Background - bl Speech & debate Web viewGuy S. Goodwin-Gill, August 2014, Professor Guy S. Goodwin Gill was formerly Professor of Asylum Law at the University of Amsterdam, served

Bauschard Debate 9/25/15 5:06 PMRefugees Pre-Release

Background.....................................................................................................................................3Definitions..................................................................................................................................4

“Refugees” Defined................................................................................................................5A2: International Humanitarian Law.....................................................................................12Related – Definition of “Persecution”...................................................................................13

History......................................................................................................................................15History of Refugee Law.........................................................................................................16Relevant European Agreements...........................................................................................19Sources of International Legal Protection for Refugees........................................................20

Extent of the Problem...............................................................................................................2160 Million Refugees (Global).................................................................................................22Massive Crisis -- Europe........................................................................................................24Reasons People Flee.............................................................................................................27

Actions by Specific Countries....................................................................................................29Germany Intake....................................................................................................................30Syrian Refugees Will Increase...............................................................................................32Status Quo Distribution Plan.................................................................................................33Hungary’s Anti-Immigrant Response....................................................................................34Mediterranean Border Crossing...........................................................................................35Greece..................................................................................................................................37Status Quo US Action............................................................................................................38European Border Controls....................................................................................................39Italy Route............................................................................................................................40

Pro................................................................................................................................................41Morality....................................................................................................................................42

Morality -- General...............................................................................................................43Morality – Golden Rule.........................................................................................................45Morality – General – Empathy..............................................................................................46Morality – Syrians HAVE to Leave Syria................................................................................48Morality -- Responsibility......................................................................................................49Morality – Responsibility (US)...............................................................................................50Morality – Responsibility (US) – A2: Nothing US Could Have Done......................................55Morality – General................................................................................................................56Morality – General -- Hospitality..........................................................................................64Morality – General – Obligation to the Other.......................................................................71Germany/France Economy Advantage.................................................................................77Should Act on Ethics.............................................................................................................78

Other Advantages.....................................................................................................................86Economy...............................................................................................................................87Smuggling Advantage...........................................................................................................89Forgetting.............................................................................................................................90Migrant Detention Centers Bad............................................................................................91Starvation.............................................................................................................................92Health Risks..........................................................................................................................93Human Rights.......................................................................................................................94International Law..................................................................................................................99

A2: Con Arguments.................................................................................................................103A2: Refugees Hurt the Economy.........................................................................................104


A2: Too Expensive...............................................................................................................106A2: Refugees Could be Terrorists........................................................................................107A2: Military Action Better...................................................................................................109A2: Benefits Cause People to Flee......................................................................................110A2: Refugee Camps Solve...................................................................................................111A2: Racist Backlash.............................................................................................................113A2: Aid Solves.....................................................................................................................114

Should Increase Aid................................................................................................................115Should Increase Aid............................................................................................................116Need to Increase Aid...........................................................................................................117

Need Massive Resettlement...................................................................................................118Status Quo Plan Fails...........................................................................................................119A2: Too Many People to Absorb.........................................................................................120Need a Comprehensive Resettlement Plan.........................................................................121Resettling Large Numbers Practically Possible....................................................................123

Con.............................................................................................................................................124Morality..................................................................................................................................125

A2: US Responsible -- US Could Have Intervened in Syria...................................................126A2: Responsibility to Refugees............................................................................................129A2: Infinite Ethical Responsibility to the Other...................................................................130Not Just Europe’s Responsibility.........................................................................................134

Forced Resettlement Bad........................................................................................................135Redistributing Refugees Across Europe Fails......................................................................136Can’t Force Resettlement...................................................................................................137No Support for Increased Redistribution............................................................................141European Action Generally Fails.........................................................................................142

Disadvantages.........................................................................................................................144Social Services Good...........................................................................................................145Backlash..............................................................................................................................146Terrorism............................................................................................................................148European Politics Links.......................................................................................................149Czech Politics Links.............................................................................................................151Sovereignty.........................................................................................................................153

Alternatives............................................................................................................................157Canada Alternative.............................................................................................................158Multilateral Action..............................................................................................................160


Background


Definitions


“Refugees” Defined

“Refugees’ vs. “migrant”

Jeanne Park, September 23, 2015, Council on Foreign Relations, Europe’s Migration Crisis, http://www.cfr.org/migration/europes-migration-crisis/p32874 DOA: 9-25-15

Distinguishing migrants from asylum seekers and refugees is not always a clear-cut process, yet it is a crucial designation because these groups are entitled to different levels of assistance and protection under international law.

An asylum seeker is defined as a person fleeing persecution or conflict, and therefore seeking international protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention on the Status of Refugees; a refugee is an asylum seeker whose claim has been approved. However, the UN considers migrants fleeing war or persecution to be refugees, even before they officially receive asylum. (Syrian and Eritrean nationals, for example, enjoy prima facie refugee status.) An economic migrant, by contrast, is person whose primary motivation for leaving his or her home country is economic gain. The term "migrant" is seen as an umbrella term for all three groups. (Said another way: all refugees are migrants, but not all migrants are refugees.)

Europe is currently witnessing a mixed-migration phenomenon, in which economic migrants and asylum seekers travel together. In reality, these groups can and do overlap, and this gray area is frequently exacerbated by the inconsistent methods with which asylum applications are often processed across the EU's twenty-eight member states.

