The Migrant Crisis

It’s another dark time for Europe. Thousands upon thousands of migrants are travelling into the continent, mostly Syrian, desperately trying to escape the horrors that their home country has become. It’s been constantly in the news here in the UK as groups of migrants desperately try to make it into the channel tunnel at Calais and boats full of barely alive people are found by various authorities. And then there was this photo, which is devastatingly sad:

Immigration was a big issue in the last election here, and I found that a bit strange. The idea of people owning a country seems ridiculous. I really struggle to understand that people don’t like foreigners and think Britain should be for the British. We’re a country that has constantly evolved from waves of immigration, right back to Vikings, Saxons and Romans. Why on Earth have we suddenly decided this should stop?

My experience of what people in other countries believe is limited but I suspect there are foreigner-haters pretty much everywhere. But honestly, what country can really say they aren’t built from various groups of people immigrating there. Human beings evolved in Africa for goodness sake which means very nearly 100% of people have ancestors who lived in a different place from them.

The recent displacement of people is even more extreme. It’s one thing refusing someone from another country, another to refuse a refugee, desperate people doing extreme things in order to escape the terror that was once their home. One can not begin to imagine what these people have gone through. They are desperate enough to fight through police and military forces, to travel on boats and in lorries packed to the brim. They don’t know if they are even going to survive, let alone find a place they can settle in.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the solution was in sorting out the problems in the Middle East. Obviously it would be great if we could do that, but it’s not the answer to the current problem. There are still thousands of people with no where to go and we’ve barely taken an aeroplane full.

We are supposed to learn from history. In 1938 Britain tightened Immigration laws so less Austrian Jews were allowed in the country. It was only after the horrors of the holocaust were uncovered that public pressure meant more were allowed in. In 1975 the government refused to take any of the 10,000 Vietnamese refugees escaping the napalm strikes of the Vietnam War, until public opinion shifted and they are accepted.

In 2015, the current government is refusing to accept more than a handful of refugees. After the picture above became big news and public pressure increased, Cameron said we would “fulfil our moral responsibilities” which is very true but doesn’t actually mean anything will change. There have been some remarkable stories from some parts of Europe of locals doing everything in their power to help refugees and I think many British people feel as strongly (although sadly many don’t).

I think refugees should be welcomed wherever they want to go with open arms. It’s about time we stopped pretending to be a modern, humane world and actually became one. This list suggests some things you can do to help the plight of these poor people– some are simple, some require more of  a commitment. But please do what you can, because we are all human beings after all.