This is the post I really wanted to make about immigration

[nanila]

I'm a migrant. I came to the UK in search of new opportunities, a new job and a better life. I came on an aeroplane. I had a visa. And I was lucky enough to find all of those things.

A refugee is not a migrant. A refugee is someone who is so desperate they'll pay their life savings to put their toddler on a leaky boat in the sea on the slim chance they'll find safety somewhere else. Even the thought of having to do that to my children makes me physically ill. No one does that who is not at the absolute end of hope. No one.

It makes me ill that the British government's position is that it has been doing enough to help these people. Yes. By doing such helpful things as cancelling funding for the boat rescue service that could have prevented them from drowning. Very helpful. Because you don't have to offer asylum to corpses.

Comments

[cmcmck]

And one person attacked, insulted and tried to silence me on my own blog (on LJ) this morning because I posted a post using that image.

When I posted it, I was angry and upset, but she failed to pick up on that. I am the descendent of migrants (correction, at least in one case, a refugee- one of my maternal great grandmothers was fleeing Czarist pogroms in Latvia, as she was Jewish).

But no, this woman was plainly more concerned about her own precious sensibilities.

And as to our government- words fail me even though I lived through the Thatcher era!

[nanila]

I was in floods of tears when I first came across it. I was just getting off the train and had just clicked through a link to the Independent article that someone had posted on Twitter so it completely blindsided me.

Yes, it was embarrassing to be crying whilst walking through a train station and into the Underground. Yes, I'm hypersensitive to depictions of harm done to children in any form of media and try to avoid them if I can. But I'll take an emotional bruising if that's what it's going to take to get the hardhearted jerks with real power to commit to concrete help for these people.

[cmcmck]

It look as if Cameron has been embarrassed into belated activity (it's either the pic or that petition which has already forced a parliamentary debate.

Seems some in the Arab world have been shamed too. See my later post on the topic.

I have no kids of my own as you know, but spent many years working with some of the most vulnerable kids in our own society so this left me a pretty ineffectual heap for most of yesterday.

[forthwritten]

I am all but speechless in the face of such grimness. How has it taken a photo of a dead child to actually get people to acknowledge refugees' humanity? In the very same newspapers that were calling for their boats to be torpedoed?

[cmcmck]

The very same- even down to some rank hypocrisy in the good old 'Daily Mail'..........

[nanila]

And the supposed commitment to help is STILL not being couched in concrete terms, financial or otherwise. There are no meaningful data attached.

Furious. Furious. FURIOUS.

[davidgillon]

I keep reflecting on something my friend who lives in Germany told me last month when he was visiting. Every German municipality was given a quota of refugees to take. His town held a meeting after being given their quota, and decided to say they would take twice that.

I wish I could think the same of my town.

[magister]

I have to say - I read things comparing other countries to the UK and I wonder - why the fuck would anyone want to come to such a mean-spirited, sad, place so lacking in compassion as the UK. Truly, it can be such a dismal place.

[nanila]

I wish I could think the same of my town.

Me too. I know I can't, and it's infuriating.

[angrboda]

This very much! A migrant has a choice. The only choice these people have is 'die' or 'maybe die.' It's not like they're sitting in their leaky boats researching where they can claim the best benefits.

[nanila]

The only choice these people have is 'die' or 'maybe die.'

I'd like to think most of us were compassionate enough to understand that, put in the same position, we'd choose "maybe die" over the definitive, but apparently not.

[askygoneonfire]

Yep.

And DC's comment today; "we will fulfil our moral responsibilities" which is a wonderful bit of doublespeak.

It's just so dreadful

[nanila]

The lack of concrete commitment to help, with numbers attached, is a big part of what's making me so angry.

[cosmolinguist]

All of this.

And even when people do get here, we put them through a barbaric and inhumane asylum system that's designed to refuse them. The stories I've heard bring me to tears, and those are just stories I've heard; my imagination breaks down completely when I try to think about what it must be like to actually go through. It hurts my heart so much it hurts my body too, all of this.

[nanila]

I've been choking back tears for the past two days. It's horrific, what they're going through.

