Shutting Doors To Syrian Refugees Does Not Make You Evil

By Lawrence Lease on November 23, 2015

Syrian people sleep inside a greenhouse at a makeshift camp for asylum seekers near Roszke, southern Hungary. (Image via linkis.com)

Despite the Syrian civil war, I will not provide refuge for the hundreds of thousands Syrian refugees who are coming to America to escape the Syrian civil war. However, this does not make me an evil person. After all, this is now our national past-time, a new fad that followed the ice bucket challenge as a simple and easy way to shout to the world, “Look! I’m a better person than you are!”

I did not offer my home to refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur or Rwanda or Kashmir, or anywhere else in the world where people are facing the horror and bloodshed of war. What makes Syria any different? Why do people now, who are sincerely welcoming the Syrian refugees into their country, believe they are so much more deserving of their time and money than people from all the other countries whose lives are being slaughtered across the globe?

Why are people only considering 10,000? How about a million? Where do we draw the line? Those who have offered to take in Syrian refugees are not evil. I believe they just want to do their small part to help people in need. I don’t believe nice gestures offer a proper solution to the Syrian refugee crisis. Indeed, I fear they may in fact end up making the problem worse rather than better for the millions who need our help.

Offering homes to a few – whether it is 1,000 or 10,000 – does absolutely nothing for the millions more who won’t be lucky enough to come to countries like the United States or any other nation that is considering welcoming the refugees. The Syrian refugee crisis is no longer the subject of a sensible debate about what we can do that might actually make a difference, it is just an opportunity for people to broadcast to the world about how much they care. Why do something when you can just emote about it? All of our politicians are now required to say whether they would or would not offer a home to Syrian refugees.

This is not a problem of a few thousand Syrian refugees, or even a few hundred thousand, but tens of millions fleeing war in Syria and around the world. We need to resolve the problem at source and make it possible for Syrians to return to their own country – by whatever means necessary – not by making token gestures to make ourselves feel nicer.

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