Thinking about migration
Having talked in my terminal post about our immediate response to the situation of refugees from Syria in Europe, some other problems take challenged me to appoint mind as well as heart. At that place have been several things nigh the reporting and comment over the terminal few days that puzzled me.
First was the tragic story of Aylan Kurdi, the little boy who had drowned. A clip has been posted up on YouTube from Heaven News, with the comment:
According to news reports, the father had been kidnapped and tortured during the siege of Kobani by Islamic Land or another jihadist group, and it's claimed that all of his teeth had been pulled or knocked out. (I am seeking verification of these reports)…
Abdullah'south sister living in Canada, Tima Kurdi, sent coin to him so traffickers could be paid to arrange the perilous gunkhole journey for the family to escape from Turkey to Greece – a 'good act' she now profoundly regrets.
She explained in a BBC interview why she sent the coin, "I was doing it for their better future, for the kids, for him, for the whole family". In some other interview published by Canada's Huffington Post she said, "I am the one who should be at blame. I blame myself considering my brother does non have money. I sent him the money to pay the smuggler. If I didn't send him the money, those people withal (would be) alive."
Daniel Hannan, a Conservative MEP, offers a powerful assay of this:
In truth, children are drowning because their parents believe that reaching the Eu by h2o is the surest way of beingness allowed to stay there. If we want to stop the horrors, we need to stop the boats…When people say, "the migrants have been through hell, and we should welcome them," what they're actually saying, if you call up most it, is that we should contract out our immigration policy to people smugglers.
This highlights the need to really have a policy—yes, a policy that is shaped by compassion, only one that is also informed by a careful assay of the (possibly unintended) consequences of our action. Peter Ould commented on the response of Austria (where he has family unit) and Federal republic of germany:
I'grand proud that Austria took the migrants from Republic of hungary, no questions asked, fed them, gave them somewhere to sleep and helped them motion on (if they wanted to). At the same time, nosotros should all terminate and ponder those iii words – "no questions asked". Did Republic of austria and Germany just tear up EU clearing policy and the Geneva Convention? What happened to the principle of registration at first safe port? I can completely understand the frustration of the Hungarian Government when Frg insists the residue of Europe follows the law when information technology suits Frg, but tears up the law when information technology doesn't arrange Germany. As I wrote this calendar week, the upshot facing Europe is not migration but rather sovereignty.
What not many people noted in the story nigh Aylan and his family was that they werealready in Turkey—they had non just arrived there from Syrian arab republic.
Daniel Hannan goes on to offering some big hints most the problems with the media coverage, and the way our response is shaped by it.
Last week, for case, a BBC researcher called me, wanting to discuss the migration crisis. Would I talk past phone to her plan? Yes, I told her. In fact, I was at that moment volunteering in a hostel for underage migrants in Italy, and then it would have a certain aptness. The moment I mentioned the hostel, I sensed the interest draining from her vocalisation. She was after someone who would exist, equally it were, uncomplicatedly anti-immigrant. She wanted no nuance, no dash of humanity.
I suppose broadcasters accept to simplify everything for the listeners. Just the trouble with treating clearing policy as a test of decency is that it quickly becomes all about you lot. The welfare of the migrants is pushed aside past your determination to flaunt your kindness.
One of the other things that puzzled me nigh the coverage of those trying to leave Hungary was why a number of the refugees had smart phones with GPS which allowed them to plan their route to Germany. If my experience is anything to get by, you need money to take a smart phone. And why were so many of the refugees immature men? Hannan has been involved in organising a social action programme to run into the needs of migrants, and so he has get-go-hand experience to depict from:
While we were in Messina, an Italian coastguard vessel put in with 693 gunkhole people on board, mainly Eritreans. I have seen refugee columns earlier, and they tend to be fabricated up disproportionately of women and children. But more than fourscore per cent of the people disembarking here were young men – the archetype indicator of economical migration.
Of course, those fleeing squalor deserve our fellow-feeling no less than those fleeing persecution. These young men are guilty of zilch worse than courage, resourcefulness and optimism. But if we plan to open our doors to anyone who wants to get away from a hardscrabble life, we are inviting hundreds of millions of people to settle here.
Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph has done some sobering assay of the current state of affairs of migration into the U.k.. It is massive, and rising, and the majority are non coming from the Eu—though return migration of Britons returning from abroad is contributing to the numbers as well. The surprising thing is that the growth in migration is a consequence of thereduction in global poverty:
When a poor country becomes richer, its emigration rate rises until information technology becomes as wealthy as Albania or Armenia are today. This procedure usually takes decades, and only afterwards does wealth subdue emigration. State of war is a catalyst. If conflict strikes, and the country isn't quite as poor as information technology one time was, more of those afflicted at present take the ways to cross the earth. The digital historic period ways they also have the information.
If he is correct, then we are going to see the kind of thing that has been in the news many more times over the adjacent few years.