History of international refugee law and action

Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, August 2014, Professor Guy S. Goodwin Gill was formerly Professor of Asylum Law at the University of Amsterdam, served as a Legal Adviser in the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1976-1988, and was President of the Media Appeals Board of Kosovo from 2000-2003. He is the Founding Editor of the International Journal of Refugee Law and has written extensively on refugees, migration, international organizations, elections, democratization, and child soldiers. Recent publications include The Limits of Transnational Law, (CUP 2010), with Hélène Lambert, eds., The Refugee in International Law, (OUP, 2007), 3rd edn. with Jane McAdam; Free and Fair Elections, (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2nd edn., 2006); Brownlie’s Documents on Human Rights, (OUP, 2010), 6th edn., with the late Sir Ian Brownlie, QC, eds; and introductory notes to various treaties and instruments on refugees, statelessness and asylum for the ‘Historic Archives’ section of the UN Audio-Visual Library of International Law. He practises as a Barrister from Blackstone Chambers, London, The International Handbook of Refugee Protectionhttp://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199652433.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199652433-e-021 DOA: 9-25-15

The modern law can now be traced back nearly 100 years, to legal and institutional initiatives taken by the League of Nations, first, in the appointment of a High Commissioner for Refugees in 1921, and then in agreement the following year on the issue of identity certificates to ‘any person of Russian origin who does

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not enjoy or no longer enjoys the protection of the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and who has not acquired another nationality’. After the Second World War, the refugee question became highly politicized (Goodwin-Gill 2008), and the UN’s first institutional response to the problem—the International Refugee Organization (IRO), a specialized agency—was opposed by the Soviet Union and its allies, remaining funded by only 18 of the 54 governments which were then members of the United Nations. Notwithstanding the politics of the day, tens of thousands of refugees and displaced persons were resettled under IRO auspices, through government selection schemes, individual migration, and employment placement (Holborn 1975; Loescher and Scanlan 1986).

In 1951, the IRO was replaced by a new agency, an initially non-operational subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly charged with providing ‘international protection’ to refugees and seeking permanent solutions. The Statute of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was adopted on 14 December 1950, and the Office came into being on 1 January 1951.2 Its mandate was general and universal, including refugees recognized under earlier arrangements, as well as those outside their country of origin who were unable or unwilling to return there owing to well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. Once a temporary agency, UNHCR was put on a permanent basis in 2003, when the General Assembly renewed its mandate ‘until the refugee problem is solved’.3

From the start, UNHCR’s protection responsibilities were intended to be complemented by a new refugee treaty, and the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was finalized by states at a conference in Geneva in July 1951; it entered into force in 1954 (Goodwin-Gill 2009).4 Notwithstanding the intended complementarity, there were already major differences between UNHCR’s mandate, which was universal and general, unconstrained by geographical or temporal limitations, and the refugee definition forwarded to the Conference by the General Assembly. This reflected the reluctance of states to sign a ‘blank cheque’ for unknown numbers of future refugees, and so was restricted to those who became refugees by reason of events occurring before 1 January 1951; the Conference was to add a further option, allowing states to limit their obligations to refugees resulting from events occurring in Europe before the critical date.

The difficulty of maintaining a refugee definition bounded by time and space was soon apparent, but it was not until 1967 that the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees helped to bridge the gap between UNHCR’s mandate and the 1951 Convention.5 The Protocol is often referred to as ‘amending’ the 1951 Convention, but in fact it does no such thing. States parties to the Protocol, which can be ratified or acceded to without becoming a party to the Convention, simply agree to apply Articles 2 to 34 of the Convention to refugees defined in Article 1 thereof, as if the dateline were omitted (Article I of the Protocol). Cape Verde, the United States of America, and Venezuela have acceded only to the Protocol; Madagascar and St Kitts and Nevis remain party only to the Convention; and Madagascar and Turkey have retained the geographical limitation. The Protocol required just six ratifications and it entered into force on 4 October 1967.

A refugee is anyone outside his or her own country who cannot return due to fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular group

Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, August 2014, Professor Guy S. Goodwin Gill was formerly Professor of Asylum Law at the University of Amsterdam, served as a Legal Adviser in the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1976-1988, and was President of the Media Appeals Board of Kosovo from 2000-2003. He is the Founding Editor of the International Journal of Refugee Law and has written extensively on refugees, migration, international organizations, elections, democratization, and child soldiers. Recent publications include The

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Limits of Transnational Law, (CUP 2010), with Hélène Lambert, eds., The Refugee in International Law, (OUP, 2007), 3rd edn. with Jane McAdam; Free and Fair Elections, (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2nd edn., 2006); Brownlie’s Documents on Human Rights, (OUP, 2010), 6th edn., with the late Sir Ian Brownlie, QC, eds; and introductory notes to various treaties and instruments on refugees, statelessness and asylum for the ‘Historic Archives’ section of the UN Audio-Visual Library of International Law. He practises as a Barrister from Blackstone Chambers, London, The International Handbook of Refugee Protectionhttp://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199652433.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199652433-e-021 DOA: 9-25-15

Article 1A(1) of the 1951 Convention applies the term ‘refugee’, first, to any person considered a refugee under earlier international arrangements. Then, Article 1A(2), read now together with the 1967 Protocol and without time or geographical limits, offers a general definition of the refugee as including any person who is outside their country or origin and unable or unwilling to return there or to avail themselves of its protection, owing to well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group (an additional ground not found in the UNHCR Statute), or political opinion. Stateless persons may also be refugees in this sense, where country of origin (citizenship) is understood as ‘country of former habitual residence’.

