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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 wish more people were like you, Misth. I’m not surprised, though, that not all are.
(My only quibble: How does he know from this photo that they are Muslim? How does he know they aren’t Syriac Christians?)
Oh, you’re preaching to the choir on that one.
;-)
I know you didn’t mean that Marci. It was a misplaced rhetorical flourish on my part.
Perhaps refugees are susceptible to anger and resentment in a way similar to how elderly people are. Plenty of elderly people respond to the care they receive in old age with anger.
They used to be somebody, to be able to look after themselves. Now they’re not and can’t. They hate needing help with menial tasks like getting out of a chair or using the bathroom. Their prior skills have become useless, because of physical weakness, mental deterioration, or just the passage of time. It’s all so undignified! One message board calls the hostility “dependency resentment”.
“Dependency resentment.” That sounds about right.
Zafar has a valid point for investigation, once the insinuation is removed. That was a graceful retraction, Z, and leaves a valuable topic on the table.
If a regime, say Syria, is bad enough that those escaping it should be categorized as refugees, then shouldn’t its government be shunned, literally not recognized as sovereign?
Had a great argument long ago with a Paulist who admitted that since without consent, there is no sovereignty, and no duty upon us to treat with such regimes as equals.
I wish I could understand the justifications offered for treating so many regimes one way or another. Well, at least people don’t seem to lack for theories about international affairs…
Hmm. Lots of Hmong in the Fox Valley of Wisconsin where I lived for 10 years (97-07). Didn’t seem to be doing that great as far as we could tell. Lots of welfare dependency. Many of the adults still didn’t speak English. My kids knew that the local drug dealers at school were Hmong. Seemed to be assimilating best to the American “urban” culture. I was on the hospital child abuse committee. We had lots of cases from the Hmong community, they have a tradition of marrying young girls to older men. I’m talking 12 and 13 year olds. The authorities had a tough time dealing with it because the Hmong community would not cooperate and shielded the perps.
None of this is surprising when you take a primitive hill culture tribe with no written language and try to transplant them in 20th century Midwest America. Thanks to the kind hearts of church groups, who organized the initial immigrants, and the family chain immigration laws, you end up with small communities overwhelmed with ethnic ghettoes. Also the churches were VERY good steering them straight to the Welfare Office to sign up for their benefits, not so much at actually providing charity for them. At least the Hmong don’t go Jihadi, they just form street gangs.
Things aren’t that good with the Somali refugees who the state of Minnesota has been saddled with. They DO go Jihadi. They are also becoming very aggressive in demanding accommodation to them. Cabbies refusing to drive blind people with service dogs. Store clerks refusing to sell bacon, demanding prayer rooms in public schools. And we can thank them for Obama Care. Al Franken would not be senator, if Somali Imams had not organized about 100,000 votes for him. He was the 60th vote.
WATCH: FOOTAGE EMERGES OF ‘REFUGEES’ ABUSING POLICE, THROWING FOOD AND WATER AWAY ONTO TRAIN TRACKS
Don’t seem too grateful to Hungary.
This is a startling picture, and I can’t get it out of my head. It raises a lot of questions.
However, a few years ago I worked on a book by John Prendergast for which the working title was “The Enough Moment.” I had to learn a lot about the Sudan and the conflict there.
Based on what I know of the Sudan conflict, the young men in the picture above may very well be the targets of the advancing army. They are given a choice to join up or die. That’s how these armies get so big so fast.
Giving these men refuge may be a good thing for everybody.
I can’t figure out where the women and children are unless these are unattached young men, which is possible in a war-torn country.
Or maybe they are already part of that army and being deployed to a new front…
Treating with a sovereign entity doesn’t mean you accept that they are your equals in a range of things. They might be, but they might not be. One doesn’t treat only with what one acknowledges as equal, one treats with whom one must.
If the advanced democracies only treated with other advanced democracies they’d be “not treating” with most of the world, including some allies like Saudi.
That’s what kept me up last night.
I hope someone is finding out whether they are friend or foe.
I think ridiculous government bureaucracy can bring out bitterness and ingratitude in the most patient of Saints–let alone exhausted people fleeing insanity.
With that said, it is one thing to be resentful, frustrated and afraid, and it is another to spit on the hands that shelter you.
The Muslim Brotherhood has a stable presence in the USA and long running influence programs in both parties which have succeeded to the point of changing law enforcement and counterterror training material. Its front organizations will be called on to screen refugees and asylum seekers to weed out jihadis and to establish the criteria for doing so.
Hezbollah has extensive (and soon to be much better funded) operations in South and Central America and working ties with organizations like MS 13 and the cartels, which give it access to well established routes for smuggling people and materiel into the US.
When previous waves of refugees hit the USA, the government and civil society were all promoting assimilation. No longer. That’s thanks in large part to the malevolent influence of the Frankfurt School – all refugees – on US academia.
Back to Claire’s original point – is there any effort in Europe to pressure Qatar to provide more assistance or else lose it’s multi-billion dollar investment in the World Cup?
If that picture is what it purports to be, then you are looking at an army which has fled the field before even suiting up. If these are young men at risk of being called up into Islamist terror, then why do they not take up arms and fight against it?
Shame.
Double-plus like.
Turns out I was off by 15% (but Claire was off by 25%).
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, 13% are children and 12% are women.\
That adds up to 25%.
Meaning that 75% are men.
Also, only 51% are from Syria. The #2 source country is Afghanistan. #3 is Eritrea. #4 is Nigeria. Iraq is way down the list at #5.
Source: http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.html
So that means 49% automatically go back. Send back the unaccompanied Syrian males, probably at least another 20%. Thats almost 70% with an express ticket home. The remainder get a thorough screening and interrogation. ANY islamists ties or sentiments, back you go. Not a real refugee but economic migrant, back you go. Europe cannot absorb this mass. There will be hell to pay.
#182 I apologize if someone commented between 182 and the last comment, but—whether they’re Muslims or Christians, the same question applies—where are the women and children? Did these brave and fit-looking men leave them behind, to face the supposed horrors they were fleeing? Not anyone I’d want in MY country!
I’m sickened at the thought of what is happening to Budapest. Bashar-al Assad caused this problem and he can damn well fix it along with his Vogue cover girl wife.
Um…any suggestions as to how?
What could we do to encourage that, or at least not undermine it?
No suggestions as to how to deal with Muslim leaders but I wouldn’t admit a single one of their refugees particularly if it threatens the safety and security of Eastern Europe.
Well, in Budapest it seems the chants of “Allahu Akbar” were a clue.
The photos of Yazidi refugees have a decidedly different tone to them. Lots of women, children, and elderly men. If there is a man of military age, he’s usually accompanying his family rather than travelling alone (or with his buddies):
More photos here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=yazidi+refugees&newwindow=1&hl=en&biw=1680&bih=925&site=webhp&tbm=isch
A photomeme I got from a (pro-Assad) Syrian Facebook page:
It could be Syrian gov’t propaganda, of course, but if it’s not then it would appear that the attitude within Syria towards the subset of refugees who just happen to be healthy single males of military age may be remarkably similar to the attitude of many Western conservatives.
Maybe.
A friend sent me this link for a Knights of Columbus project targeting aid to Christian refugees. At the link you can find an interesting letter for the Archbishop of the Chaldean Archdicocese of Erbil, Iraq. Donations were for low-cost housing for Syrian Christian refugees.
http://www.kofc.org/en/christianRelief/index.html