“We praise the eastern European countries’ warm and welcome approach to over a million refugees from Ukraine but contrasted their compassionate treatment with the handling of migrants from Syria and North Africa, who were generally treated with scorn and distrust.
In 2015, for example, Hungary put up a 13 foot fence topped with barbed wire running 115 miles along its border with Serbia, and its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said: ‘Please don’t come.’ When it’s Syrians who are fleeing a war, it’s all ‘we do not have space, do not come.’ But now there’s space and people must come?
What changed? I mean, when the Syrians needed refuge, even the camera crew was drop-kicking families. But now the Ukrainians are getting accommodations, they’re getting visas, they’re getting work benefits – which, by the way, is good!
We don’t even have to speculate about the difference in treatment. The prime minister of Bulgaria said it last week about the Ukrainian refugees: ‘These are not the refugees we are used to … these people are Europeans. These people are intelligent, they are educated people …’
I’m impressed that the prime minister of Bulgaria has found the time to get to know all 1 million refugees who have fled Ukraine in the past week. He must be very efficient at making small talk.
More seriously, I understand that European countries have to think about how easy it is for refugees to integrate into their culture and society. I get that, I truly get that. It’s just like how it’s easier for you to take in a family member who’s in trouble than a random person who needs help.
But it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. And the problem I have is that when it’s Syrians, or Africans on a boat, these countries didn’t even try to integrate them. They reject even the chance that anyone brown could assimilate.” —Trevor Noah
https://idiocracy23.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-magisterial-collection.html
“A magisterial collection. A combination of Bukowski’s Last Night of the Earth
and Orwell’s 1984.”
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