The refugee must be ‘outside’ his or her country of origin, and having crossed an international frontier is an intrinsic part of the quality of refugee, understood in the international legal sense. However, it is not necessary to have fled by reason of fear of persecution, or even actually to have been persecuted. The fear of persecution looks to the future, and can emerge during an individual’s absence from their home country, for example, as a result of intervening political change.

“Refugee” does not cover those who have committed war crimes


The Convention does require that the persecution feared be for reasons of ‘race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion’. This language, which recalls the language of non-discrimination in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and










subsequent human rights instruments, gives an insight into the characteristics of individuals and groups which are considered relevant to refugee protection. These reasons in turn show that the groups or individuals are identified by reference to a classification which ought to be irrelevant to the enjoyment of fundamental human rights, while persecution implies a violation of human rights of particular gravity; it may be the result of cumulative events or systemic mistreatment, but equally it could comprise a single act of torture (Hathaway 2005; Goodwin-Gill and McAdam 2007).

“Refugee” definition

Dieter Kugelmann, lawyer and professor, March 2010, Refugees, Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, http://opil.ouplaw.com/view/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e866 DOA: 9-25-15

3 Art. 1 (1) Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons ([adopted 28 September 1954, entered into force 6 June 1960] 360 UNTS 117) defines the term ‘stateless person’ as a person who is not considered a national by any State under the operation of its law (Nationality). It further prescribes the standards of treatment to be accorded to stateless persons. The Agreement relating to Refugee Seamen of 23 November 1957 grants specific protection to a special group of refugees. The non-binding Declaration on Territorial Asylum, United Nations General Assembly (‘UNGA’) Resolution 2312 (XXII) of 14 December 1967, lays down a series of fundamental principles in regard to territorial asylum (Asylum, Territorial) stating that the granting of territorial asylum ‘is a peaceful and humanitarian act and that, as such, it cannot be regarded as unfriendly by any other State’ (at para. 4).

4 Under international law, Art. 1 A (2) Refugee Convention defines the notion ‘refugee’ as a person who,

owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

By Agreement, the Refugee Protocol extends the definition of a “refugee” to those impacted by war


The Refugee Protocol extended the application of the Refugee Convention to the situation of ‘new refugees’, ie persons who, while meeting the Refugee Convention definition, had become refugees as a result of events that took place after 1 January 1951. This definition requires that the fear of persecution was the reason for fleeing the State and it requires that the person crosses a border. Persons fleeing from natural disasters, civil wars (Armed Conflict, Non-International), or economic crisis do not fall into the scope of the Refugee Convention. However, the responsibility of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for [UNHCR]) was extended, ratione personae, by unanimous consent of the Member States to displaced persons in refugee-like situations. This includes

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persons who are compelled to leave their home because of man-made disasters, eg armed conflicts or other political and social upheavals.

“Refugee Convention” definition is accepted world-wide


Although the legal definition of refugees given in the Refugee Convention is a definition solely for the purposes of the Convention, it is in practice recognized for the purpose of humanitarian assistance on a worldwide basis. It can be seen as the core of a minimum standard definition for the status of a person as refugee. The law of the European Union contains a definition which is based on the Refugee Convention. According to Art. 2 lit. c Council Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004 on Minimum Standards for the Qualification and Status of Third Country Nationals or Stateless Persons as Refugees or as Persons who Otherwise Need International Protection and the Content of the Protection Granted, the term refugee means

a third country national who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group, is outside the country of [his] nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of that country, or [it refers to] a stateless person, who, being outside of the country of former habitual residence for the same reasons as mentioned above, is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to return to it.

SARPA definition of “refugee”


Within the Organization of American States (OAS), two legal instruments of 28 March 1954 relate to refugees: the Convention on Diplomatic Asylum (Asylum, Diplomatic) and the Convention on Territorial Asylum (so-called Caracas Convention). The notion of refugee used in these conventions is close to the notion used in the Refugee Convention. A broader notion of refugee is endorsed by the 1969 Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (‘SARPA Convention’). Taking into account the definition of the Refugee Convention, Art. 1 (2) SARPA Convention defines a refugee as a ‘person who, owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his place of habitual residence’. Refugee protection is not centred on the reason for persecution but on the individual need of the refugee to be protected. This notion, however, does not correspond with an enlargement of the rights of the refugee.

There are political, social, and legal definitions of a “refugee,” but all include the idea of someone who flees his or her existing living arrangement
















The notion ‘refugee’ can be understood from a sociological, political, or legal point of view. In a broader sense, a refugee is a person who flees his habitual place of residence and seeks refuge elsewhere. Persons may leave their homes because of natural disasters or because of man-made situations, especially out of fear of persecution, war, or other circumstances, menacing their individual sphere of interest. After a certain period of time they may return to their home countries or may stay in the destination country for an unlimited time. However, this description does not yet entail concrete legal consequences, because there is no consent on a general legal definition of the term refugee at the level of customary international law.

