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| Syrian refugees in Turkey 2015. |
The
Fears
Mel writes again:
"Hi Noel! I was walking in the Parks this morning and ran
into people who were raving about the disasters that taking in immigrants will
have upon poor, benighted UK communities. I bit my tongue and did not rant
back! I guess I was just too surprised by the elderly couple who had clearly
lived through World War II and all that followed and sounded more scared and
confused than evil. However, I got home and opened by computer and found that
the BBC news site was reporting that :
“ a little earlier, Hungary's parliament “passed a
series of new laws as part of a crackdown on illegal immigrants, meaning:
• It will be a criminal offence to cross
or damage the fence being constructed along the border with Serbia
• Illegal border crossing will be
punishable by up to three years in prison
• It will be possible to submit asylum
requests at border crossing points”
Earlier, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told public
radio:
"Now we talk about hundreds of thousands [of
migrants] but next year we will talk about millions and there is no end to
this. All of a sudden we will see that we are in a minority in our own
continent."
(I am feeling like quoting my grandmother whenever I
hear the name Viktor Orban. When I was a toddler, whenever she heard the name
Stalin she would cry: Stalin! Stalin? I spit upon his name!)
So, Orban
predicts we will be a minority in our own continent. What we is that? White
people? Christians? Hungarians? Really???? We will be overrun? Gawd, it
sounds worse than the World Jewish Conspiracy, all these greedy Muslims
besieging poor helpless Europe.
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| Syrian Refugees walking from Hungary to Austria. |
So should
we fear being overrun by a hostile and Triffid-like wave of aliens, people
whose skins and cultures and religions are Other? (And what happened to the
French Declaration of the Rights of Man, the separation of Church and State,
and the rights of people to worship as they wished as long as there was a
secular rule of law?)
What is
the total population of Europe? What if the EU actually came up (about 3 years
late) with a policy that offered homes to refugees (and migrants?) based on
fair distribution throughout Europe? What if someone spoke to Putin about
taking in a few people to populate some of the empty areas of Russia that could
use a bit of settlement and exploitation? What if the UN finally persuaded its
delegates to have a debate about giving homes to refugees according to a fair
world-wide system and also that reflected all the fine words and resolutions
that were passed after WWII? What if Canada, or Australia, which have
lots of open spaces that could use pioneers to settle them still, actually
opened themselves up to helping out in a major way? What then? Would it really
mean that all of a sudden everyone will be a minority in their own continent?
(Like the Native American Indians after about 1600?)
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| World War Two - Undesirable Aliens |
And do
the natives of Europe (how many generations a native of the country you live
in, I wonder?) really think that all that is going to happen is that there will
be a huge influx of people living forever off the different national benefit
systems? In the UK the right wing press is promoting the idea that the benefit
cheats are destroying the fragile economy that was originally devastated by
Labour incompetence. (More about who was responsible for the economic crisis of
2008 later from me and elsewhere from Noel Hodson! It’s really quite important
to understand that and get it right.)
Actually,
the statistics for how much benefit cheats cost the government of the UK is
something in the range of 0.7% of the total money spent on benefits; and most
of the money (maybe around 50%) is going to landlords of the private sector –
David Cameron and George Osborne’s Holy Grail sector – whose tax fiddles and
outrageously over-bloated rents are supposed to generate a trickle down effect
to those whose benefits have recently been capped – no matter what the
exceptional circumstances – or who are being penalized for having an extra room
in their house.
One thing
is sure, this is not the era of joined up thinking! So are we to assume that
none of the refugees will be professional people, skilled people, trained
people? That none will want to re-educate themselves, gain new qualifications,
learn the language of the country they end up in or build a new life? That none
will be able to take on jobs or might be computer literate and be helpful to
companies that are trying to exploit the new economy IT has generated?
In other
words, we cannot expect a refugee to take a job, earn money, pay taxes, pay
rent, buy food, buy clothes or in any way contribute to the economy of his or
her new homeland? Or that over, say, three generations, there will be some
amount of culturisation and maybe also some romance and new families started?
Listen,
guys, this will come as a shock to you but they have worked out the genome and
it seems that Hitler and other racists were wrong and that the more remote the
gene pools are that mix, the more it reinvigorates the local human stock! But
it’s so much less scary to be inbred and deal with the consequences of that,
clearly, I reckon.
And who
now has a world wide platform for this nonsense? Victor Orban, the Prime
Minister of Hungary, that’s who. With no sense of history, and a leader who has
all the hallmarks about him of hoping to be a successful a fascist, racist
non-visionary thug running a police state, we have to wish the Hungarians good
luck in waking up to what they are doing to themselves by voting this man into
power, let alone what they are doing through him to the desperate refugees who
have foolishly turned up because of geographic necessity to try to get across
the Hungarian country and get the hell out of there as fast as they can to
somewhere civilized like Germany. (At the moment, I like Angela Merkel.)
And what
would the court of human rights in the Hague (or is it Brussels that should
speak out?) have to say about what I assume is the illegality of selling
someone a ticket to Germany from Budapest and then refusing to let the train
take him or her to Berlin after they
have bought the ticket with what is often their last bit of money? (Come to
that, who is letting the thousands of refugees camped in or near the railway
station use the toilets, for which you have to pay; or providing some food and
water for the dehydrated and uncomfortable families?) Isn't the selling of the
ticket a contract that the Hungarian government and police have now broken? I
wonder if someone should sue them?!?! just
to make a point ...?
Finally,
I doubt any arguments will convince the unconvinceable, prejudiced and
ultimately truly frightened people who see the refugees as a threat to their
culture and way of life and who should be kept out therefore. It was ever thus!
It’s fear of the other. It’s also a shocking lack of optimism about the
adaptability of the human being to changes of circumstance.
And it
is, above all, a huge failure to recognize what is going on as a moral issue
and a test of whether we really have learned that lesson: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. "
******
BEAN COUNTING NUMBERS:
The European Union has 550M people. In addition to the EU, Russia is the
largest country on Earth with immense tracts of uninhabited land – with 9
people per sq km. The highest estimate I have heard of migrant/refugees heading
for Europe is 1M or 1/550th of present populations. With
Goodwill and good planning – the one million could easily be decently housed, fed and
integrated.
HAVENS FOR REFUGEES
I may have told you our true story of Iceland after/during the Vietnam
War? They gave welcome, homes, money, new business starts, school places etc to
20 Vietnamese refugee families. Within 3 years all 20 families had gone. The
puzzled, kindly Icelanders told us this over tea in a Reykjavik café, dark
outside at 3pm, with horizontal freezing rain driving past the window; a nice
breezy day for natives – a terrible cold, dismal, soul destroying day for
Vietnamese. Not all migrants will stay in Europe – many prefer the Middle East.
It is time for some cool calm political thinking.
Noel
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