Global Reverberation of the Refugee Problem

Many countries have set up quotas to receive the refugees, with the most generous being Germany. France is next in line, despite the threat of political backlash by ultra-rightist Marine Le Pen, who aspires to take over the presidency, playing on the xenophobic fears of the population, already heightened because of the recent attacks.

Canada will receive 25,000 Syrian refugees, but President Obama’s pledge to admit 10,000 refugees has already led to Congressional action to stop them, which he has vowed to veto.

Polls indicate that 53-56 percent of the US population is against admitting more Muslim refugees. Who do these Syrian refugees look like? Somebody answered: the biological father of Steve Jobs, who was indeed a Syrian immigrant. Imagine if Albert Einstein were on the German ocean liner St. Louis with 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, when the ship was turned away from the port of Miami to return to Europe. More than a quarter of the passengers later died in the Holocaust.

President Frank D. Roosevelt was suspicious that some Nazi spies were able to creep in amongst the Jewish refugees and thus he restricted their entry to the US.

In the aftermath of World War II, Jewish immigration, perhaps more than any group, transformed America culturally, scientifically and philosophically. In a way, they transferred Europe’s best traditions to the US.

President Roosevelt’s anti-immigrant phobia turned him also against the Japanese minority in the country. Indeed, through an order of his, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast were rounded up and detained without charges during World War II. They were sent to brutal internment camps throughout the duration of the war. Of course, the US government extended an apology to the victims of that policy and they were compensated financially later.

Today’s fears may have some justification that some bad apples may cross the borders with the legitimate refugees, who themselves are victims of terrorism and are escaping the very same terrorists that have the West in their sights. Almost 30 governors, mainly Republicans, have expressed positions against admitting refugees to their states, but immigration is governed by federal policy.

President Obama said, “When I hear folks say that well maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims, when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful. That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have a religious test for our compassion.”

Immigrants founded this country and it cannot turn against its raison d’etre. Ten thousand refugees represent a mere drop in the bucket in the ocean of 350 million.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon criticized the border controls in a call for Europe to respond to the refugee crisis with “compassion, solidarity and shared responsibility.”

Armenia has demonstrated that compassion by welcoming 17,000 refugees from Syria, ranking third in Europe in terms of admitting refugees. The director of European Friends of Armenia Eduardo Lorenzo Ochoa writes in an article that “Armenia shows Europe how to welcome refugees.” Most of the Syrian refugees in Armenia are of Armenian descent but there are also Yezidis and Assyrians who have made Armenia their home. Mr. Ochoa concludes his remarks with the flowing statement: “Armenia’s approach to the current crisis is a direct continuation of this praiseworthy tradition, and proves that Armenia is fully and undeniably part of European community values.”

Although Armenia upholds European values, the European Union has no plans to support refugees in Armenia, after sending $3.2 billion to Turkey for the same.

A word needs to be said about countries which have contributed to the turmoil in Syria by arming the terrorists: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain have admitted zero refugees although their bloodstained signatures are on the destiny of those refugees.

Nadim Houry, Human Rights Watch deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, has called those wealthy countries’ inaction in the face of the Syrian crisis “shameful.”

These refugees did not choose on their own to rush to Europe and to America. They were living — well indeed — in a stable and we can add, prosperous country until the West decided a regime change was necessary.

The moral of the story is do not bomb and destroy stable countries and then feign charity for the victims.