Cartagena definition includes those fleeing war

Hugo Story, Upper Tribunal Judge (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) (UTIAC) (formerly Senior Immigration Judge of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal) in the United Kingdom (UK); formerly a law academic, and later an Honorary Research Fellow, at the University of Leeds; and a founding member of the International Association of Refugee Law Judges (IARLJ). The views expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of UTIAC or the IARLJ. draft, 2012, Refugee Survey Quarterly, Armed Conflict in the Asylum Law: The “War-Flaw,” http://rsq.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/2/1.full DOA: 9-25-15

The Cartagena Declaration’s drafters were even more concerned to ensure their regional definition of refugee embraced those fleeing armed conflict and generalised violence, stating that: The definition or concept of a refugee to be recommended for use in the region is one which, in addition to containing the elements of the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol, includes among refugees persons who have fled their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalised violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violations of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order.2

Those fleeing war are covered by broader and or subsidiary definitions of “refugee”


Significantly, within Europe, starting with various non-binding resolutions between EU Member States,27 progressing to the Temporary Protection Directive28 and culminating in the Qualification Directive, reform

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to ensure international protection for persons fleeing armed conflict was effected, not by including any specific criteria relating to them in the definition of persecution, but by dealing with them in the context of extra-1951 Convention “subsidiary protection”. Thus Article 15(c) of the QD provides that one of the three categories of serious harm concerns: “(c) serious and individual threat to a civilian’s life or person by reason of indiscriminate violence in situations of international or internal armed conflict”.

Article 15 of the EU QD was drafted against the backdrop that within the wider framework of the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and its predecessor Commission, had been dealing with many cases involving persons fleeing from armed conflict who had been denied refugee status but claimed they should succeed under Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).29 At that time the Court’s response was as given in Vilvarajah v. the United Kingdom ,30 which concerned an asylum-seeker from Sri Lanka, that a person could not succeed on such a basis unless they could show a risk personal to him – again, some kind of exceptionality approach.

So when it comes to persons fleeing armed conflict there has been in various ways a visible displacement of refugee decision-making away from dealing with them under the Article 1A(2) refugee definition and towards catering for them either under broader, supplementary definitions of refugee (as in the OAU Convention) or under forms of subsidiary protection.

Four reasons those fleeing armed conflict should be protected as refugees


Before seeking to clarify the implications of the above analysis for refugee law, it is salient to remind ourselves of the major reasons why armed conflict cases need to be looked under the Refugee Convention. Firstly, because we know that Article 1A(2) was not supposed to exclude those fleeing armed conflict from consideration; secondly because we know that the Refugee Convention has primacy (it must have primacy on an international law level because, leaving aside the ICCPR and the Convention against Torture, it is the only refugee-specific treaty with a global application); thirdly, because we also know that all the regional treaties accord it primacy; and, finally, because otherwise we fail to combat the error of displacement – using other systems of refugee protection at a regional or state level as a substitute for application of Refugee Convention protection.





A2: International Humanitarian Law

International Humanitarian Law doesn’t protect refuges in conflict situations

Refugees caught in armed conflicts represent an archetypal case for testing the potential of the complementarity approach. The overlapping between international humanitarian law, refugee law, and human rights law is not disputable in this particular situation and their cumulative application reveals some unexpected conclusions. Although international humanitarian law is supposed to be the main branch of international law applicable in times of armed conflict, closer scrutiny of its specific norms proves rather frustrating (Section A). Indeed, international humanitarian law has little to provide for protecting the specific needs of refugees caught up in armed conflicts.

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Related – Definition of “Persecution”

Persecution includes the threat of death


Although central to the refugee definition, ‘persecution’ itself is not defined in the 1951 Convention. Articles 31 and 33 refer to threats to life or freedom, so clearly it includes the threat of death, or the threat of torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. A comprehensive analysis requires the general notion to be related to developments within the broad field of human rights,6 and the recognition that fear of persecution and lack of protection are themselves interrelated elements. The persecuted do not enjoy the protection of their country of origin, while evidence of the lack of protection on either the internal or external level may create a presumption as to the (p. 39) likelihood of persecution and to the well-foundedness of any fear. However, there is no necessary linkage between persecution and government authority. A Convention refugee, by definition, must be unable or unwilling to avail him- or herself of the protection of the state or government, and the notion of inability to secure the protection of the state is broad enough to include a situation where the authorities cannot or will not provide protection, for example, against persecution by non-state actors.

The Convention does require that the persecution feared be for reasons of ‘race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion’. This language, which recalls the language of non-discrimination in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent human rights instruments, gives an insight into the characteristics of individuals and groups which are considered relevant to refugee protection. These reasons in turn show that the groups or individuals are identified by reference to a classification which ought to be irrelevant to the enjoyment of fundamental human rights, while persecution implies a violation of human rights of particular gravity; it may be the result of cumulative events or systemic mistreatment, but equally it could comprise a single act of torture (Hathaway 2005; Goodwin-Gill and McAdam 2007).











History


History of Refugee Law

Historical evolution of refugee law


18 In the history of mankind, there have always been people fleeing their habitual place of residence and seeking refuge elsewhere. However, it was only in the 20th century that refugees became an issue on the international level. Before World War I, refugees were treated in accordance with national laws concerning aliens. There were no rules of customary international law taking into account the specific situation of refugees; nor did any bilateral or multilateral agreement exist to regulate their status. As a consequence of the peace treaties after World War I, huge numbers of people had to seek refuge in foreign countries. The League of Nations had to cope not only with the protection of minorities within States but also with complicated refugee problems across borders. Initially, the Assembly of the League of Nations and the States in general thought that the refugee problem would be a temporary phenomenon. But within a short period of time, the problem turned out to be serious and of lasting character (see also Refugees, League of Nations Offices).

