The Migrant Crisis

I note with interest that the media and various government ministers use the term 'migrant' now to cover everyone trying to enter Britain or, for that matter, Europe. Very occasionally the word 'refugees' creeps into a report, but is quickly replaced in all further references by 'migrant'. What's the difference? In my dictionary a 'migrant' is one who leaves one country/town/ or the land and 'migrates' to find work away from his/her roots or origins. Karl Marx argued for the 'right' of workers to do this, saying in effect that it should be the right of a worker to move to where his work will be adequately rewarded.

A 'refugee', by contrast, is one escaping a war, oppression or some other event which may be a 'natural' one such as a volcanic eruption. But herein lies the rub -- if our media and political masters apply the word 'refugee' to the 2 or 3 million people currently in holding camps in various countries in the EU (800,000 in Germany alone), a whole raft of so-called 'International Laws' will kick in and with them the armies of 'Human Rights lawyers' who feed off contesting any and every attempt to remove those who don't qualify for admission anywhere.

Let's also admit that it is also the case that our various bureaucracies are often biased, frequently unfair, and usually so 'rule bound' as to be utterly uncaring, unfeeling and pretty nearly reduce the people they deal with to a point of being no longer 'human', but just cyphers in the system. An article in The Spectator addresses several of these points, but, as ever, attracts comments from those who see only a threat to their own comfort, have never been in a position where they cannot remain in their homes, and who comment from a perspective of ignorance of the realities of the world. Many of those who have commented on the article seem to have missed the author's point completely. Stephano Hatfield makes the telling point that there is a difference between an 'economic migrant' and a 'refugee', yet Theresa May, the current UK Home Secretary, seems to conflate them, linking 'migrants' from other EU States with the refugees pouring in from the failing Islamic States of the Middle and Near East, North Africa and the Civil wars in several West African states with the undoubted groups migrating for economic reasons.

Then there is the hysteria stirred up by the British Press and politicians, about the 'siege' of the Channel Tunnel, and the migrants trying to board trucks, cars and anything else heading for Britain. This is, it must be acknowledged, in part due to the last Labour government's drive to open the immigration doors to all manner of immigrants from cultures which bear no relationship whatever to that of Europe, much less Britain. What gets lost in all this, is that while the UK goes into an almost ludicrous frenzy over fewer than ten thousand 'migrants' trying to enter the UK by these means, Germany is dealing with 800,000, Italy with another 250,000, Greece (remember the ones with the financial problems) over 100,000 and France with numbers approaching those of Germany. Yes, there is unhappiness about it, but they are dealing with it quietly and efficiently. Yes, it is a political football in most countries, but much less so, it seems, than in the UK -- which is dealing with a fraction of the numbers everyone else is coping with.

More worrying is the very point the author of The Spectator article is making with his link to the family of Anne Frank. Vilifying the refugees simply creates an atmosphere in which it becomes easy to isolate them and then turn them into an 'enemy' - which, alarmingly, seems to be happening already if when one reads the UKIP and similar minded parties and their supporters rants and comments. Another Spectator article published today points to the fact that almost 10 million people in Syria are now 'displaced', and trapped because the borders around that benighted land are now closed. The 2 million or so in camps in Jordan are trapped as well. Forbidden to work, families are dependent, children are rebelling and teenagers are defying their parents and sneaking off to join militias 'at home' because that is better than sitting around waiting for the next handout.

To those who argue these folk should have stayed where they were and fought back against the oppression, consider this; if your family home were reduced to a pile of rubble, and the attacker threatens to behead you, your children and rape your wife and daughters - would you 'remain in place'?

We should be concerned at the Home Secretary's deliberate linking of the refugee crisis with the European freedom of movement for workers. The freedom of movement within the EU of workers is NOT the problem, but linking it to the 'migrant/refugee' crisis gives opponents of such movement (and the UK does have a bit of a 'history' there) gives the politicians and the media the chance to whip up antipathy against ALL migrant workers, especially those from EU countries. By calling workers from other EU countries 'migrants' and in the same breath calling those fleeing Africa, the Levant and all the other countries suffering massive conflict or grinding social poverty 'migrants' she is setting them all up to be vilified and hounded out of the UK.

