Migrant Misery is Human Misery
Two stories from different parts of the world caught my eye. In Thailand, apparently refugees are being sent back to sea with little chance of survival. The worst bit is that the Government seems powerless to stop this misery. [see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7847197.stm.
I am pro-emigration. I belive that no matter what misery you inflict on a suffering people, most of the time you can inflict anything worse than what they are running from and sometimes the small chance they will get through will encorage them to keep coming. Moving to pastures new is part of the human expirience, we populated the planet in this way. Why do you think you can stop it now?
What we can do is stop causing our fellow human beings so much misery – help solve the problems that make it necessary to move and maybe we can minimise the misery. How hard can that be?
And the misery just keeps coming for the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in Thailand – http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/01/28/thailand.refugees/index.html
“Migration, on current levels, is only a statistical rounding error. Only 3% of the world’s current population live in a country they were not born in. This will change, and the result will be huge political controversy.”
A statistic from the Davos session this morning. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/28/davos-population-world-economic-forum