The other and his wish for a better life
800 migrants attempted to get into Spain from Morocco on Sunday. The Huffington Post reports, that they tried to cross a 6 meter high barbed wire fence, to enter Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta. Most were turned back.
Just a reminder, that many are still trying to come to Europe any way possible. According to the UNCHR, 2016 has been the deadliest year yet for migrants and refugees crossing the Mediterranean.
More than a year has passed, since the Balkan route, virtualy dried out. Now, there are only a few migrants and refugees moving towards Northern and Western Europe this way. Some are caught, others reach their destination. A vast majority of them never wanted to settle in Slovenia anyway, a country on this route. Germany or Sweden were far more desired. Nonetheless, at the peak of the crisis, up to 10000 came into Slovenia each day, creating a huge logistical problem for the authorities. All those people needed places to sleep, food had to be distributed, they had to be documented and so on.
All in all, after a rocky start, after some time, things started running more smoothly. Yes, that meant the Slovenian government turned itself into a transporting company, turnig the country into an corridor for moving people from its southern to its northern border. Not many stayed. For such a mass of people to cross a small country of only 2 million inhabitants, there were fever problems one would expect.
Migrants and refugees didn’t just start to come to Europe out of the blue, sometime in early 2015. They were always on the move. People in Slovenia knew about the situation in the Mediterranean, where many were drowning. Here and there a story about a hundred or more drowned people, shocked them. ‘Why won’t anybody do something?’ they asked. But that was all far away. It is one thing to read about tragedies far away, it is another, to see such tragedies unfold in your country.
And it is really another thing, to see thousands and thousands, mostly young men, marching through fields, waiting in lines at the border crossing, demanding, they be let through.
The result was not nice, allthough, it was more than expected. Hatred exploded, barely covered by mainstream medias attempt, to keep it under the rug.
Refugees are escorted by police through Dobova, Slovenia, Oct. 22, 2015, en route to a holding camp. Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
I have a deep problem. I really don’t understand, what is so wrong, if some young man, say from Nigeria or Pakistan, decides to leave his hometown behind and move to some country, where he expects to find a better life. We all have our dreams and wishes, theirs is to go somewhere, where they can realise them. To Germany or Great Britain, to places, they don’t really know and are naive about and where they think, something close to heaven will open up for them. Or they will just start a new life.
Yes, those people are economic migrants, fleeing from poverty, lack of opportunities, corrupt governments and so on. Again, is that so bad? It is understandable, that not even the richest country in the world can take in all the refugees of the world, let alone all who wish for a better life, but should we judge them harshly for wanting?
Isn’t it true, that Slovenians played the roles of economic migrants and refugees in the past as well? Some went to United States to find a job. Others fled the communist revolution and went to Argentina. And so on. They certainly weren’t the only ones. The flow of people from Europe to Americas was immense. Were those people bad? Should we judge them, as some kind of invasion, who went there to transplant their culture and religion to a new world, to replace those, who were there before them?
The question, if people traveling on the Balkan route, were refugees or economic migrants, was always a false one. Those, who were the loudest opponents of their movement, tried to use that as an excuse, just so they could close the borders. Sure, many comming were lying they were Syrian, because they knew, most would not want to send them back to a war zone.
I am not saying, everything the opponents of migration say, is wrong, just that it is often very superficial. They want to paint them as some homogenous group. All are muslims, all are Arabs, all are men, all are aggressive, all are potential terrorists and so on. That simply isn’t true. It’s a gross simplification, designed to make them look like a threat. We should judge people based on their character, one at a time, not as part of some giant mass, comming to change the way we live, with a desire, to destroy our civilisation, as many would like us to believe.
It is now all political. Illegal imigrants must go, we hear. They have no place here. They bring with them a hateful religion, that denigrates women and supports terrorism, they repeat. We, the people, want our countries back, so we can live in peace, they almost shout.
A huge manipulation is at work. Even, if all illegal immigrants would be sent back, even if such fate would befall all the refugees, there would still be muslims left in Europe. Yes, it is mainly about muslims, although, one must ask oneself, were the majority christians, if the result would not be the same. They would still be foreigners.
What would those, who daily warn us of the treat of muslim takeover, do to people, who have been born here? They can’t send them to their country of birth, if they are born in France or Danemark. What would be their final solution? None, of course. There will hardly be a second holocaust. What is at play, is fearmongering, that pays of politicaly. You see, it is easy to manipulate people into supporting you based on fear and hatred. You need a enemy for that, a group of people, who are demonized and called invaders, and muslims will do quite nice. If the majority would be hindus, it would happen all the same.
Multiculturalism has always been a sham. The political, economic, media and other elites, that rule us, try to sell us a world, where we should accept diversity. Fine, nothing wrong with that. The problem is, that means, those others are simply shoved into some poor neigborhood, where they live in a ghetto, far away from those, who preach multiculturalism. It is the poor, the loosers of massive economic changes, who bear the weight of integration and comming to terms with different religions, cultures, nationalities.
Of course, it is not always thus, but societies within societies in larger European cities nonetheless are evidence, that something is wrong.
We can accuse nationalistic and conservative political parties of riding on a wave of fear, so building up their support. But, it would be wrong, not to assign some blame also to political forces on the other side, who view themselves somehow guardians of multicultural societies, but in reallity just want to exile every minority they are supposedly fighting for, into some sort of an ideological gheto. Which, often, is also a physical one. This way, they actually stand in the way of integration, instead of fighting for it, as they usually profess.
We need balance. Reasonable politics of middle ground. Such, that see the problems of massive immigration, threats that can come out of it, but are also pragmatical and open hearted enough, that they are able to see all the suffering behind giant movement of people, who wish for a better life. We need to face the problems of integration. Not go out in search for aliens in our midst, who pose a threat, just to forge some political support out of it. But also not remain silent, when we see some group of people are promoting values in opposition of modern, secular and liberal societies. We need politicians, who fight extremism, but don’t turn extremist themselves.