[cosmolinguist]

I've been having to monitor my intake of news/Twitter/etc. extremely carefully, to keep myself from being overwhelmed and useless. I'm trying to limit myself to practical stuff: I signed the petition (which does actually seem to be doing some good! I was worried it'd just be ignored), I'm knitting hats and scarves and blankets to be taken to Calais... Knitting's a good anxiety-reliever for me anyway, and I've got plenty of that to burn off right now.

Exactly

[ed_rex]

A refugee is not a migrant. A refugee is ...

Thank you, very well-said and, tragically (criminally), something that needs to be said again and again and again.

Re: Exactly

[nanila]

And requires tragedy on the level of dead children on beaches to extract even vague promises action from certain heads of state. It's atrocious.

Re: Exactly

[ed_rex]

And requires tragedy on the level of dead children on beaches to extract even vague promises action from certain heads of state.

It's not surprising, of course. Because the actions of those "certain heads of state" (mine included) are at least in part what caused this "sudden" refugee crisis in the first place.

I'm noticing a growing number of voices (most recently, via Scientific American, trying to a-politically pin the blame on climate change while completely ignoring western money and arms that have fanned the flames in Syria (and so many other places).

Sorry. Yes, atrocious is the right word.

[hilarita]

Yes. It also pisses me off mightily when they talk about an 'invasion'. An invasion is when people come with pointy sticks* and take things over by force. Not people trying to sneak past borders in extremely dangerous circumstances, often with their kids. Why is the UK so fucking scared of supporting people from war-torn countries?

*or equivalent

[nanila]

From the rolling Guardian coverage:

On the edge of the EU’s borders, Abdullah Kurdi, the father of the Syrian boy who was photographed lying lifeless on a Turkish beach after his family attempted to reach the Greek island of Kos, said he was preparing to take the bodies of his two sons and wife to be buried in his home town of Kobani.

Kurdi said he no longer had any desire to continue on his journey to Europe. Speaking outside the mortuary where the bodies of his two sons were being held, he said: “I just want to see my children for the last time and stay forever with them.”

Yep. Still furious. And heartbroken for that man. And also FURIOUS.

[ayebydan]

I'm really proud of the SNP for snapping at Cameron to make a move and let people in, Scotland will take its share. Nicole is hosting a conference tomorrow with Scottish charities, council reps and so on to plan our strategy for when DCam says the word. Leader of the Tories in Scotland called him out on twitter and basically said 'if we don't help them wtf does that make us?' Now Ruth Davidson is DCam's lapdog. I hope seeing people like her call him out will help shift his mentality.

I really wish more people would talk about the millions being taken in by middle eastern nations. Iraq has taken millions, as has Egypt. When Iraq looks like an idea you know things are seriously messed up.

My facebook lit up with messages about how a migrant chooses to go somewhere for work ect and a refugee flees war and persecution.

[lark_ascends]

Yes.

I'm completely disgusted with both sides of Australian politics, because we're not even taking any refugees by boat into Australia, we're deporting them to other nations that can't care for them! We're putting them into detention for years where there is child abuse, mental health issues are rampant and nobody seems to care - hell, our government is trying to stop anybody even reporting on that! Reports are coming out that some refugees have been waterboarded.

Abbott promised to stop the boats... It seems like part of doing that is to turn them back so they've got even further to travel. As long as they don't drown in Australian waters, that's fine.

Furious. Furious.

[fred_mouse]

Word.

So angry at my government, so frightened that many more will die because our politicians think there are votes in xenophobia.

[ironed_orchid]

Yes.

I refuse to support any Australian party whose solution is offshore detention. Which rules out both major parties.

[silveradept]

Any place that thinks it has done enough for refugees hasn't. And it's awful that it takes media gorn to provoke any sort of response.

[trascendenza]

UGH. I can't even, just, UGH.

[ironed_orchid]

Thank you.

I am simultaneously furious and despairing over the treatment of refugees.

[omnipotent]

It is disturbing to me that I heard nothing of this in the American news. In fact, I didn't even know anything about the matter until reading your entries about it. It amazes me how easily people can harden their hearts to the plights of fellow human beings.