19 In 1928 the first international instrument with relevance to the legal status of refugees was developed within the League of Nations, the Arrangement relating to the Legal Status of Russian and Armenian Refugees. It was followed by the first legally binding treaty, the 1933 Convention relating to the International Status of Refugees, which was limited in its application to the then existing refugees. As a model instrument, it dealt not only with the issue of travel documents (see also Passports) but with a variety of matters affecting the daily lives of refugees such as personal status, employment, social rights, education, exemption from reciprocity, and expulsion.

20 Based on preparatory work under the auspices of the United Nations, especially within the Economic and Social Council (‘ECOSOC’) (United Nations, Economic and Social Council [ECOSOC]), the Refugee Convention was adopted on 28 July 1951 as a fundamental legal instrument of refugee law. As the application of the Refugee Convention was limited to the refugee problems known at the time of its adoption, its terms were later made applicable to all new refugee situations by the 1967 Refugee Protocol.

Regional refugee protections


21 The growing number of refugees fleeing wars and internal conflicts in Africa, starting in the late 1950s, led to the adoption of what is generally considered the most comprehensive and significant regional treaty dealing with refugees. On 10 September 1969, the Organization of African Unity (African Union [AU]) adopted the SARPA Convention. The primary importance of this convention is its expanded definition of the term refugee (see above). The SARPA Convention complements rather than duplicates the Refugee Convention. Apart from the broad refugee definition, the SARPA Convention regulates the question of asylum (Art. 2 SARPA Convention). It also contains important provisions on voluntary repatriation (Art. 5 SARPA Convention) and on the prohibition of subversive activities by refugees (Art. 3 SARPA Convention).
























22 Latin America has a long tradition of asylum. The Treaty on International Penal Law ([signed 23 January 1889, entered into force 3 September 1889] OAS Treaty Series No 34 [1967]) was the first regional instrument to deal with asylum. Within the OAS, two legal instruments of 28 March 1954 are concerned with refugees, the Convention on Diplomatic Asylum and the Convention on Territorial Asylum. The notion of refugee is very close to the notion laid down in the Refugee Convention. In the 1980s the outbreak of civil strife in Central America resulted in mass exoduses of nearly a million people, posing serious economic and social problems for the countries towards which this massive flow was directed. In 1984, these host countries adopted the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees which laid down the legal foundations for the treatment of Central American refugees, including the principle of non-refoulement, the importance of integrating refugees, and undertaking efforts to eradicate the causes of the refugee problem. The definition of refugee in the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees is similar to that of the SARPA Convention encompassing ‘persons who have fled their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order’ (part III para. 3). The Cartagena Declaration on Refugees is not binding on States. It is, however, applied in practice by a number of Latin American States and, in some cases, has been incorporated into domestic legislation.

23 The Council of Europe (COE) has adopted several instruments concerning refugees. Among the most important are the 1959 European Agreement for the Abolition of Visas for Refugees, the 1967 Resolution on Asylum to Persons in Danger of Persecution, the 1980 European Agreement on Transfer of Responsibility for Refugees, the 1981 Recommendation to Member States on the Harmonisation of National Procedures relating to Asylum, and the 1984 Recommendation to Member States on the Protection of Persons Satisfying the Criteria in the Geneva Convention Who Are Not Formally Recognised Refugees. European Conventions on extradition and social security also contain provisions on refugees (Extradition). Taking into account the status of ratification of each binding agreement, the work of the COE has not led to a coherent set of refugee law. Nevertheless, it has contributed to the improvement and consolidation of the protection of refugees in Europe.

24 The fastest development of refugee law can be observed in the law of the European Union. Art. 18 Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000) grants a right to asylum with due respect for the Refugee Convention. It repeats the content of Art. 78 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’ [signed 13 December 2007, entered into force 1 December 2009] [2008] OJ C115/47; Art. 78 TFEU was formerly Art. 63 EC Treaty), limiting the scope of the right to asylum, because the provisions do not aim at exceeding the already existing international obligations of the Member States. However, the law of the European Union provides for precise and detailed rules applicable to refugees and asylum seekers. Arts 67–79 TFEU (formerly Arts 61–69 EC Treaty) provide for a common policy on visa, asylum, immigration, and other policies concerning the free circulation of persons.

25 The approximation of rules on the recognition and content of refugee status and subsidiary protection status is implemented by secondary law. Some of the most important legislative acts are Council Regulation (EC) 2725/2000 of 11 December 2000 concerning the Establishment of ‘Eurodac’ for the Comparison of Fingerprints for the Effective Application of the Dublin Convention; Council Directive 2001/55/EC of 20 July 2001 on Minimum Standards for Giving Temporary Protection in the Event of a Mass Influx of Displaced Persons and on Measures Promoting a Balance of Efforts between Member States in Receiving such Persons and Bearing the Consequences Thereof, which was enacted as a reaction to the situation during the civil wars on the Balkan peninsula since 1990 (see also Yugoslavia, Dissolution of); Council Directive 2003/9/EC of 27 January 2003 Laying Down Minimum Standards for the Reception of Asylum Seekers, according to whose Art. 2 lit. b application for asylum is defined as application made by a third-country national or a stateless person which can be understood as a request for international protection by a Member State; Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 of 18 February 2003 Establishing the Criteria and Mechanisms for Determining the Member State Responsible for Examining an Asylum Application Lodged in One of the Member States by a Third-country National; and Council Directive 2003/86/EC of 22 September 2003 on the Right to Family Reunification providing for conditions of family reunification in the Member States of the EU and the specific rights of third-country nationals under given circumstances. Yet, its definition of family is more restrictive than the understanding of family eg in parts of Asia and






















