By Bailey Scott
As tens of thousands of refugees from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan stream across the borders into Europe, they are straining fragile economies and social service systems. More troubling, though, is that this influx appears to be provoking the kind of xenophobia experienced before World War II, when Jews became the convenient scapegoat for all Europe’s economic and political woes. This go-round, Muslims are the easy targets in Europe and, increasingly, in the United States, still reeling from the aftershocks of 9/11 and the frightening realization that international terrorism has taken root in its soil.
If America and Europe are to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, they must work together now to create a comprehensive plan that responds well to the crisis. In particular, the plan must lighten loads currently borne by refugee entry points—the economically tottering Greece, Italy and Hungary that have felt the full impact of more than a half million refugees and migrants over the past 12 months. These are overwhelming burdens that, if not dealt with comprehensively, will likely lead to chaotic and draconian responses as the pace of immigration accelerates.
Who owns the problem? Predictably, many E.U. member-states seem to be pointing their national fingers at the other guy. In early September when European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker announced an emergency quota system the member nation response was decidedly tepid. Germany, perhaps propelled as much by lingering guilt over what it provoked in the 1930s as by the realities of the present-day, pledged to take-in 800,000 followed by Sweden, ironically not yet an E.U. member. By contrast, France and The United Kingdom made limited offers to accept 24,000 and 20,000 refugees, respectively. Many Eastern European states flatly rejected Juncker’s plan, which could undermine negotiations at the upcoming E.U. leaders’ summit later this month on October 15 and 16.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been particularly belligerent. He called Juncker’s plan “madness” and strung a razor wire barricade along its border with Serbia. Worse, Hungary stalled registering refugees and sponsored anti-immigrant campaigns claiming that refugees will steal Hungarian jobs and over-tax the nation’s social services systems. Similar xenophobic fears undergird the resistance to immigrants in other former-Communist states – Slovakia, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic, still recovering from the economic and political tsunami triggered by collapse of the Soviet Union more than 20 years ago.
Thanks to the largesse of nations like Germany and Sweden, perhaps western Europe might seem friendlier and more welcoming than the former members of the Soviet Bloc. Nevertheless, anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise there too. It fact, it has been a troubling undercurrent in German society since the 1970s when it welcomed the first influx of Turkish “guest workers.” Three generations later, the Turks are still targets of violent and sometimes fatal attacks by militant neo-fascists. Today, despite welcoming policies, German far-right activists have amplified their protests against incoming refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
France too has struggled with xenophobia, dating back to the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the far-right National Front Party he founded in 1972 and accelerating now under the leadership of his daughter, the slightly more moderate Marine LePen. In seeming lockstep with her German counterparts, Le Pen blames refugees, itinerant workers, and other foreigners for France's domestic troubles.
The same story seems to be emerging in Britain as well, though perhaps more constrained by the nation’s history of multiculturalism born from British imperialism. In an annual survey of British Social Attitudes, more than half favored drastic tightening of immigration quotas and a deepening discontent with immigration policies
With its own unique and overwhelming immigration problems and long, porous border with Mexico, the U.S. might be forgiven its fairly measly offer (compared to Germany’s) to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees. True, there is understandable reluctance to admit more from the Middle East out of fear it would lead only to import terrorism and people flatly unwilling to adopt the American culture as their own.
While the current refugee crisis certainly requires a European response, it doesn’t absolve the U.S. from taking action. Like its European counterparts, the U.S. has current anti-immigrant sentiments that it must address. Over the centuries America has earned its reputation as the world’s melting pot, effectively dealing with a variety of ethnic, religious and racial prejudices: the puritans disdain for conventional Protestants. And, theirs for Catholics. And, all of theirs for Jews. And, the English for the Germans and Irish. And the Irish’ contempt for the Italians and the Polish. After a fair amount of tension between these communities, immigrants, over the generations, transformed themselves into Americans, first and foremost.
However, there were disappointing setbacks along the way. The U.S. cannot be on the wrong side of history again, as it was in the late 1939 when it not only adopted stringent Jewish immigration quotas and turned away the ocean liner St. Louis filled with over 800 Jewish refugees escaping the horrors of the Holocaust in Germany, forcing them to return to their homeland and near-certain death.
U.S. and other influential nations should become leaders of an effort to develop and execute an immigration plan that responds reasonably to the needs of refugees around the world, their host nations, and real-world considerations. The coordinated effort should begin with an agreement by the participating nations to leave their hackneyed national stereotypes at home and check their xenophobia at the door.
