Syrian Refugees And European Opportunism

Many politically conscious Americans have by now seen satirist John Oliver’s recent show on the European refugee crisis. I was personally thrilled to see that he covered the topic, since—despite global telecommunications—quality reporting on the crisis has had a little trouble crossing the pond, leaving most Americans uninformed. However, after watching Oliver’s segment, I can say with some degree of certainty they are now hardly more informed.

The problem with Oliver’s reporting on the subject is not just an Oliver problem—although in my opinion, the show included a little too much summary of the plot of Days of Our Lives and not enough clarification of European asylum policy—but a general deficiency in coverage on the crisis throughout the American media. The result is a great deal of misconceptions and gaps in knowledge, a few of which I hope to rectify.

Oliver’s first pitfall is the same as that of that of most American news outlets— calling refugees “migrants.” This is a hugely important distinction, as “migrant” means something very different from “refugee,” the primary distinction being that migrants are seeking better economic opportunities and not fleeing conflict. Refugees have specific rights under international law, and it is the legal responsibility of all signatories of the 1951 Convention on the Rights of Refugees to grant asylum to refugees. Some news agencies—including such reputable ones as The Washington Post—have attempted to implicitly justify this characterization by citing a “statistic” that 30 percent of refugees are actually migrants from countries other than Syria masquerading as refugees. Reading a bit deeper into these articles, however, reveals that the “statistic” comes from Tobias Plate, a Press Speaker for the German Interior Ministry, who based it upon the perceptions of border guards and admitted to having no formal information (something very different from the rather definitive headline). The German media consistently use the term Flüchtlinge (“refugees”) or Asylbewerber (“asylum-seekers”) and not Migranten to refer to the Syrian asylum-seekers.

So at least the German media do a decent job of reporting on the crisis, but what about the work of the German government? As usual, German Chancellor Angela Merkel received international praise that she probably does not deserve. Oliver and other pundits praise the German government’s “philanthropy” without pausing to consider that the Syrian Civil War has been raging since 2011, and refugee populations climbed into the millions years ago, so why didn’t they do this sooner? The answer is simple: politics. Over the past few years, the German government has delighted in attaining a balanced budget and playing mad scientist with the Greek economy. While thousands of refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean over the past several years, Europe’s response has been limited to naval operations dedicated to disabling smuggling operations—not to actually addressing the causes of migration. Four years that could have been devoted to building sustainable housing for refugees and ensuring that the social service system could deal with the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who needed asylum were instead spent improving Germany’s economic status.

Why, then, did the German government now decide to let in hundreds of thousands of immigrants—thereby suspending the Dublin Convention’s mandate that refugees may only seek asylum in the nation they arrive in? Part of it is public opinion. Huge pro-refugee demonstrations have sprung up in Germany over the past year, indicating that public outrage was reaching a breaking point. The second reason is economic. To the credit of the American media (and John Oliver), many news outlets have pointed out that Germany has a huge deficit of young, skilled workers, and the refugee crisis provides the perfect opportunity to solve this. This is an excellent deal for both Germany and the Syrian refugees—I don’t dispute that—but in the American media, this is where the story ends.

Leaving people with nothing more than the information that all the refugees are going to Germany is problematic. Imagining that the refugees are safe and happy in Germany might put our minds at ease, but it is exceedingly naïve. Searching for articles on the topic Flüchtlinge on the website of the popular German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, I am confronted with the following articles: “Violence in refugee lodgings—Police arrest 15 suspects,” “CSU [Christian Social Union] suggests halt to refugee acceptance,” “14 injured in mass brawl in refugee housing,” “[Local woman suggests] curfew for refugees,” and “Planned refugee lodging at Bodensee set ablaze.” Within the first half of 2015 there were more attacks on refugee housing in Germany than throughout all of 2014—almost all undertaken by right-wing extremists. In Germany’s recent national summit on refugee policy, no representatives for the interests of refugees were present. (A Federal Press Secretary claimed, “The interests of refugees will be represented by the interior ministers.”) This all tells a very different story than most American media sources.

This is not to say that Germany is entirely inhospitable for refugees. Most Germans are indeed supportive of refugees, and there have been moving stories of communities holding vigils outside refugee housing to protect the inhabitants from Neo-Nazi assaults. Huge left-wing protests have occurred in support of refugees—though these have sometimes unfortunately led to physical confrontation with bands of rightwing extremists. The lesson here, however, is that despite all the hardships, Germany is still the country of first choice for Syrian refugees. Many commentators have ascribed Germany’s pull factor to the large social welfare system, but this is an oversimplified take. In fact, the German government has decided to discontinue cash aid to refugees in exchange for assistance in- kind (e.g. food), and this has done nothing to slow the influx of refugees. Germany is not a utopia for refugees by any means—it is merely the best option. If refugees are willing to brave the peril of Neo-Nazi assaults and pervasive prejudice in exchange for (possible) asylum in Germany, it can only mean that the situation is worse elsewhere in Europe.

Germany’s actions, made out of political necessity and not out of humanitarian responsibility, are indicative of a much larger European program of isolationism which is having disastrous effects on the refugee crisis. The foreign policy of the Global North since the end of the Cold War has followed this trend of subtle neo-imperialism, which has manifested itself very clearly in the handling of the crisis. The German government has, admittedly rather deftly, orchestrated the current geopolitical situation in Europe and the Near East to derive as much benefit as possible out of the crisis with no regard for the welfare of such policies’ impact on the mostaffected nations.

To recognize the devastating effects of Europe’s refugee policy, we must turn our attention from Germany and back to the Middle East. Recent discussions on European refugee policy have been centered on expanding funding for Frontex—the naval anti-human-smuggling operation meant to prevent refugees from reaching Europe—and on relocating the refugees to other countries. On October 15, the European Union signed an agreement with Turkey by which Europe would donate three billion Euros to Turkey (why this money could not be spent to assist refugees in EU countries will remain a mystery) in order to keep refugees from continuing across the Bosphorus into Europe. Why would Turkey—already home to 2 million Syrian refugees—agree to this? Because the European Union has promised an acceleration of EU membership negotiations and the long-overdue designation of Turkey as a “safe land of origin,” enabling Turkish citizens to more easily acquire visas to European nations.

Because Europe is willing to invest vast amounts of money in keeping refugees out, the majority of the financial burden will continue to fall on the more impoverished nations of the Middle East and Northern Africa. Lebanon, whose over 1.2 million Syrian refugees make up almost a third of the country’s total population, has for years been experiencing the effects of an unsustainable long-term refugee population. The desperate shortage of refugee housing and the duration of the refugees’ stay has forced most of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon to move out of the camps and into rental housing in cities, which has been disastrous for the Lebanese economy. The labor market has been thrown into chaos (making it little wonder that Turkey does not allow refugees to obtain work), schools with previously ideal student-to-teacher ratios are now overcrowded, rental prices have soared, and healthcare has become expensive and often inaccessible. By now, it should be abundantly clear that Lebanon and its refugee population need immediate relief.

It is not wrong even for highly developed nations like Germany to be worried about taking on vast refugee populations—such a massive influx of people in need of care is bound to be difficult to manage. However, this does not change the fact that someone is going to need to shoulder the burden of the Syrian Civil War, and the Global North is better equipped to do so than countries like Lebanon are. To say nothing of the alleviation that the United States could provide by taking in several tens or hundreds of thousands of refugees, countries like Germany need to accept their humanitarian duty—even at the cost of a balanced budget.