http://opil.ouplaw.com/view/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e866#law-9780199231690-e866-p-6



includes only the core family, especially parents and children. Of particular importance are also Council Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004 on Minimum Standards for the Qualification and Status of Third Country Nationals or Stateless Persons as Refugees or as Persons who Otherwise Need International Protection and the Content of the Protection Granted creating a legal status of subsidiary protection; Council Directive 2005/85/EC of 1 December 2005 on Minimum Standards on Procedures in Member States for Granting and Withdrawing Refugee Status asserting the importance of procedural rules and procedural rights for a person seeking refuge; and Directive 2008/115/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on Common Standards and Procedures in Member States for Returning Illegally Staying Third-Country Nationals, which entered into force on 13 January 2009 and whose deadline for implementation is 24 October 2010.

26 Guidelines for further steps towards a common policy on visa, asylum, and immigration have been adopted in a basic political EU document on migration—the Hague Programme: Strengthening Freedom, Security and Justice in the European Union—endorsed by the European Council on 4–5 November 2004 and implemented by the Council and Commission Action Plan of 10 June 2005. The European Council has declared its will to introduce a Common European Asylum System by 2010, based on the existing directives and regulations on asylum.









Relevant European Agreements

Two relevant European agreements

Shelly Kerebell, September 22, 2015, Forbes, Refugee Crisis: Why Are Europe’s Leaders Failing? http://www.forbes.com/sites/shelliekarabell/2015/09/22/refugee-crisis-why-are-europes-leaders-failing/2/ DOA: 9-22-15

The thing is, “Europe” today is thousands of miles closer to Syria than it was before 1992: it starts at the Hungarian border. Two EU regulations – the Schengen Agreement and Dublin III – make this a boom and bust for asylum-seekers.

Schengen – Signed in the Netherlands by by five countries in 1985 (a prelude to unification as laid out in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty) and designed to allow free border crossing; entry into one Schengen country allowed access to the others. Today 22 of the 28 EU countries are Schengen members, as are four non-EU embers; a handful of others (notably the UK) have opted out altogether.

Dublin III – Signed in the Irish republic capital, it states that the state admitting non-EU persons into the bloc are responsible for vetting them and will face the administrative nightmare of taking back any inappropriately admitted persons – a process known as the “Dublin return.”

The problem is, these regulations were designed to handle a more orderly influx, not thousands of desperate refugees and migrants determined to land anywhere safe.

Dublin Resolution

Jean Park, Deputy Director, Council on Foreign Relations, April 23, 2015, Europe’s Migration Crisis, http://www.cfr.org/migration/europes-migration-crisis/p32874 DOA: 9-6-15

Entry-point states bear unilateral responsibility for migrants under the Dublin Regulation (PDF). Revised in 2013, this EU law continues to stipulate that asylum seekers must remain in the first European country they enter and that country is solely responsible for examining migrants' asylum applications. Migrants who travel to other EU states face deportation back to the EU country they originally entered.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2013:180:0031:0059:EN:PDF


http://www.forbes.com/sites/shelliekarabell/2015/09/22/refugee-crisis-why-are-europes-leaders-failing/2/



Sources of International Legal Protection for Refugees

Refugee protections established by international law, customary international law, general principles of law, national laws, and evolving standards


The international law of refugee protection, which is the source of many such exceptions, comprises a range of universal and regional conventions (treaties), rules of customary international law, general principles of law, national laws, and the ever-developing standards in the practice of states and international organizations, notably the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.






Extent of the Problem


60 Million Refugees (Global)

60 million refugees on the move

Matthias Schwartz, September 8, 2015, The New Yorker, The Refugees at Our Gates, http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-refugees-at-our-gates?intcid=mod-latest DOA: 9-22-15

New, expanded quotas would mean the world to a lucky few, but their sum effect would be small. According to the U.N., sixty million people have now been forced to flee their homes, ten million more than at the height of the Second World War. The westward rush of Syrian exiles through Hungary over the past few weeks is only one wave of a sea change. Significant parts of the so-called “developing” world have been made unbearable, if not effectively uninhabitable, by conflict, tyranny, famine, and climate change. Those with the means to leave will do so, whether or not they have the right paperwork. They are coming whether we want them or not; the choice is how to treat these refugees, and how much dying we are willing to tolerate among those who want something better than a tent in a camp in Lebanon, Ethiopia, or Jordan.

