Migrant Crisis Quotes

For a start, people who traveled for so many miles through such horrific conditions in order to find work cannot accurately be portrayed as lazy benefit-scroungers

También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams.

There are an estimated 258 million migrants around the world, and many of us are migrating to countries that previously colonized and imperialized us. We have a human right to move, and governments should serve that right, not limit it. The unprecedented movement of people - what some call a "global migration crisis" - is, in reality, a natural progression of history. Yes, we are here because we believe in the promise of the American Dream - the search for a better life, the challenge of dreaming big. But we are also here because you were there - the cost of American imperialism and globalization, the impact of economic policies and political decisions.

The Arab Spring whose seeds failed to bloom anything other than a chaotic mess that requires only blood to grow has contributed immensely to the rising numbers of these migrants.

In Bangladesh alone, tens of millions are expected to have to flee from low-lying plains in coming years because of sea level rise and more severe weather, creating a migrant crisis that will make today's pale in significance. With considerable justice, Bangladesh's leading climate scientist says that "These migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States." And to the other rich countries that have grown wealthy while bringing about a new geological era, the Anthropocene, marked by radical human transformation of the environment.

Europe, he says, is frightened that an influx of foreigners will erode European values. But what values will there to be uphold if we abandon our duty to protect those less fortunate than ourselves? Wat incentive do we give to refugees to maintain the fabric of our society if that fabric is so ragged in the first place? "If Europe is not able to show a better way of life to them, then they will think that their morality is better than ours." "They need to face some higher standards of morality, " he says. "If not, they will set their own." [Quoting Serbian priest Tibor Varga]

Chad Berry in his book Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles, “the

It is also difficult to maintain that post-colonial Africa hasn’t seen violence and suffering. The Africans who- oh wry irony- step into rickety boats in order to find a safe haven in the Europe of the former colonial powers.

As one book, Appalachian Odyssey, notes about the influx of hill people to Detroit: “It was not simply that the Appalachian migrants, as rural strangers ‘out of place’ in the city, were upsetting to Midwestern, urban whites. Rather, these migrants disrupted a broad set of assumptions held by northern whites about how white people appeared, spoke, and behaved . . . the disturbing aspect of hillbillies was their racialness. Ostensibly, they were of the same racial order (whites) as those who dominated economic, political, and social power in local and national arenas. But hillbillies shared many regional characteristics with the southern blacks arriving in Detroit.”10

At times it seems as if the whole world has become a refugee and the few of us, who are privileged enough to wake up to the sound of an alarm clock instead of a siren, those of us who are enveloped by a veil of safety many of us fail to appreciate, have become desensitised to the migrating numbers, to the images of the dead, shrugging them away as a collective misery that this ailing part of the world must endure.

In 1960, of Ohio’s ten million residents, one million were born in Kentucky, West Virginia, or Tennessee. This doesn’t count the large number of migrants from elsewhere in the southern Appalachian Mountains; nor does it include the children or grandchildren of migrants who were hill people to the core. There were undoubtedly many of these children and grandchildren, as hillbillies tended to have much higher birthrates than the native population.6

It was not simply that the Appalachian migrants, as rural strangers ‘out of place’ in the city, were upsetting to Midwestern, urban whites. Rather, these migrants disrupted a broad set of assumptions held by northern whites about how white people appeared, spoke, and behaved . . . the disturbing aspect of hillbillies was their racialness. Ostensibly, they were of the same racial order (whites) as those who dominated economic, political, and social power in local and national arenas.

From the Author’s Note: In 2017, a migrant died every twenty-one hours along the United States-Mexico border. That number does not include the many migrants who simply disappear each year. Worldwide in 2017, as I was finishing this novel, a migrant died every ninety minutes, in the Mediterranean, in Central Americ, in the horn of Africa. Every hour and a half. So sixteen migrant deaths for each night I tuck my children into bed. When I first began my research in 2013, these estimates were difficult to find because no one was keeping track. Even now, the International Organization for Migration warns that the available statistics are “likely only a fraction of the real number of deaths” because so many migrants who vanish are never accounted for in the first place. So maybe the number is more like two hundred deaths for each load of laundry I do. There are currently around forty thousand people reported missing across Mexico, and investigators routinely find mass graves containing dozens, sometimes hundreds, of bodies.

Charity had heard that the Trump administration might be using new arrivals from Mexico as weapons in a public relations war. When space in the migrant shelters ran out, ICE workers would drive these people into cities in the dead of night and just leave them there. “I’d heard that Trump was trying to create a crisis,” said Charity. “Trying to turn people against immigrants. It was just a rumor. But when I get there I find this is all true. They’re just dumping families on street corners at two in the morning. They were trying to create a disaster.

