do About the Refugee Crisis?
To answer this more directly, I would say A) not much, and B) work to prevent more of the same by banging the drum day and night pointing out that “elections have consequences”. MEWS: Middle East Withdrawal Syndrome
Well are we going to have a country or aren’t we?
I agree: the US has carrots that cost us little or nothing (free trade ought to be the rule anyway).
Companies would quickly set up shop in any place with hard working inexpensive labor and free trade with the US. It would become self-sustaining quite rapidly. And such a solution is much less expensive for Europe than the current welfare options.
If we want space for a City of Refuge, I bet Europe could parlay Greek debt payments for an island or two. Set them up, and help them become American-style city-states.
Having not 30 minutes ago discussed this with a Jordanian citizen, I can give you his perspective. Jordan has absorbed lots of Syrian refugees, particularly for a country of only 6 million. The problem is the refugees are 95% muslim, the vast majority are Sunni. This is changing the demographic balance in Jordan and ditto Lebanon. They can’t take many more without potential problems down the road ( he wondered why the Gulf states aren’t doing more for their Sunni Arab brothers, particularly as they have been highly critical of Jordan for their handling of the issue).
He also mentioned reading about a Fatwa from some Imam online, complaining of the plot by Merkel to take all these Sunni Arabs and convert them to Christianity, her being the head of the Christian Democratic Union. Seriously.
In response the questions about why gulf states and others aren’t doing more. Lives are not precious in the 3rd world, they are digits, expendable, collateral damage. This is expected from a religion spread by the sword.
You are kidding right? The FIRST stop from the airport for many immigrants is to be steered right to the local welfare office.
“You cannot simultaneously have a welfare state and free immigration.” –Milton Friedman
But 95 percent of Jordan is Sunni, too — so it changes the confessional balance catastrophically in Lebanon, but not in Jordan. So I would have expected him to say the problem for Jordan is the unbelievable strain it puts on resources. Did he perhaps mean that the refugees are more pious or easily radicalized, do you think?
I don’t know about Jordan so much, but yes, Lebanon’s (imho brittle) confessional system doesn’t lend itself easily to this.
What a sense of humour! When did the Gulf states ever do anything for anybody else?
But this is where the free trade bit becomes relevant. The Gulf states don’t need a free trade agreement with the US. Jordan would benefit enormously from one.
It may still be too difficult for them. Otoh, Syrian refugees already make up 10% of the residents of the Kingdom. How unsettling would it be to integrate them (the way the ’48 and ’67 refugees were) if that was linked to strong economic growth? Compared with not integrating them but having them in the country anyway.
(A similar situation which springs to mind is Pakistan and refugees from Afghanistan. Never integrated, bad decision.)