60 million refugees on the move world-wide

LA Times Editorial, September 5, 2015, LA Times, What Others Say: World Needs Moral Policy on Refugrees, http://onlineathens.com/opinion/2015-09-05/what-others-say-world-needs-moral-policy-refugees-los-angeles-times DOA: 9-6-15

The photo was heartbreaking: A toddler in shorts and a red T-shirt lay face down at the edge of the surf, waves lapping at his head, his body settled into the sand like a piece of driftwood. His name, the world would learn, was Aylan Kurdi, and he and his Kurdish family were heading from Syria to Canada — from war to peace and, they hoped, safety. Instead, 3-year-old Aylan, his 5-year-old brother Galip and their mother all drowned when their smuggler’s boat capsized off Bodrum, Turkey. The image won’t end the wars in Syria and Iraq. Most likely, it won’t even change European policies toward the migrants and refugees pouring in from the Middle East and Africa. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees has reported that the flow of displaced people around the world, some 60 million now, is at its highest level since World War II. While attention has focused understandably on the crisis in the Mideast and Africa, with the desperate drowning at sea or suffocating in the backs of trucks as they try to reach Europe, people are on the move around the world, fleeing war, oppression, persecution and poverty.

60 million refugees are on the move

Stewart Patrick, 9-3-15, World on the Move: Understanding Europe’s Migration Crisis, http://blogs.cfr.org/patrick/2015/09/03/world-on-the-move-understanding-europes-migration-crisis/ DOA: 9-6-15

People have been on the move since the dawn of time, of course, but never in such numbers. By the end of 2014, 59.5 million individuals had been uprooted due to conflict or persecution—the highest level since World War II. Despite knowing the risks, every day thousands continue to board rickety boats, or pay smugglers for the promise of safety and better lives ahead.

http://unhcr.org/556725e69.html

http://blogs.cfr.org/patrick/2015/09/03/world-on-the-move-understanding-europes-migration-crisis/

http://onlineathens.com/opinion/2015-09-05/what-others-say-world-needs-moral-policy-refugees-los-angeles-times


http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-refugees-at-our-gates?intcid=mod-latest


Dramatic increase in emmigration from Africa


Increased patrols in the waters off western Africa were thought to have effectively curbed migration along the Western Mediterranean passage to Spain in recent years, but 2014 saw a dramatic uptick in attempted border crossings from migrants and asylum seekers fleeing conflict in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan, and South Sudan. According to the Spanish Interior Ministry, the number of migrants trying to enter Spain illegally in 2014 rose by almost 70 percent from the previous year to 12,549. And despite efforts to fortify the borders of Melilla and Ceuta, Spanish territories that are contiguous with Morocco, a steady stream of migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa continue to scale the fences of these two enclaves.

Many fleeing Eritrea and Myanmar

Amanda Taub, 9-5-15, Vox, Europe’s refugee crisis, explained, http://www.vox.com/2015/9/5/9265501/refugee-crisis-europe-syria DOA: 9-7-15

Political and sectarian repression in other countries has contributed as well. Many families in Eritrea, for example, are fleeing the dictatorship there that is sometimes called Africa's own North Korea. In Myanmar, the a Muslim minority group known as the Rohingya has endured brutal violence and ethnic cleansing, sometimes with the tacit support of the Myanmar government or even at the hands of government forces themselves. Fleeing Rohingya made headlines in recent months after thousands became stranded at sea, marooned in dangerous boats because neighboring countries refused to take them in.

Arab Spring sparked the refugee crisis


For years, the EU kept refugees out of sight and out of mind by paying Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi's government to intercept and turn back migrants that were heading for Europe. Qaddafi was something like Europe's bouncer, helping to keep the potentially significant number of African migrants and refugees from ever reaching the continent. His methods were terrible: Libya imprisoned migrants in camps where rape and torture were widespread. But Europe was happy to have someone else worrying about the problem. But then the Arab Spring. In 2011, Libyans rose up against Qaddafi, Europe and the US eventually intervened, and with Qaddafi's regime gone, Libya collapsed into chaos. Though the journey through Libya remained dangerous, it was also suddenly open, making it easier for both refugees and economic migrants from across Africa use the country's shores as a launching pad for the cross-Mediterranean journey to Europe. At the same time, the Arab Spring also helped lead to Syria's war, and to conflict in Yemen, and eventually to the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Of course none of this caused the exodus of refugees from, say, Afghanistan or Myanmar, but the Arab Spring was perhaps the largest single spark of the ongoing, global refugee crisis.

http://www.theweek.co.uk/6515/how-libya-kept-migrants-out-of-eu-at-any-cost

http://www.theweek.co.uk/6515/how-libya-kept-migrants-out-of-eu-at-any-cost

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/5/9265501/refugee-crisis-europe-syria

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32686328

http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/22/burma-end-ethnic-cleansing-rohingya-muslims

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15699&LangID=E


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/28/melilla-spain-morocco-400-migrants-break-fence

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/28/melilla-spain-morocco-400-migrants-break-fence

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/11539439/Illegal-immigration-in-Spain-up-70-per-cent-in-2014.html



Massive Crisis -- Europe

500,000 this year, 8,000 per day

BBC, September 25, 2015, Europe Gets 8,000 refugees from Iraq and Syria Daily, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34356758 DOA: 9-25-15

A daily flow of about 8,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees to Europe is likely to continue, the United Nations warns. The figure came from UN regional coordinator for refugees Amin Awad, who spoke to Reuters news agency. More than 5,000 refugees are arriving daily in Greece. That flow could continue during the winter if the weather remains good and the borders open, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) told the BBC. About half a million migrants - mostly from Syria and other conflict zones in the Middle East and Africa - have arrived in Europe this year.

