A Deeper Look Is Needed – The Immigrant Problem

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There is a failure in our modern media to take a deeper look at the roots of the problems that ours and other societies are facing in the world.

At present a huge wave of immigrants are racing across the Mediterranean to Europe to claim their stake in it. Most are fleeing the conflict in Syria; others are escaping the poverty in their third world countries like Afghanistan or Sudan. There are also many coming to the U.S. and Canada from Central and South America in droves. It is understandable that they are leaving their difficult worlds. But is it right?

Syrian refugeesThose invading Europe are taking great risks in their flight, many dying along the way. There is the now iconic image of a young Syrian boy lying dead face down on the beach in Greece. But who is really to blame for this?

Too many are saying the European Union is not helping in this quandary. Did the nations of western Europe start this mess? No. The roots of all this conflict and despair start in the refugees own countries. The father of the drowned Syrian boy made the choice to leave his country. Although he very well could have been facing danger and difficulties in his own homeland, he risked his and his families lives to venture out. He paid a smuggler who was acting selfishly and illegally to take them to Greece whether the Greeks wanted them or not. The captain of the dilapidated ships carrying them to the western shores is at fault too. All of them could be blamed for the tragedy. Why do Greek and EU officials get lambasted for not doing enough? Doesn’t Greece have enough problems of its own right now?

During World War Two when Germany was the bad guy and Greece, France, Britain and the other allies where getting trampled by the Nazi boot their citizens did not run en-mass to other countries for refuge. A few sought asylum, but most stayed and fought or hunkered down during the Occupation, many serving in the famous Underground movements that fought back.

The modern social tendency seems to pack up and run into the arms of other countries that somehow feel that because they are wealthier they need to patch up every hurt that the rest of the world encounters. While this is admirable to an extent, it seems to be forgotten that people need to be responsible for themselves first and not be so willing to share their usually self-created miseries with everyone else. The West is also seen too often as utopias where everything is clean, well ordered and, above all, rich. Too many think that they have a right to those riches as well.

Here are the essential basics of things that go unasked when people run from their own countries:

Did you create your own poverty by following your societies traditional tendency to have a lot of children which you later found you could not support?

Did you allow a dictatorship to take place in your land of birth by blindly following leaders who promised to meet all your self-interests when all they were really only interested in were their own?

Did you blindly follow the popular religious decrees and leaders of your land who used your shortsightedness and illusionary religious beliefs to gain mental and emotional control over you? Did they develop this control to such an extent that they ended up getting political, monetary and legal control over you and your nation?

Did you not fight back against your governments encroachment into your rights?
Did you allow your children and your relatives to be brainwashed by your educational and religious systems to the point where they became unconscious victims of repression and control in your countries?

Did you allow the women of your society to become so repressed that they became essentially wordless automatons whose only function was household duties and childbearing? Did they become so alienated from the society of your country lost their vital input into it?

Did you allow the minorities in your land to become second class citizens? Did you aid in making them poverty stricken, landless, unemployable?

Did you follow without thinking your countries ages old ignorant traditions that limit you and have no relationship to modern times and that keep you and your family in eternal poverty?

Any and all of these conditions add to the degradation of a land. People who have submitted to any of these self-inflicted handicaps should not be fleeing to other lands to share their misery with the people there, but should stay at home and deal with the problems that they themselves have created. Not doing so only spread the problems elsewhere.

The people coming to Greece and Italy (and here in the U.S.) have already shown a disrespect for these countries laws by invading in the first place. In Hungary they have blatantly shown disrespect for the police and officials trying to control the burgeoning intrusions into their land. Almost all the immigrants are demanding to go to Germany. Why? Because the Germans have the most social help available and also because they are the richest continental European country. Do they really want true asylum or are they just interested in getting their hands on some Euros? Many of the migrants started their journey in Turkey (which has assimilated and helped the largest number of immigrants of all the EU countries) where they were perfectly safe. But, no, they seem fixated on Germany and the promise of a promised land. They don’t seem to notice that in doing so they are making Germany itself a poorer land. Or maybe they don’t really care.

Roger Freed
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