It was not simply that the Appalachian migrants, as rural strangers ‘out of place’ in the city, were upsetting to Midwestern, urban whites. Rather, these migrants disrupted a broad set of assumptions held by northern whites about how white people appeared, spoke, and behaved . . . the disturbing aspect of hillbillies was their racialness. Ostensibly, they were of the same racial order (whites) as those who dominated economic, political, and social power in local and national arenas. But hillbillies shared many regional characteristics with the southern blacks arriving in Detroit.”10

Women remained in an underprivileged position under social modernity. The ‘male breadwinner model’67 brought with it new inequalities. Since housewives were not employed, they were excluded from many insurance benefits, or minimally covered by these. The care and reproductive work that women performed in the household was neither paid nor integrated into the official order of social modernity. In other words, while social modernity attenuated the conflicts and risks induced by vertical inequalities (between classes), it reproduced new inequalities on the horizontal level—weighing especially on women and migrants.

As one book, Appalachian Odyssey, notes about the influx of hill people to Detroit: "It was not simply that the Appalachian migrants, as rural strangers 'out of place' in the city, were upsetting to Midwestern, urban whites. Rather, these migrants disrupted a broad set of assumptions held by northern whites about how white people appeared, spoke, and behaved ... the disturbing aspect of hillbillies was their racialness. Ostensibly, they were of the same racial order (whites) as those who dominated economic, political, and social power in local and national arenas. But hillbillies shared many regional characteristics with the southern blacks arriving in Detroit.

As one book, Appalachian Odyssey, notes about the influx of hill people to Detroit: “It was not simply that the Appalachian migrants, as rural strangers ‘out of place’ in the city, were upsetting to Midwestern, urban whites. Rather, these migrants disrupted a broad set of assumptions held by northern whites about how white people appeared, spoke, and behaved . . . the disturbing aspect of hillbillies was their racialness. Ostensibly, they were of the same racial order (whites) as those who dominated economic, political, and social power in local and national arenas. But hillbillies shared many regional characteristics with the southern blacks arriving in Detroit.” 10

At a time when travel is for many easy and anodyne, their voyages through the Sahara, the Balkans or across the Mediterranean – on foot, in the holds of wooden fishing boats and on the backs of land cruisers – are almost as epic as those of classical heroes such as Aeneas and Odysseus. I’m wary of drawing too strong a link, but there are nevertheless obvious parallels. Just as both those ancient men fled a conflict in the Middle East and sailed across the Aegean, so too will many migrants today. Today’s Sirens are the smugglers with their empty promises of safe passage; the violent border guard a contemporary Cyclops. Three millennia after their classical forebears created the founding myths of the European continent, today’s voyagers are writing a new narrative that will influence Europe, for better or worse, for years to come.

Moreover, these changes occurred when most American households actually found their real incomes stagnant or declining. Median household income for the last four decades is shown in the chart above. But this graph, disturbing as it is, conceals a far worse reality. The top 10 percent did much better than everyone else; if you remove them, the numbers change dramatically. Economic analysis has found that “only the top 10 percent of the income distribution had real compensation growth equal to or above . . . productivity growth.”14 In fact, most gains went to the top 1 percent, while people in the bottom 90 percent either had declining household incomes or were able to increase their family incomes only by working longer hours. The productivity of workers continued to grow, particularly with the Internet revolution that began in the mid-1990s. But the benefits of productivity growth went almost entirely into the incomes of the top 1 percent and into corporate profits, both of which have grown to record highs as a fraction of GNP. In 2010 and 2011 corporate profits accounted for over 14 percent of total GNP, a historical record. In contrast, the share of US GNP paid as wages and salaries is at a historical low and has not kept pace with inflation since 2006.15 As I was working on this manuscript in late 2011, the US Census Bureau published the income statistics for 2010, when the US recovery officially began. The national poverty rate rose to 15.1 percent, its highest level in nearly twenty years; median household income declined by 2.3 percent. This decline, however, was very unequally distributed. The top tenth experienced a 1 percent decline; the bottom tenth, already desperately poor, saw its income decline 12 percent. America’s median household income peaked in 1999; by 2010 it had declined 7 percent. Average hourly income, which corrects for the number of hours worked, has barely changed in the last thirty years. Ranked by income equality, the US is now ninety-fifth in the world, just behind Nigeria, Iran, Cameroon, and the Ivory Coast. The UK has mimicked the US; even countries with low levels of inequality—including Denmark and Sweden—have seen an increasing gap since the crisis. This is not a distinguished record. And it’s not a statistical fluke. There is now a true, increasingly permanent underclass living in near-subsistence conditions in many wealthy states. There are now tens of millions of people in the US alone whose condition is little better than many people in much poorer nations. If you add up lifetime urban ghetto residents, illegal immigrants, migrant farm-workers, those whose criminal convictions sharply limit their ability to find work, those actually in prison, those with chronic drug-abuse problems, crippled veterans of America’s recently botched wars, children in foster care, the homeless, the long-term unemployed, and other severely disadvantaged groups, you get to tens of millions of people trapped in very harsh, very unfair conditions, in what is supposedly the wealthiest, fairest society on earth. At any given time, there are over two million people in US prisons; over ten million Americans have felony records and have served prison time for non-traffic offences. Many millions more now must work very long hours, and very hard, at minimum-wage jobs in agriculture, retailing, cleaning, and other low-wage service industries. Several million have been unemployed for years, exhausting their savings and morale. Twenty or thirty years ago, many of these people would have had—and some did have—high-wage jobs in manufacturing or construction. No more. But in addition to growing inequalities in income and wealth, America exhibits