All this demands that nosotros call back through the issues carefully. Alastair Roberts offered some challenging reflections in response to my last post:
Pity is thenatural andhuman reaction, but fetishizing it every bit the 'just legitimate response' is unhelpful. The kneejerk of pity is a very unsafe guide for policy in such cases, every bit information technology can easily encourage well-pregnant approaches that exacerbate our problems. The nearly of import response right now is one that avoids sentimentalism's blitz of mentally obfuscating feeling and devotes itself to the difficult task of level-headed deliberation about prudential and effective policy…
The cultural questions are huge and need to exist addressed. My girlfriend (who has edited and added a few sentences to this paragraph of my comment) spent a couple of months in Syria, largely lone, which utterly destroyed whatsoever sentimental notions she might accept had nigh the country and its population. On the occasions when she wasn't accompanied by a male, practically every male person she met, pretty much without exception, groped, propositioned, objectified, or otherwise tried to take sexual advantage of her, although she was uniformly dressed in pocket-sized loose clothing. It wasn't just a few occasions: it was relentless. It wasn't but a few bad apples, simply culturally typical…Many of these disproportionately male person refugees aren't choirboys by whatsoever stretch of the imagination. For example, hither's a news written report of twelve Christians thrown overboard past Muslims on i of these migrant ships.
Syrian Muslims would culturally assimilate best in other regional states. Of class, the oil-rich Gulf states aren't doing anything much at all to aid. Qatar, for case, is currently investing hundreds of billions in throwing a lavish Globe Loving cup party, at the price of over lx deaths per game, while taking in no refugees. Let's start putting some serious international pressure on these countries to stride upwardly and practise their bit… Mayhap we could start by boycotting the Qatar World Cup and having an alternative outcome in one of the other recent host nations.
Alastair's concluding complaint is virtually the poor level of reflection by many in the church.
So much of the Christian reflection I have encountered on this subject has been remarkably poor, with lots of sentimentalism and virtue signaling, but remarkably little prudence and sensible deliberation. Facile WWJD fashion arguments almost invariably rely upon romanticized projections of our values onto Jesus, drawing upon highly selective prooftexting, rather than arising from rigorous exploration of relevant theological principles or from recognition of the difference between the good—the values that should inform our practice—and the right—the actual deportment that we should prudentially take in light of the good.
I have to confess to sharing much of this frustration. The almost mutual text that I have seen flight around is Matt 25.xl: 'Whenever you lot did this for the to the lowest degree of these my brothers, you lot did information technology for me'. Just, read properly in context, this parable of Jesus has absolutely aught to do with helping refugees—at least non in the manner we are being challenged today. Jesus uses the term 'brothers' and 'the least of these' to refer to his disciples (see Matt 12.48–50); since the 'Son of Man has nowhere to lay his caput' (Matt viii.20), Jesus expects his followers to feel at to the lowest degree something of the same; and the notion of reward for those who care for Jesus' followers has been introduced previously, in the context of facing pressure and persecution (Matt 10.42, where the recipient of kindness is referred to equally '1 of these little ones who is my disciple'). Rob Dalrymple offers an extended study of the correct meaning of this passage. The daft matter is that in that location are plenty of other places to get to shape our response to those in need—not least the parable of the Jericho route in Luke ten.
Giles Fraser offers another example of this sloppy thinking.
For the moral imagination of the Hebrew scriptures was determined by a battered refugee people, fleeing political oppression in north Africa, and seeking a new life for themselves safe from violence and poverty. Time and once again, the books of the Hebrew scriptures remind its readers non to forget that they likewise were once in this state of affairs and their ethics must exist structured around practical help driven past fellow-feeling.
The only slight drawback to this analysis is that, in the biblical narrative, God effects the rescue by raining down judgement not simply the nation that has enslaved his people, but also on the people whose country they were going to enter. If y'all simply read Loose Catechism, you lot'd be forgiven for thinking that the Hebrew Bible was a socialist's lease—but information technology isn't. The 'applied assistance driven by fellow-feeling' that Fraser refers to includes imposing their own values and beliefs on those they are commanded to help.
Justin Welby was quite right to cite the command 'to break down barriers, to welcome the stranger and honey them as ourselves (Leviticus xix:34), and to seek the peace and justice of our God, in our world, today.' Only he won't take forgotten that this is part of the distinctive 'Holiness Code' of capacity 17–26—and that all who entered the land had to leave their own culture at the edge, and alive like 1 of God's people, adopting their beliefs likewise equally their customs. This is precisely why, in the moving personal commitment of Ruth to Naomi, she makes the comment 'Your God will be my God' (Ruth 1.16). As Alastair Roberts concludes:
Hospitality has a logic to information technology, i that does not alienate the site of hospitality from the party extending hospitality. Hospitality almost always entails bold upon ourselves a degree of openness to disruption, only not to the radical erosion of our cultural community, solidarities, institutions, economy, religious character, historic identity, and linguistic unity.
These are the bug we need to wrestle with as we codify our response.
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