I'm inclined to agree with the latest Spectator article, in that we may have an obligation to 'rescue' people, but we do not have an obligation to house, feed, clothe and employ them here. We do have some responsibility for ensuring they are supported in all efforts to improve the situations which have driven them to flee their homes. In places like parts of Libya and Syria or Iraq, I would suggest there is a need to find ways to make the refugee camps more like functioning societies rather than a 'waiting area'. Why can't the refugees be given employment looking after their own needs in the camps? Why should this be forbidden? Why bring in teachers from the local area, when you have qualified people sitting around idle?

To solve this problem we need to do more to provide something meaningful for those who have escaped, which will encourage them to stay in the camps. We also need to look very carefully at how we can break the cycles of corruption, abuse and conflict which bedevil so many lands and are causing this tide of human misery. Only then can we hope to even begin to deal with it.

Hunting for 'Sport' ...

I think there is something seriously wrong with someone who chooses to spend a large amount of money to go to some distant country (and sometimes stay within his own) just so he (or she) can kill some large animal as a 'trophy'. It is one thing entirely to kill an animal for food, it is another to kill something just to show how 'powerful/rich/manly' you are. What I find utterly despicable about the case of the dentist who shot Cecil the iconic lion, is that he didn't need to kill the beautiful beast, and then he made a mess of it. His accomplices lured the animal out of a Game Reserve, and given that Cecil was so well known, and used to people, he was a sitting target, and they knew it. Then, just to add insult, this would be 'hunter' uses a bow and arrow - and wounds him.

Then the buffoons lose track of the injured animal and it suffered for forty hours before they finally killed it with a rifle. Some hunters, some 'big' man this dentist. Now it emerges he makes a bit of a habit of killing big animals for 'sport'. Not because they are a pest, or threatening anyone - just because he gets a thrill out of it.

I am very aware of the arguments that revolve around the ecology/conservation issue, specifically that 'culling/killing' older animals 'improves' the 'bloodline' and the money pays for more 'conservation'. Further arguments make the point that it is not the hunting that is the problem, but the 'loss of habitat'. Both arguments advanced by owners of parks or companies that organise hunting. There is no doubt that there is a problem with habitat, and there is equally no doubt that there is some very big money to be made from killing animals under all manner of guises. This is, perhaps, where the biggest problems lie, particularly in Africa. The money goes largely to the personal bank accounts of the arrangers, and the 'license fees' usually vanish in backhanders to various officials to 'look the other way'. How many more Cecils must we lose before someone calls time on this slaughter of our vanishing wildlife? Particularly on the dwindling 'trophy' animals?

Poaching is a major problem and some 'target' animals are being pushed to the edges of extinction. How, therefore, can a wealthy 'tourist' obtain a permit to shoot and kill a Northern Black Rhinoceros when there are, according official sources only FOUR left in the wild! The lion population in Africa is crashing, down now to 25,000 according to conservation groups from 150,000 thirty years ago. Tanzania's President has just sold 1.8 million km2 of the Masai Mara to the Emir of Dubai as 'private hunting park'. Not unnaturally the Masai are not happy about being cleared from their traditional land, and conservation groups are not happy about having a chunk of one of the most diverse habitats for Africa's dwindling animal population turned over to 'hunting' -- private or otherwise.

Of course the usual argument that the hunting will be 'good for the diversity' is being trotted out. Frankly, it just doesn't hold water! Not in the Masai Mara!

The argument that 'loss of habitat' makes it necessary to 'cull' these beautiful animals is as much a commentary on the human race as it is on the hunters who advance it in defence of their 'sport'. The human animal is the only one that does not regulate its birthrates and population. All the African wildlife, and I should think everywhere else's, expands or contracts its numbers in a sort of harmony with food supply. That is, as long as 'humankind' don't interfere. It is well known that the 'big cats' restrict their breeding when food is in short supply, and so do most of the herd animals - humans don't. So our populations keep expanding, and restricting the space for the animal population.

Add in big money being offered by human population groups who have already decimated their own natural fauna in search of 'ingredients' for their 'traditional medicine' and then add in the inadequates with vast fortunes and the urge to prove how big they are by shooting everything that has horns or fangs and claws, and we are headed for the extinction of all the 'trophy' animals they want to kill. What then? Perhaps we should start issuing hunting permist to bag a 'Big Game Hunter'. That might address more than one problem.