The refugee crisis occurring in Europe has brought out the true feelings of many. This challenge has exposed the racists and drawn an unmistakable line in the sand among the people there. It has brought to light how much some countries value the help they could provide, or how much they value the idea of non-involvement that many cling to following a century of war and misery.
But why, I ask, is the burden of, and therefore the decision of the fates of, the refugees solely on the heads of otherwise uninvolved European countries? Why, when four million refugees (the number of externally displaced people via the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) are driven from their homes by an increasingly dirty civil war, do they turn to Western Europe? The answer is that it is easier and much more attractive for them (economically and socially) for them to traverse possibly thousands of miles to Europe than to try to gain admittance to many of the Arab League nations within a more reasonable distance. The refugees’ decision to migrate to Europe has put undue pressure on struggling European countries that are completely unrelated to the conflict, but the choice to take (or not take) these refugees should be left to the peoples in question.
And yet there is not more pressure on our Arab allies to take more refugees, and there is no argument in Saudi Arabia on how many refugees are too many, or what to do with them if they wash up on the shore. The argument instead exists in and about Europe, placing an unnecessary burden on the shoulders of countries that are already stooped from the fall of Greece and a sinking currency.
American activists are probably the worst of this bunch; many have called for Europe to accept as many refugees as is possible, some arguing that the influx is not large enough to do any real damage to European economies. What they fail to see is the real impact of such a mass immigration; housing would have to be made, thousands on thousands of jobs would have to be found, and medical help for some 368,000 refugees with serious illness or disabilities would have to be provided. On top of that, while the impact per country seems low, the economies of Europe are fundamentally interdependent; an impact on one country will add to the hardships of other countries, compounding what seem like relatively small issues.
But most importantly, activists fail to realize that there is no inherent responsibility of the European nations to house as many refugees as there are. The decision to take on refugees should be left up to the people of those independent states, regardless of the power the floundering European Union supposes it has to force them otherwise. Many have been critical of Hungary’s recent actions to limit the number of refugees through security measures, but those citizens have decided that they have reached the point at which the safety and prosperity of their own nation is more important than helping even more migrants. Where that point exists should be left up the governments and the people of each individual nation this crisis affects, and this should be remembered when discussing whose “responsibility” these people are. Europe especially should not be accountable for an influx of immigrants when holding them so is unfair and potentially extremely harmful, especially when the other, closer nations (and even farther ones better equipped to handle the issue, like the United States) aren’t doing the same.
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