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Crisis?
By lindamuralidharan on 2015-09-12 15:09:26
Yes, almost all of you have seen or heard some type of report about the refugees now clamoring to get into countries such as
Germany from many places in Asia and Africa. Some even have the hope that the United States of America will open up its
doors. Generally this is described by the media as a "crisis". To a large extent, that is because the visuals have increased in
recent months from capsized boats to dead bodies to hordes of refugees including amputees, elderly, the young, the middle
aged, children, parents...what would be a typical cross section of any small town anywhere....kept behind barbed wire or in
train stations or other such places where they are too often blocked on their journey with minimum food and water and
bedding of any kind. And, in truth, out in the elements as winter approaches or just kept in large crowds with so little
sustenance or perhaps even medical attention for any length of time these thousands of people do present themselves as an
humanitarian crisis. We also need to remember this has been going on for a long time. For the most part people were in
smaller groups, crossing large bodies of water in overloaded boats, struggling across land masses to places like Greece,
Turkey, Germany, France, Lebanon, and Jordan. Even within Iraq, displaced refugees have fled ISIL to towns outside of
ISIL control. Mayors from these places such as Jordan and Iraq have been pleading for help for some time. And some of
the refugee "camps" have held hundreds of people for a long time while they wait to hear when or even "if" they will be
relocated. Of course, we are focused greatly on Syria at the moment, but various kinds of conflict and economic distress
have driven people from the Sudan and Pakistan and Afghanistan and many other places. One of the things we tend to forget
is that our war in Iraq drove thousands of Iraqis into Syria. Who knows how many who are now fleeing the dreadful chaos
and violence in Syria may be among those twice displaced from their homes i in the space ofa decade or decade and a half.
[caption id="attachment_7540" align="alignleft" width="295"] == — a a crowded
tenement neighborhood|[/caption] Now we have the usual big arguments. Although the President of the United States has
agreed to increase our acceptance of some of the refugees, that is he has agreed to increase the number from the
approximately 1,500 we have accepted in the last 18 months to 10,000 for 2016, we are fully engaged now in the divisive
debate about whether we can absorb such numbers or whether we will be granting easy admission to those who wish to
commit violent Islamic jihad against the US. Aside from noting the laughable comment about the total number being hard to
absorb since it is tiny in the sea of the United States population, (and, yes, fortunately some politicians are talking about
numbers as large as 60,000 which would make more sense) what do we need to do to solve this problem? What do we need
to do to move this debate toward effective action? [caption id="attachment_7541" align="alignright" width="566"]
Polish immigrants[/caption] First,
put yourself in the shoes of a typical refugee. Perhaps you are a Pakistani from a minority Shia sect that is persecuted in
Pakistan. Your mosque has been bombed and several homes in your village were burned out by a mob. There is not a lot of
sympathy for you in Sunni Pakistan. You plan to go to England to study and seek good employment and you speak good
English already. Or, perhaps you are a woman from a town in Syria that has been repeatedly shelled by the Assad
government. Your husband was killed in one of the attacks and now you, your 4 year old and your brother are making your
way across Hungary trying to get to either Germany or Sweden to safety. Or just think of yourself driven from your own
home by forces way beyond your control..whoever you are and wherever you live, what would that feel like in any of these
situations? [caption id="attachment_7542" align="alignleft" width="456"]
crowded tenement[/caption] What would you ask of
the world? What would you ask of the United States which likes to present itself as the richest and most powerful among
countries? And, indeed, it does have vast wealth. Second, remind your self of the shame we have been trying to live down
because we as a country put our own citizens in internment camps and turned away a shipload of 908 Jewish refugees trying
to find a safe place away from the Germans and their concentration camps and their gas ovens in the middle of the 20th
century. Of the 908 forced to give up and be returned to Europe, the estimate of historians is that at least a quarter of them
perished in the concentration camps. Third, we accepted thousands of Cuban and Vietnamese refugees largely because we
had a grudge against their governments. There were some problems involved in integrating them into the larger stream of
US society from language and cultural barriers to mental health challenges but it has not destroyed the fabric of American
communities. Filipinos have also been accepted into this country in large numbers in recent decades although they and the
many other documented immigrants from Africa, Eastern Europe and other places are not generally considered "refugees" as
such. There is a new report out by the Center for Immigration studies that, as described by Byron York of the Washington
Examiner, will probably be used by those opposed to much in the way of increased immigration of any kind and that would
include the admission of sizable numbers of refugees allowed on humanitarian grounds. The research from this group says
that immigrants of all kinds use the social safety network....various forms of public assistance...at a higher rate than do
native born persons. Fifty-one percent of immigrant households reported using some type of assistance whether cash grants,
Medicaid, food stamps or other assistance compared with 30 percent of native born heads of household. [caption
id="attachment_7544" align="aligncenter" width="298"] Jane
Addams[/caption] One of the caveats here that Byron York neglects to mention is that large percentages of immigrant groups
come here able to obtain only minimum wage jobs in the beginning (we do tend to have some exceptions...there may be a
high percentage of scientists and academics from Europe and China as well as all kinds of professionals from India).
Because minimum wages in most regions of the country do not constitute a living wage, individuals and families are not
entirely at fault for reaching out to tax payers for some additional support. It is certainly both real and anecdotal experience
that many immigrants move past this level when they improve their language skills and many more raise offspring who are
in more self-sufficient fields of employment than their parents were able to obtain. [caption id="attachment_7543"
align="aligncenter" width="300"] f a if j . Samm carly public school|[/caption] We also
forget that the vast numbers of late 19th Century and early 20th Century immigrants included folks who needed assistance.
There was little in the way of tax payer assistance then so groups like the settlement house movement (as begun by Jane
Addams at Hull House in Chicago) and the YWCA filled that role. People needed affordable medical care, care for orphans
and abandoned children, food supplements, vocational and language training and other forms of counseling and social
work. I don't think very many people including those who might argue against helping more refugees in this instance regret
the generations of people who have come here from all over the world and made lives for themselves and their families
here. Were there criminals among them? Yes...there are criminals in every group. Were there those with poor living skills
and mental health and physical health issues? Yes. And yet the net worth and joy we provided as a welcoming nation is
hard to deny. [caption id="attachment_7539" align="aligncenter" width="375"]
= Hull House, Chicago[/caption] I want us to reach out and do the
same for the most needy today. Probably then most needy and those needing immediate assistance are those fleeing conflict
and economic disasters and now stuck in various forms of limbo in parts of the Mideast and Europe. We can vet them for
possible violent jihadi tendencies but the risk of actually incurring a terror attack is small. As even former New York mayor
and Republican operative Giuliani said on TV today: each one of us has the tiniest, microscopic chance of ever being killed
by a terrorist even though there will definitely be more attempts at attacks whether or not we accept tens of thousands of
these particular refugees. The risk is small and the benefit huge. Remember...what would you want if you were in the dire
circumstances these refugees have found themselves in? Crisis? We have heard that the Chinese characters denoting this
word also equal "opportunity"? We can certainly take that view in addressing the many suffering human refugees while
continuing to seek ways to stop some of the conflicts and to deliver forms of direct aid to refugee camps. This is indeed our
opportunity to live up to our ideals and reputation at home and abroad. Let us welcome as many as we can as soon as we
can. It may require adding personnel to do the vetting and if so, let us do that. We are a very rich country. And sometimes,
just sometimes...as Mick Jagger might say....we actually show that we have heart, a very generous heart.
