Migration
The migrant problem is a horrendously complex one that requires clear thought and less emotion.
On one front it is a clear humanitarian problem. There are poor people desperate to escape war, persecution and poverty. They need helping. In the short term something has to be done and done quickly. We simply cannot sit back and allow people to suffer. That is callous.
On the other side is a clash of cultures, large numbers, burgeoning populations and differing values.
There are a number of reasons why we have this situation:
- There are terrible wars being waged all over the world – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Nigeria, Libya …… People are fleeing the death, mayhem and destruction. The economies are devastated. They have no future. A number of these wars have been fuelled and instigated by the West because of terrorism? Oil? Or strategic needs?
- There is a rise of extremist, fanatical religious strands of Islam. These groups – Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, ISIS and tens more – follow an interpretation of Islam that is extreme. They wish to impose their version of Islam on everyone – ban music, insist on Burqas, destroy all other culture and impose sharia law etc. etc. They have flourished in the vacuum created by the chaos following the wars. They use the West, who they foolishly describe as Crusaders, as scapegoats. They are systematically killing (in the most savage manner), looting and destroying. Their intolerance and persecution has led to millions seeking refuge.
- There is an overpopulation crisis. In many of these countries there has been a population explosion resulting in millions of extra people with no work, no future and living in extreme poverty. These huge numbers cannot be supported in their own countries.
- There is an economic crisis. The West has enjoyed a standard of life that is far superior to that enjoyed elsewhere. The world markets have been organised and run for the benefit of Western economies. We are rich and the Third World is extremely poor. With the advent of computers this has now become obvious to those in Third World countries. They want to have the benefits of living in the West with its employment, salaries and life-style.
- There is a lot of oil money floating around which is being used to fund Islamic extremism and destabilise the world.
- There are a lot of cynical selfish exploiters who are looking to make money out of the chaos. They are charging to take migrants to Europe, selling arms to all sides and generally looking to make a killing (literally make a killing).
- There are the politicians looking to destabilise and gain advantage by turning faction against faction.
- There are religious factions bred on long-established racism – Jews and Arabs, Sunni and Shia, Islam and Christian. The hatred is centuries old and fuelled by the Palestinian situation, poverty, wars, overpopulation, unemployment and economic depression.
- There is the added spice of Russia trying to exert power and using the various crises to exploit its conflict with the West. Putin is trying to be the big, tough guy. Russian pride is at stake.
The West is proving inept at dealing with all this and far from unified. We need some strong leadership and clear strategy.
What the West is concerned about
- A huge input of people into European countries requiring infrastructure – housing, schools, jobs, health care etc. This is happening at a time of austerity when there is strain on these services.
- The input of a large number of people who do not support the ethos of the West. They are largely Muslim and may not support tolerance, freedom, secularism, democracy and respect the customs of the host countries. They are religious and may support Sharia law, religious schools, Madrassas, Mosques and not integrate with the host country. People are concerned that they will displace the host culture.
- The immigrant families tend to have more children which increase the concerns of the above.
- Along with genuine migrants terrorist fanatics may come into the country putting everyone here at risk.
- Every country has its national culture; with large enclaves of immigrants this identity is under threat, particularly if they do not integrate. Many are dismayed at the number of people who do not speak the language, who live in insular communities and the number of Mosques springing up all over.
The irony is that the West, with its low birth rates, needs immigration. They just do not want erosion or usurping of their ethos.
We fought hard to escape from the strangle-hold of theocracy. We do not want to slip back into that again. We see the stultifying effect it has had on the Arab States. We want to remain free, have democracy and the right to chose. We want tolerance, fairness and our own culture. We want religion to be a personal choice not an imposition.
The other irony is that the immigrants are in danger of destroying the very thing they have come for – the freedom and tolerance.
The Solutions
- We have to demonstrate that we have compassion and moral integrity by caring for these displaced people. We cannot allow them to drown or keep them in detestable camps. They need interim housing, processing and assimilating.
- We should manage their entry to the West so that fanatics are identified and weeded out.
- Diplomatic pressure should be brought to bear to end the wars. The West needs to become more unified and focussed.
- The Palestinian situation has been fuelling much of the radicalisation and hatred and needs to be resolved. Pressure should be brought to bear on all parties.