While many Europeans made world headlines when they rolled out the red carpet for refugees and migrants fleeing war and economic deprivation, the influx of arrivals also provided the hardline right with a renewed voice. “People coming from this war will act a certain way, so it’s not just the fault of Germans. But we aren’t animals.” Ramadan, like hundreds of thousands of others, waited eagerly to find out if his family would be able to join him. In the meantime, he spent each day waiting for his wife to call, waiting for another temporary assurance that none of his relatives had died.

The Christian right, driven by what it claimed was the undermining of Christian values during the Obama era, began looking toward the very same autocrats who had captivated the alt-right. These political figures were also using “family values” such as opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights as a means to merge Christian nationalism with ethnic nationalism, creating a potent bloc against European Union “elites.” These two parts of the bloc were further drawn together by the migrant crisis that escalated in 2015, which was caused, the alt-right claimed, by the needless wars in the Middle East launched by their ideological enemy, the neoconservatives. Because many of the migrants were from Muslim countries, the situation seemed to embody long-standing conspiracy theories in the Christian right about invasions of the West by Muslim hordes. For both the Christian right and the alt-right, the reaction of Europe’s xenophobes to an influx of refugees and asylum seekers served as a template for what Trump portrayed as an “invasion” on the U.S. southern border.

The real migration crisis is not that there is too much international migration. Most of the time, migration comes at no economic cost to the native population, and it delivers some clear benefits to the migrants. The real problem is that people are often unable or unwilling to move, within and outside their country of birth, to take advantage of economic opportunities

The refugee crisis, resulting from the armed conflicts, persecution, violence, war, and so on In such cases, these refugees face various problems. Instead, we must find ways to problems and about their grief. Refugees are like us humans. There should be best efforts to bring information to public attention, empathy, security and to join them in the social mainstream.

Another excluded group were the so-called ‘guest workers’, who are underscored as having played a crucial role in Germany’s spectacular social and economic ascent that was possible for the majority of working people at this time. This ascent ultimately rested in large part on an ‘underclass’ of migrant workers,66 who had been brought to Germany for repetitive and dirty work in a prospering industry, and then later, once the long economic boom was over, were coolly sent back home. Without them, there would not have been ‘normal labour relations’ in the form that we knew.

Sonnet 1178 Five little rich tourists sink in a sub, Wallets open without limit on a search-n-rescue op. A 1000 migrants die each year tryna cross the sea, Borders tighten in sheer fear with no show of mercy. People are only worth saving if their savings is super healthy. 50 Shades would be a Hitchcock film if the sicko had no money. Empathy is a far cry, life is never the issue. While next-door-neighbor cries of hunger, Netflix wets more tissue.

Five little rich tourists sink in a sub, Wallets open without limit on a search-n-rescue op. A 1000 migrants die each year tryna cross the sea, Borders tighten in sheer fear with no show of mercy.

Ukraine is worth aiding, but not Afghanistan, Tourists are worth saving, but not refugees. Loss of any life is indeed a moment of tragedy, Then why this double-standard and hypocrisy!

Hands are wrung about the “migrant crisis”—but not nearly so much about the crises driving the migrations. Since 2014, an estimated thirteen thousand people have drowned in the Mediterranean trying to reach European shores.

faith is often messy and tumultuous. What has typically been valued in Christian spirituality is an unhealthy dependency on certainty that leaves little room for ambiguity. As a result, the church in the west is now facing a sprawling migrant crisis of its own making, with millions of spiritual refugees displaced somewhere between apostasy and heresy, and who find asylum by default in agnosticism.

The conferences convened to 'do something' about the refugee crisis - from the World Humanitarian Summit to the UN High-Level Meeting on Addressing Large Scale Movements of Refugees and Migrants - are ritual re-enactments that changed times have drained of real consequence.

