Grassroots/Hank Kalet

They Are All Like Us

The global refugee system is broken.

Created in the wake of World War II when millions were left homeless throughout Europe, the international refugee protection system established a set of definitions that created legal protections designed to aid people fleeing war and persecution. The system’s earliest rules focused on Europe, but were expanded in 1967 to cover much of the rest of the world.

The system worked well for quite some time, but are now failing the very people they are meant to help. Historical racism, reluctance by richer nations, and changing threats have left many who need protection without it — a failure underscored by the massive refugee crisis caused by Russia’s illegal and immoral war in Ukraine.

The world has been stepping up and aiding the nearly three million Ukrainians who have fled their homes since Vladimir Putin ordered the Russians to invade. Poland and other neighboring countries are doing the lion’s share of work, receiving refugees and working to help them resettle.

And yet, the images we are seeing on TV and in the newspaper — images of children and families, all White, most educated — offer a clear example of inequities in the current system. The wide acceptance they are receiving runs in stark contrast to rhetoric and actions of not just Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump but of many British Tories, the Poles, and others.

The welcome and the support the Ukrainians have received — deserved as it may be — stands in stark contrast to other recent crises in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and the US-Mexico border.

The response to the Syrian civil war during the 2010s is instructive. As Syria refugees flowed beyond the borders of Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, and into the European Union, many national governments imposed restrictions on entry, saying it was impossible to integrate the growing number of Syrians and a need to protect European culture.

In 2015, Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, ordered construction of a razor-wire fence between Hungary and Serbia, sent thousands of police to patrol the border, and slashed the number allowed in the country. Orban’s government said policies that allowed refugees fleeing Syria to enter the EU were “threatening European countries with an unprecedented social, economic, cultural and security conflict.”

Ukraine’s refugees, however, appear to be different. Orbán told Al Jazeera that Hungary has limited resources but that it would help what he views as legitimate refugees — a distinction he did not define, but that clearly was meant to justify the country’s closing of its borders to Syrians.

“We are not living in a comfortable West, we are living in the midst of difficulties, not just now but throughout our history, so we are able to tell the difference between who is a migrant and who is a refugee.”

In Poland, refugees from neighboring Ukraine receive a warm welcome, as the New York Times reports. “From the instant they cross into Poland, Ukrainian refugees … are treated to live piano music, bottomless bowls of borscht and, often, a warm bed.”

They also “fly for free all across Europe” and can stay up to three years in all European Union countries.

Contrast this, says the Times, with refugees from Sudan and other African and Middle Eastern countries, which continue to face active resistance.

This is partly because of geo-politics: Russian ally Belarus is said to have create a crisis in the EU last year, the Times says, “invit(ing) in tens of thousands of desperate people from conflict-ridden countries like Sudan, Iraq and Syria and directed them to Poland’s frontier as a way to cause havoc in Europe.” But it also stems from racism, Islamophobia, and a long-standing xenophobia.

This does not bode well for the immediate or long-term future, when we are likely to be beset by even larger and less organized refugee flows — refugees who may not meet the current definition of refugee but will be facing threats to their lives just the same.

As the planet continues to warm, weather will grow more extreme and damaging. We will face flooding in some areas, droughts in others, and competition for dwindling resources. We already are seeing growing violence from non-state actors — the Islamic State and Al Qaida, Mexican and other drug cartels, White Supremacist groups in the United States and abroad — which will only worsen with the environmental crisis, and the growing dysfunction of corporate capitalism.

The United Nations places the number of displaced persons at 82.4 million world wide. These are defined as people forced to flee their homes. Of that, 48 million are “internally displaced,” or still living in their home country. These figures, however, only include those fleeing “conflict or persecution,” and not those forced from their homes due to environmental or economic causes. This may have made sense in 1951, when the UN High Commissioner for Refugees was created, but it doesn’t now. We need to broaden the definition, and attack the racist assumptions that underpin the current approach.

The Ukrainians need our help today, but they are not the only people displaced by war and persecution, disease and extreme weather, by poverty and gangs and violence. White Americans and White Europeans may see themselves in the faces of those fleeing Russian tanks, but we also should see ourselves in the Guatemalan fleeing street violence and kidnappings, the Mexican on the run from cartels, the Sudanese escaping war, and the Bangladeshi breaking loose from extreme poverty.

Hank Kalet is a poet and journalist in New Jersey. Email, hankkalet@gmail.com; Twitter, @newspoet41 and @kaletjournalism; Instagram, @kaletwrites; Substack, hankkalet.substack.com.

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2022

Populist.com