Abortion,
in-vitro, gay marriages, separation of the state and the Church… The list of
discords between Poles has grown long for a while and this month attitude
towards migrants joint the catalogue of divide lines. Actually the problem has
not come out of the blue, but the influx of migrants and / or refugees to
Hungary has triggered disputes how United Europe should face the challenge and
how Poland should behave in order to protect its interests with encroaching
European solidarity.
I used the
terms ‘migrants’ and ‘refugees’ as they both show up in the discussions, yet
should not be mistaken for each other, nor used interchangeably. In simple
words, the former term generally refers to people who strive to settle down in
another country to seek a better life, while the latter term describes people
who had to flee their homeland because they had been persecuted there or
because their country is war-stricken.
The scale
of discord was best observable on… facebook. As I learnt, among my (so-called)
friends I have both avid supporters of openness towards migrants, calling for
greeting them with open arms and playing host to as many of them as possible,
as well as extreme-right-wing freaks, posting one post after another decrying
the migrants, displaying them as Muslim rabble (or would-be terrorists)
assaulting Europe and attempting to set up their own rules here. The gap
between the embracement and rejection for migrants was so wide that while I
looked at posts from the two sides of the dispute, I wondered where the truth
lies.
If I had
followed only my leftist ‘friends’ and turned off news feed from my right-wing
‘friends’, I would have shaped an opinion of migrants as of poor people who had
to choice but to leave their property and lives they had led behind and escape
their homelands to search for a safer home. The newcomers would enhance
cultural diversity of Poland and after all out of purely humanitarian reasons,
we should take them in.
Had I
tweaked with the visibility settings and left in only news feed from my
right-wing ‘friends’, I would have viewed migrants as uncivilised horde, made
up mostly of men aged 20-35, invading Europe in uncontrolled way, living in
camps resembling rubbish dumps, rioting with the police, slinging stones into
trains, robbing food from trucks, wheedling out social benefits, etc.
So where
does the truth lie? In between? With time both groups of ‘friends’ cooled off,
while other, more balanced posts began to emerge. As it turned out, the picture
cannot be painted with one of two colours, it is neither black, nor white.
There is a variety of shades of grey and the problem of inflow of thousands of
migrants has many facets and it is not as simple as advocate or straightforward
embracing or rejecting migrants claim.
Among
migrants there are refugees from war-afflicted regions, but many more migrants
take the opportunity to search for easier life in Europe, whose leaders naively
want to play host to everyone. As statistics of humanitarian organisations and
TV footages reveal, most migrants are young men, who on one hand are potential
conscripts, on the other hand who have been probably sent by their families for
a mission to settle down and then help other family members move in.
I argue
motives of majority of migrants are purely economic. They do not want to just
live in a peaceful country. Had they wanted, they would have stopped in
Hungary, Croatia, or Poland, but they treat CEE countries only as a transit
areas on their way to Germany, Austria or Sweden, where they would live off
generous social security benefits. Quotas on migrants allocation EU leaders
intend to set are an absolutely flawed way to tackling the crisis, since they
totally disregard reasons which bring migrants to Europe. Even if Mrs Merkel
instructs Poland, by threatening to cut off the stream of subsidies, to take in
10,000 or more migrants, unless tighter border controls are instated, those
migrants will eventually land in Germany, because they do not want to live in a
poor country which can offer them fairly low allowances. The way European
politicians handle the matter prompts comparisons to centrally planned economy
or to allocating animals between zoo gardens, while all decisions are claimed
to be made in the name of most humanitarian, lofty values.
While
reading the above you might have the impression I might be intolerant to
migrants. The impression might be misleading. I am not afraid of migrants, I
appreciate cultural diversity, I respect different customs and religions, skin
colour, etc. In my neighbourhood I run across several people from Belarus or
Ukraine who came here in search for better life, often work in grey economy to
earn money, rent the cheapest accommodation, eke out a living and the rest of
the money transfer to their families abroad. In the corporate world I have
worked with people from former USSR and even from Middle-East regions and they
have all been competent and reliable workers. Sometimes I eat out in
restaurants run by guys from Turkey or one of surrounding countries and
although I am most fond of Polish cuisine, I hold dear their contribution to
variety of eateries in Warsaw. Those people have one thing in common – they
work, while by all accounts most migrants flooding Europe have no intention to
take up any job, but aim to settle down in countries with most generous social
security systems. This is who I am intolerant to – loafers, regardless of their
descent.
Once I
discarded political correctness, time to face another truth – attempts to bring
in Western-style democracies to Arabic countries have been doomed to fail.
People living there are from a different cultural circle and simply have not
grown up to democracy. With time I more and more often think it would have been
wiser not to bring down dictators who, surprisingly, better kept law and order,
than setting up democratic systems which are rather a travesty of democracy and
in terms of death toll prove inferior to dictatorship.
I wonder
how the whole story unfolds. I wonder whether tightening border controls would
put to an end Europe without borders established by Schengen agreement.
I wonder
whether putting in walls on some of the borders will divert the stream of
migrants to Poland and if it happens, how the Poland’s administration will cope
with thousands of migrants heading for Western Europe, especially if Germany
closes its borders.
I wonder
whether Poles would see train stations occupied by migrants, or if A2 and A4
motorways will have one westward lane occupied by marching migrants.
I wonder
whether the commotion will reduce the number of safe tourist destinations
available for Poles.
I wonder
whether travelling by car across Europe will be a safe as and easy as it used
to be…
And I hope
by spring next year it all straightens out…
For those
seeking a fairly unbiased coverage, I wholeheartedly recommend The Economist’s column dedicated to migration crisis.
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