We often see the current refugee crisis confined to numbers. Scores! Thousands! Millions! They come in flocks! They cost the government so much money! They steal your jobs and corrupt our culture! They are taking over the population, rising in numbers day by day! The media and politicians are constantly bombarding us with such numbers. The trouble with numbers is they are distancing - fear-mongering, but distancing. A refugee becomes not a person but a number - one out of however many. Numbers can be applied to anything. Numbers are used to tell a story; they are not the story itself.
So what is the story?
Picture this: you are leaving your country behind - your home - the only one you have ever known. It is not a matter of choice but of life and death: if you stay, you die. Leaving means at least the slimmest chance of survival. You spend your life savings to get on a boat bound for Europe - no more than a flimsy raft crammed with fellow refugees fleeing their homes. If you survive the journey - and that’s a big if - you then seek asylum in the country where you have landed. This process takes as long as 10 years, and even then, you may be denied. You are supposed to do this in every country you set foot in, so if you landed in a country that is not your final destination, prepare for a long wait until all is said and done. In the meantime, you live in a camp for asylum seekers, often far enough from the city that traveling there is more than you can afford, plus you have to be back to the camp by a certain time every night. Crime in the camp is not taken as seriously as it is in the world outside, so if you are attacked or robbed of what few possessions you have, good luck getting any level of justice. You are isolated, and you feel your voice is not being heard. You have no way of knowing the fate of any family members left behind. All the while, your right to stay in this country is being debated. Many would like to see you sent back. You deal with racism and the general feeling of being an outsider every moment. You grieve lost family members and wonder at the fate of surviving ones. You struggle to learn the language. You wait.
Narrative says something different from the numbers, doesn’t it? Refugees have witnessed atrocities, feared for their lives, and every day face the resistance of the locals who will never know their suffering. Why? Because we are afraid. We are afraid of anyone even remotely different from us. We assume that people from “over there” are a danger to us and our way of life. We assume that their culture and our culture are entirely incompatible. This is an incredibly close-minded viewpoint. It revolves around an “us/them” mentality. This has been a trend throughout history. We have categorized ourselves, drawn borders, built walls. The classifications we use to split ourselves up into groups are arbitrary. They are not natural. We create them in order to more easily understand those around us. We create the differences between groups. In reality, people are not as different as we make them out to be. We are all conscious. We can all experience suffering. We all contain multitudes. I am no more or less complex than any other person; therefore, my life is no more or less important than anyone else’s. Race, ethnicity, culture, religion - these do not separate us into different species; they make us facets of one species.
Our country was built on the backs of immigrants. The US was synonymous with opportunity - with the chance to start over. Truth be told, despite all of that, we don’t have a great track record with welcoming people who are different from ourselves. It is the parts of our history where we enslaved and oppressed that we are ashamed of. Not to be on the side of refugees is to be on the wrong side of history. When our descendants learn of how we responded to refugees, do we want them to be ashamed of our prejudice and cruelty or proud of all of the lives we helped save? What shall our legacy be?
This is not to say we welcome refugees, let them go off to the asylum camp, and not worry about their existence for another decade. Welcoming refugees is great, but what are we welcoming them to? A system that does not work. We do need to extend acceptance and welcome to refugees coming in, but that is only beginning. The system is in desperate need of reform. The asylum process needs to be faster, and the refugee camps need to be less isolated, better represented in the greater community and have better conditions in general, including enforcement of the law and distribution of resources. First, however, we need to acknowledge their humanity and allow them into our society. We need to start by caring about refugees and accepting responsibility for their fate.