Refugees are not like other migrants: they are not moving for gain but because they have no choice.

it’s fair to say that America is going through rather a turbulent period in its history. The past eighteen months alone have seen roughly three-quarters of a million deaths from contagion, a tanking economy, serious civil unrest around multiple issues dear to various shades of “left” and “right,” a bitterly contested election followed by a not precisely peaceful transfer of power, a migrant crisis at the southern border, mushrooming conspiracy theories, bitter debates around “cancel culture,” growing anxiety about the power of tech giants, and much else besides.

Geography should be the ultimate deciding factor for every political dilemma for proximity to an ailing land is bound to result in one’s infection.

Con l'attiva cooperazione di governi e di altri personaggi pubblici che trovano nell'opera di appoggio e fomentazione del pregiudizio comune gli unici strumenti sostitutivi di una politica tesa ad affrontare le cause reali dell'incertezza esistenziale che ossessiona i loro elettori, i "rifugiati" [...] sostituiscono streghe maligne, fantasmi di malfattori impenitenti e altri spiritelli e spauracchi vari che popolano le leggende metropolitane.

Le rêve secret de la plupart des migrants, c'est qu'on les prenne pour des enfants du pays. Leur tentation initiale, c'est d'imiter leurs hôtes, et quelquefois ils y parviennent. Le plus souvent, ils n'y parviennent pas. Ils n'ont pas le bon accent, ni la bonne nuance de couleur, ni le nom ni le prénom ni les papiers qu'il faudrait, leur stratagème est très vite éventé. Beaucoup savent que ce n'est même pas la peine d'essayer et se montrent alors, par fierté, par bravade, plus différents qu'ils ne le ont.

Agadez has only a handful of multi-storey buildings. The main ones are the mosque and, next door to it, the palace of the Sultan of Aïr, who still retains a role in the local judicial system. But the houses overlooked by this pair are mostly single-storey courtyards, each enclosed by a windowless wall. These are the compounds, and perhaps fifty of them are used by smugglers – though no one knows the exact total. And that’s the point: they’re the perfect places to hide a hundred migrants until they head north to Libya. Once inside, the haggling starts. The going rate between Agadez and Libya is thought to be about 150,000 West African francs (CFA), or £166. But one traveller said he paid as much as €500 (£363), while Cisse claims he charges each of his thirty passengers as little as 50,000 CFA (£55). With such big numbers, it is no surprise that the business continues in full force despite a recent ban.

Like Katie Hopkins, prime minister David Cameron described migrants as a ‘swarm’. Foreign secretary Philip Hammond called them marauders bent on overrunning European civilisation. Home secretary Theresa May frequently scoffed at any suggestion that they might simply be seeking safety. Interviewed on Today, BBC radio’s flagship current affairs programme, May said, ‘People talk about refugees, but actually if you look at those crossing the central Mediterranean, the largest number of people are those from countries such as Nigeria, Somalia and Eritrea. These are economic migrants.

But for pragmatists on both sides of the debate, this very reductive picture of an economic migrant is ultimately not a particularly useful one. For a start, people who travel for so many miles through such horrific conditions in order to find work cannot accurately be portrayed as lazy benefit-scroungers. Ironically, they instead display qualities that would be prized in indigenous Europeans – the kind of on-yer-bike resourcefulness that conservatives wish was intrinsic to every native jobseeker.

Nizar claims, complicit officials are paid up to 100,000 Egyptian pounds (about £8,900) a trip. By agreement with the smugglers, police arrive after most of the migrants have managed to leave the beach. At that point, the remaining passengers are arrested and taken for a few days’ detention in police cells, to maintain the pretence that Egypt is playing its part in ending the smuggling trade. ‘It’s normal that if I want to smuggle three hundred [migrants],’ says Nizar, ‘the authorities will take fifty and let two hundred and fifty go, to show the Italians that they are doing some work.

Firstly, it’s more accurate. When you’re describing a large group of people whom you don’t know, it makes sense to define them by what they’re doing (which you can be reasonably sure of) rather than why they’re doing it (which you can’t). Migrant is the most efficient way of achieving this: in its purest sense it simply means someone on the move – and casts no aspersions, positive or negative, on why they set out in the first place. Secondly, many of those who push for the use of ‘refugee’ do so by defining refugees in opposition to migrants. Refugees, they say, deserve rights, whereas migrants don’t. Refugees had good reason to leave home; migrants did not. This is a problematic differentiation. In attempting to separate the two groups, we imply that it is easy to distinguish between them. In reality, as I’ve attempted to explain in earlier chapters, it is increasingly hard to do so. There is often overlap, and many people’s experiences might fit the definitions of both categories.