The 'Migrant Crisis' - Why is it a Crisis?

The Refugee crisis in Syria and Afghanistan is now mainstream.

In other words, the refugees are trying to reach countries with a powerful media presence.

Countries in the West.

Refugees have been fleeing Syria for a long time now, with many now residing here in Sudan, nearly fully integrated – married to Sudanese and settled.  Of course the right wing Sudanese newspapers made a little frenzy about this, the same way they did/do with the South Sudanese, (even when we were one country) – right wing will always be right wing, and racists always target the weak to maintain their positions of power.

There is not much of a welfare system here, but the Syrians who moved here got something they didn’t get in Syria – safety. Most of the Syrian refugees I’ve come across that came to Sudan now own businesses running accessory shops or restaurants…  They were clearly doing well in Syria, before the war. 

The war that claimed 250,000 lives and left half of the pre-war population displaced and fleeing.

It was absolutely not the choice of the Syrian people to be in this situation, the same way that it was not the choice of Iraqi’s or Afghans – or if we scratch a little further in history the displaced millions after World War II. This is why they are refugees and not migrants.

Many people ask – why don't they go to Lebanon or Turkey or countries closer to them? (The underlying assumption being that they want Europe because they are lazy ‘cockroaches’ who want to benefit from welfare they don’t deserve)

The short answer is they did, many of them are there – however outside of your own country you are always treated as a second class citizen, and Europe is much more subtle in its discrimination than the Middle East and North Africa and much more compassionate towards those in need. Compassion it can afford – take this example, when the bank crisis happened in the UK, The government gave the banks an amount that would total the GDP of Spain. That was just to bail out the banks. Although you may think that Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi-Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE are wealthy (rich with oil), the GDP of Spain is no where near the amount that these countries make – it exceeds them massively.

Europe is extremely wealthy, to the point where when you take the total income of the world – you can see that Europe and North America are the only two continents where the total world population is exceeded (disproportionally) by the wealth. Take a look at this graph.

This was in the year 2000, this year the UN published a report stating that the richest 1% of the world owns 40% of the world’s wealth.

In terms of wealth, we can absolutely afford to take in and help out these refugees and in terms of helping out – it is very unlikely that Europeans don’t want to help out.

I think the driving force behind most of the media’s frenzies is clear - the fear of lack of integration. 

The fear of investing in a foreign force that will later turn against you. We have seen in many European countries media stories about communities of people who simply refuse to integrate - but why is this? And is this as big a problem as we think it is?

TBC.