- The funding of ISIS and other fanatic religious savages needs to be tracked down and stopped. Likewise internet recruitment.
- There needs to be a global, unified response to tackle religious fundamentalism led by the Arab States. The West has to put pressure on them to do this. ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda and the rest need to be utterly discredited and defeated.
- The economic gulf between rich and poor countries needs to be bridged so that everyone becomes entitled to a job, a fair wage, fair conditions, pensions and health care.
- We need to integrate people living in Britain so that they subscribe to the values we have as a nation. We have a long history of fighting for social justice and equality.
- We need to address the drastic overpopulation crisis that is destroying the wilderness, forests and nature, over-fishing, butchering wild-life and leading to poverty, unemployment and economic disaster. This is what is fuelling the migration problem.
- We need to dump the whole oil economy and move right over to renewables. This will immediately dry up all the funding for the militant savages of ISIS and the rest.
- We need to create a rapprochement with Russia and China to tackle radicalism on a unified front.
Well those are my procrastinations. I suppose some of them are controversial. But I think they need bringing out into the open and discussing. I consider myself a caring, tolerant person but I am intolerant of intolerance and I hate violence, indoctrination and fundamentalism. I am open to debate. I can’t see a solution that gets to the root causes coming any time soon. But unless someone starts addressing the underlying issues I think this is all going to end badly.
What do you think?
Hi Opher! Good job! – Btw: Does anything like this exist in Britain ?
I don’t know Matt. I’ll check it out.
This is what I found Matt:
https://translate.google.co.uk/
I’m not sure if that was what you were after? Still got loads of Beat MP3 if you want it?
I don’t know why the link doesn’t work on your side of the channel. I’ll try again:
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger-fuer-fluechtlinge.de%2F
OK Matt – That one works!! Cheers Opher.
One humanity!! Compassion and intelligence together – we can solve anything.
And yes – we do have caring people doing that sort of job here. More power to them!
Just remembered – I might not have!
I think you have done an excellent job here. I feel a lot of this myself~ concern over the great numbers of “Other”, potentially swamping the culture of my country, yet finding it repugnant to refuse them shelter. I struggle not to judge when I see people blithely having more and more children, refusing to see that they are contributing to a very real problem.
Thank you Melissa. I believe the overpopulation is the nub of the issue. Most things stem from that. Thank you for commenting. Best wishes – Opher
Oh – and I forgot to mention – the world population will be reduced. I think that is the driving force behind all of this. There are far too many of us. That’s why we’re chopping forests, polluting, creating poverty, starvation, war and greater inequality. It’s fuelling ISIS and migration.
Solve the overpopulation and you solve the underlying problem.
……. And we all live happily ever after!
That is a very well thought-out post. Gonna share that with Lord Drollery…
The bigger the debate the better. There seems to be a herd of elephants in the room. People are reluctant to debate in case they get accused of Racism or Islamophobia. I think it needs debating. People have real concerns. The world is in crisis.
Couldn’t agree more. There is something else I was thinking about when I hit send on that comment. I do look at the Bible as a book of history, and I happened to think of how Jesus said there were ALWAYS going to be wars and rumors of wars (and he was speaking, imo, of the area in which he lived and traveled — the Middle East). I do think about that. It crossed my mind in that second to wonder just how successful would we ever be in bringing peace to that area of the world.
It is exceedingly complex. The religious elements are bad enough with Jew, Christian and Muslim at loggerheads; the Shia/Sunni hatred being absurdly prominent. But on top of that you have the politics and tribalism. After the Second World War countries were arbitrarily created without regard to tribal boundaries. Churchill has a lot to answer for. This has led to immense unrest. Then there’s the British pulling out of Palestine and leaving the whole area up in the air. The Jews laying claim to land and usurping Arabs who had lived there for centuries based on Biblical text going back thousands of years. Then you’ve got oil and the West wanted to destabilise, divide and rule and governments and individuals wanting chaos to exploit for profit. It’s a mess!
No wonder the extremists were able to exploit it. There’s been a lot of shady business. We’ve got dirty hands.
It’s time we sorted it out and held our hands up. We’re partly to blame.
