On the European Immigration Crisis

Europe does not have a responsibility to bear the brunt of the refugee crisis.

There seems to be a bout of delusion among not only Exonians, but also in the American population about the root of the Syrian refugee crisis. What could have possibly caused all these displaced Syrians? Was it an acute dose of global warming? Lack of gun control? No internet access? A dearth of finely woven Iranian carpets? Or, is it perhaps, just perhaps, because of a radical Islamist group of psychopaths created by a power vacuum caused by early American withdrawal following the Iraq War, powered by arms and vehicles left behind by the retreating American army now tearing up the century old geopolitical borders in the search of a postmodern caliphate coupled with the subsequent attempt by our own president to destroy said radical Islamist group and enact savage collateral damage in the process by bombing the deuces out of the entire region? 

It’s hard to not chuckle when you file through article after article of sensationalist media trash being posted and linked by all your friends lambasting these European nations for their inactivity when the U.S. itself has only taken 1,500 refugees. The problem is only exacerbated when all major U.S. media groups turn to profiteering by the ceaseless wide-pan camera shots of corpses washing up on shores, images of the Keleti train station in Budapest, and the famished faces of desperate Syrian families. Thus, while the U.S. continues to arm Syrian rebels, intensifying the very crossfire that the refugees are fleeing from, and our commander in chief repeatedly fails to broker peace due to a disgusting coagulation of special interests and war mongering congressmen/women, we seek to stand out as “global citizens” by rapping on the crisis as a “European problem.”

Most of Europe is not like the Sanderish-Utopia that we hear of. Eastern Europe, which has only been twenty years out of the Warsaw pact, still suffers from chronic housing shortages. Also, unemployment is a real existent thing in Europe, believe it or not (shocking!). Many countries suffer from climbing unemployment rates and workforces that are already too large: Sure, they could settle the immigrants, but the immigrants would only find themselves without jobs and with a government that does not have enough money to spend on them.

There is a joke that goes like this: The Greek Government is getting so desperate it is starting to respond to emails from Nigerian millionaires. In the current discussion surrounding the crisis, which is incredibly, if not uniformly, pro-immigration, unsurprisingly so given the demographic of Exeter, the livelihoods of Europeans and the economies of European countries, many of whom are still unable to recover from recession, are not even considered. They are, instead, forced to bear the brunt of a refugee crisis that they did not cause while the culpable lie across the Atlantic watching the whole situation unravel in the comfort of their homes. Try to imagine a Great Depression era America accepting hundreds of thousands of refugees.

So, opponents say that the US is too far away to accept all these refugees. Well I suppose if we operate and think in their world where ships and boats have not been invented yet, why not the Gulf States, the greatest allies of the US in the region? Nations like Saudi Arabia, which already sit in the back pocket of American oil magnates, refuse to share any of this so-called moral responsibility that web warriors consistently incant. After all, how would these princes and sheikhs purchase their Lamborghinis and invite over all those Instagram models if they had to spend their money on actual hard-working fellow Arabs? Well, it's not like they need any more laborers anyways: They already have enough overworked and underpaid Chinese and Indian migrants bound in wage slavery manning their drills, building their skyscrapers, and serving their foie gras.

There are also real economic impacts of this crisis that transcend the sentimental, uninformed language of many activists. Migrants will lead to increases of spendings on housing, education, and welfare by governments that are already under increasingly fiscal strain. Migrants will also alter the labor market. This is a fact of truth, not some anti-immigrant fascist propaganda as so many decry. Skilled migrants and refugees will compete with local European workers, and given the size and magnitude of the immigrant population, will cause an increase in unemployment in the short term. The increase of aggregate demand on spending lies not only in the social sector, but also in other expensive necessities that the government must provide, including electricity, water and heating. The effect is, has been and will be, devastating to a national economy.  Syrian refugees cost Lebanon $2.6 billion in a single year (2012, mind you, before the escalation of the crisis) alone. Jordan’s annual growth rate decreased dramatically following the influx of refugees, additionally marred by falling exports and rising inflation. These short-term impacts are severe, and therefore it is only natural for European nations to take them into consideration.

The idea that every single person should be entitled to nationality of their choice with simple regard is an extremely Americanized concept. In fact, nowadays, with the silent majority of our nation crying for the creation of a wall on our southern border, the idea is perhaps fading away even more so.  We may be a nation of immigrants and pride ourselves as the great melting pot, but England is still very much a place of crumpet eating tea sipping Union Jack waving Brits. It is also essential to understand that fundamental human rights are separate from nationality of choice. Videos scrawled over the Internet display refugees forgoing permanent shelter and substantial portions of water, food, and even free furniture in nations like Hungary and Romania, instead demanding to have access to welfare-straddled nations like Germany and the UK. The UNHCR entitles refugees to freedom of movement within, and out, of their respective nations, and to fundamental necessities, but not to asylum or permanent residence within any nation of their choice. Any nation can deny and grant asylum underneath their laws  regarding eligibility, and require those seeking permanent residence to apply for the proper papers beforehand. If in any case, a nation should be transcending the bounds of the UNHCR to a higher moral plane, in order to take care of these refugees in desperate need, it should be the US and Russia, the perpetrators of this massive crisis, not the nations of Europe that have far less to do with it.

None of this is to say that Europe should not take in, feed and temporarily house the immigrants. But the comparison and the media surge is misdirected and unrealistic. Yet it is then that we are supposed to come to face the realities of ourselves. If anything, we are one of the greatest proponents of this crisis, and thus, we are the ones who ought to bear the moral complications and moral responsibility, not those who had a significantly smaller role in this calamity. Why not make the sparse plains of the Midwest apt for resettlement? Or maybe something closer to home, like the arguably under-inhabited state of Vermont? Sadly, I can hardly imagine any Exonians, the most of us primped, pompous boys and girls straight outta Newport et al., openly accepting war-stricken refugees camping on the picturesque grass lawn in front of the Academy building, or sharing rooms and beds in our nicely heated dormitories. Even for those not from such sardonically described privileged backgrounds who might convince themselves of their utmost altruism and openness to such encampments, I don’t think the Admissions Office would have any of it. Sympathy should not be a double standard: just because you do not see pictures and videos of Greek civilians being robbed and overrun by thousands of refugees, because it is not profitable for broadcasters to do so, does not mean that you should not consider the many millions more who also have much to lose. I suppose this is the entire reason why we shuck the responsibilities contained within our presuming sympathies and desires for humanitarian action onto our European counterparts.

Because, really, we are intelligent and pragmatic countrymen and women. We know what a mass influx of refugees will do to our economy, to our employment rates and to our stately, perfect suburban lives. So instead, we hide under our own artificial burkha of ignorance and behind our keyboards painted with feinted social justice, enjoy our bliss and shriek at those selfish, Islamophobic, xenophobic Europeans in our own deluded sense of humanitarian benefaction.