Are some more equal than others?

    Hello, lovelies.

        The world that we live in is a very complicated place at the moment. Covid 19 is terrorising us, war-torn countries and genocide are getting worse, fear and resentment are part of our daily lives. The government is opening lying to us, so how is any of this ever going to get any better? Whose fault is it? Can we really shut our borders to keep it all out? Is it all the fault of those who were not born here? Do some people matter more than others? Are some lives just not that important? 

        The world is a beautiful, wonderful place full of different cultures, languages and people. But the one thing we all have in common is that we all have the same set of values and goals in life, to improve our lives, protect our children and leave the world a better place than when we found it. Wow, what a beautiful place the world would be if that was actually true. But we as a people, we fear the unknown, the different and the change to our lives. It is very easy to believe that those others, those refugees and migrants don't share our beliefs and want nothing more than to destroy our cultural way of life. But are those 'others' really so different from us? And is there a reason that we have been told that they are a threat? And why would they risk everything, including their own lives, to travel halfway across the world only to be met with prejudice, racism and discrimination?  

        I think the question I am most stuck on is why. Why do we fear refugees? What have they ever done to us? Is it a perceived threat, or a future worry? Is it a fear that they will bring crime, disease or an economic burden by needing jobs, schooling, cheap accommodation and access to our free NHS? Or is a threat to our cultural identity? Will they come here, make England their home and then demand that we embrace their history, religion and values?  

        But what is the main reason that people become refugees in the first place? Why can't they just stay where they are and try to make the best out of a bad situation? People don't just wake up one morning and decide to make the arduous trek across the world for fun. They have to flee their homes and countries through the persecution of religious ideals, poverty, war, corrupt governments, racial genocide, they're political dissidents, their sexual orientation, gender, and fear of warlords, torture, drugs, domestic violence, child and forced marriage. And by turning our backs on these people can be and is fatal for them. So isn't it in our basic human decency to offer the most basic protection? Surely providing a safe home, the right to join our communities, allowing them to work, they can start their productive lives in their new host countries? 

        And if they are working, paying taxes and contributing to government coffers, won't that mean that we as a nation will have more money to spend on things like education and the NHS? 

      But what about the possibilities that they will take all our jobs? What will we do then? We will be forced to leave our homes in search of work? No! It has long been recognised that having more foreigners and migrants will have very little effect on the host nation workforce. As they typically have a different set of work skills, and often apply for different job types. 

    But what of the children of refugees and migrants? Won't they be a burden on our society? Our schools are already full to capacity. Millions of children have to flee their homes to escape conflict, war and poverty. These children have no hope, life and no choice. They don't want to leave their homes, and in doing so some of them fall into the hands of awful people. People who take the most vulnerable and use them in sexual exploitation and in sex trafficking. The vast majority of these children are boys aged between 16 and 17. They are usually travelling alone. They are scared and afraid. They do not speak the native languages and want nothing more than to be safe. They have no one to be there for them. They have nothing. They are made to feel like they are nothing. And England may not be their intended destination. Most of these boys head for their neighbouring countries but the abuse they experience along the way makes them keep travelling to find a safe place. To find a home. They are sent abroad by their families in the hope of a future. They are sent away from everything they know in order to keep them safe and alive. I can't imagine what that must be like for a parent. To send away your child, in a desperate hope that the child can have better then they had. I panic if I have to send one of my children out to the shops for milk. And our schools have been systematically underfunded for decades, and it has nothing to do with the children. Look to the government! 

    So what is the solution? Is it to fear these people? To hate them? To lock ourselves us and close our borders to everyone who can't trace their ancestry all the way back to William the Conqueror? Should we only be focusing on our own homegrown problems? Ha! if only our government would actually do that! But we have to look at the bigger picture. We are all human. Yes, we may have a different skin colour. A different language. Different religion. But so what? That in no way affects your life. Neither does their children going to the same school as yours. In fact, think of all the things we could teach each other.  To understand the effect of migration and the lives of refugees, we must rely on data and not the rhetoric of people who want to stir the pot and spread fear and discontent in order to push their own agenda. We need to demystify refugees cultural differences to see that they really are not so different from our own. And understand that foreigners will change as they integrate into their new countries.   A Polish friend of mine recently told me that as she has lived in England for 20 years, she no longer feels Polish, as she now identifies as English. 

    Sadly, I think that George Orwell got it right when he wrote in Animal farm, "Four legs good, two legs better." Said by Napoleon the Pig, as he declared that although they were all equal, some were more equal than others. 

    Last week a 16-year-old Sudanese boy washed up on the shores of France. He was a child that had left everything in search of a better life. I read an article on refugees like him and found that most of these boys have a  passion was playing football and all they want is to go to school. A teenager in Italy said, 

        "We knew it was dangerous, I knew it was dangerous, but when you have a lion at your back and the sea in front, you take the sea." 

       

    In these hard times, we need to look past our own fears and prejudices, to reach out, learn and understand that no one person or race is more important, more valued and more legal than others. 

                                                                Don't live in fear.