I don’t believe in the biblical teachings. It is not necessary for there to always be war and poverty. We have to break out of that thinking. We are intelligent and brilliant at problem solving. We can sort the mess out.
Firstly we have to unite, solve the ISIL problem, the overpopulation and war. Easy peasy.
Give everyone a future in a world of tolerance, freedom and harmony.
Make an equal world.
Support the positive, can-do Zeitgeist!
It’s a mess that will get better. Elect Opher for World Leader (fix my computer) and I will guide us to a world of perfection based on the UN charter of Human Rights. I believe in that.
Or is that just me being a megalomaniac?
LOL Having a good day, are we? 😀 Well, Opher, I hope with all my heart you are right. I also hope I live to see it happen. It scares me to think what kind of world my grandkiddos are going to be living in…
Me too. That’s what is so frightening. What with the environmental degradation I have personally witnessed around the world and the upsurge in war and fundamentalism it is looking desperate.
But when things are that bad there are only two ways to go. You either give up and despair or you do something about it and put it right.
We are in a crisis. But I believe that we have the means to put things right. We have merely lacked the will.
Living in desperate times might focus the minds and provide the impetus required.
My computer will be fixed and all my books retrieved.
The world will be fixed.
ISIS will be discredited and destroyed.
The positive Zeitgeist will emerge and everyone will live happily ever after.
Hey! You should throw your hat in the ring for president over here. I’d vote for ya!!! 😀
I wanted to let you know I’m changing my notifications on yours and a couple other very active blogs to weekly because we are getting ready to go to Maryland to see our new granddaughter and all I’m going to have is my tablet. So I may be able to answer a few of them, but if I disappear, you’ll know I haven’t abandoned you!
OK – I’ll try for President!
Sorry to hear you won’t be in daily contact. I was enjoying our daily exchanges! Enjoy Maryland and thanks for letting me know.
16 comments?
If only? …
But I did mention Quakers too you Opher, and they/we do try to have a positive influence in the middle-east and wherever there is conflict.
People of good will need to join forces. Not sure about ‘Our ethos’ though. That of western corporate capitalism isn’t my ethos and is at least partly responsible for the (pseudo-)Islamic backlash.
Yet most of us live well courtesy of that ethos. However, if it continues as at present none of us will benefit
We need all the good will and positive vibes going. Still looking into Quakers.
When I was referring to ‘Ethos’ I was not so much thinking of the corporate greed, world domination and capitalism, that has done so much to create the world’s problems, so much as the long history of tolerance, freedom, social justice and equality that is the result of centuries of social struggle. That, rather than the elite, has produced a largely fair and caring society. It is the tolerance and freedom that has been fought for and won with sweat, blood and self-sacrifice. The Quakers are part of that.
There is one side of the story in the current refugee crisis that is so sidelined- and this is in addition to your post: a lot of people currently seeking refuge in Europe are not generally what people think of: poor people, with no education, and coming from some far away place in the middle of nowhere, with extreme, radical views. In order for them to get to Europe, they need money, and often they do have it. If they do, that means before wars started, they had jobs, they therefore had skills, or owned businesses. Some are students. If European governments see them through this lens: their potential and opportunity to integrate and bring skilled people in, of young-middle ages, it has the power to contribute to the development of economies and societies. Instead, when you see them as poor migrants, most think putting them in some shelter with basic needs covered is enough. It’s sad we cannot think of this as a benefit for both people suffering from humanitarian crises, and for their host states.
The other point is that more education is needed to defeat ISIS. Bombing them will be as efficient as the war on terror in the last decade, or the war on drugs. We cannot bomb ideologies. Like in the case of Northern Ireland, it was noted that for every IRA fighter killed 10 more would rise. ISIS rests so much on foreign fighters, instead of using expensive air strikes, work on reducing the desire for people to join them.
Yes. I agree with both of your points. Another sad thing is that those countries are losing some of their best brains and highly trained people. After the war it’s going to be hard to pick up the pieces.
What to Do with ISIS is a difficult one. It can only be defeated, as has been pointed out in your comment, by discrediting the warped ideology. Education is key. Yet when they are behaving so barbarically and killing people in the most obscene way, destroying heritage and capturing young women as sex slaves it is hard not to focus on a short-term policy of force.
As a pacifist I am in agreement with you but I’m torn.