460,000 have cross by sea in the last 9 months


Political upheaval in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia is reshaping migration trends in Europe. The number of illegal border-crossing detections in the EU started to surge in 2011, as thousands of Tunisians started to arrive at the Italian island of Lampedusa following the onset of the Arab Spring. Sub-Saharan Africans who had previously migrated to Libya followed in 2011–2012, fleeing unrest in the post-Qaddafi era. The most recent surge in detections along the EU's maritime borders has been attributed to the growing numbers of Syrian, Afghan, and Eritrean migrants and refugees.

The IOM estimates that more than 464,000 migrants have crossed into Europe by sea for the first nine months of 2015. Syrians fleeing their country's four-and-a-half-year-old civil war made up the largest group (39 percent). Afghans looking to escape the ongoing war with Taliban rebels (11 percent), and Eritreans fleeing forced labor (7 percent) made up the second and third largest groups of migrants, respectively. Deteriorating security and grinding poverty in Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, and Sudan have also contributed to the migrant influx.

More details on Dublin


Entry-point states bear unilateral responsibility for migrants under the Dublin Regulation. Revised in 2013, this EU law stipulates that asylum seekers must remain in the first European



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34356758


country they enter and that country is solely responsible for examining migrants' asylum applications. Migrants who travel to other EU states face deportation back to the EU country they originally entered.

Many policymakers agree that reforming the Dublin Regulation is an important step to establishing a common European asylum policy. Under the current system, the burden of responsibility falls disproportionately on entry-point states with exposed borders. In practice, however, many of these frontline countries have already stopped enforcing Dublin and allow migrants to pass through to secondary destinations in the north or west of the EU. Germany and Sweden currently receive and grant the overwhelming majority of asylum applications in the EU."Both the burden and the sharing are in the eye of the beholder. I don't know if any EU country will ever find the equity that is being sought," says Center for Strategic and International Studies Senior Fellow Heather Conley.

Recent numbers astronomical

Leo Cendrowicz, September 24, 2015, The Independent, Refugee Crisis: Though decisions needed to avoid a “surge” of extreme right” across Europe, warns leaders, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-tough-decisions-needed-to-avoid-a-surge-of-the-extreme-right-across-europe-warn-eu-10515964.html DOA: 9-25-15

The scale of the crisis was underlined by figures from Hungary, which had a record number of migrant crossings on Wednesday: 9,939 entering from Croatia and 102 from Serbia; while Croatian police said that more than 51,000 refugees and migrants had entered the country in the last 10 days.

Europe facing the largest refugee crisis since World War II

RTE News, 9-5-15, Over 6,000 refugees arrive in Munich with more to follow, http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0905/725835-migrants/ DOA: 9-5-15

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said their plight and the growing human cost was a "wake up call" for Europe to resolve its biggest refugee crisis since World War II. Austrian police said 4,000 people crossed into the country early this morning, with the number predicted to rise to 10,000.

The number of refugees will not slow

RTE News, September 25, 2015, UN Sees Flow of Refugees to Europe Growing, http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0925/730263-refugees-europe/ DOA: 9-25-15

The UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, does not expect the flow of about 8,000 refugees per day into Europe to abate. Amin Awad, UNHCR’s regional refugee coordinator, warned that it could be "the tip of the iceberg". Meanwhile, the UN's deputy humanitarian coordinator in Iraq said 10 million people in Iraq were expected to need humanitarian support by the end of the year, where 3.2 million are already displaced. Dominik Bartsch said the United Nations was planning for the displacement of 500,000 people

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0925/730263-refugees-europe/

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0905/725835-migrants/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-tough-decisions-needed-to-avoid-a-surge-of-the-extreme-right-across-europe-warn-eu-10515964.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-tough-decisions-needed-to-avoid-a-surge-of-the-extreme-right-across-europe-warn-eu-10515964.html


from the Iraqi city of Mosul if Iraqi forces launch an attempt to recapture the city from the so-called Islamic State group.

Austria expects 80,000 more

New York Times, September 6, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/world/europe/pope-calls-on-europeans-to-house-refugees.html DOA: 9-6-15

Austria faces a similar influx — 80,000 asylum applicants are expected this year in a country of eight million, about one-tenth the population of Germany. That prospect has bolstered far-right populists at the expense of the governing Social Democrats and conservatives, who face bellwether elections in Vienna in early October.

340,000 have tried to reach Europe this year

Lukas Kaelin, 9-2-15, Foreign Affairs, Europe’s Broken Borders, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/western-europe/2015-09-02/europes-broken-borders DOA: 9-7-15

Frontex, the agency in charge of guarding the EU border, estimates that about 340,000 migrants have tried to sneak into Europe in 2015 so far, almost three times as many as in 2014. Along with the surge in numbers, the demographics of the travelers have also changed. These days, the bulk of them are Syrians fleeing violence at home, Afghans escaping their own ongoing civil war, Roma from Kosovo looking to avoid discrimination, and Eritreans fleeing a dictatorship comparable to the one in North Korea. Whereas in 2014, the bulk of refugees came to Europe through Italy from Libya and Tunisia, now more people arrive in Greece after crossing Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Macedonia and Hungary have also seen a surge in traffic. Although the reason for this shift remains uncertain, it seems likely that reports of frequent drownings on the long journey from northern Africa to Italy, and the increasingly volatile situation in Libya, have convinced many refugees to try their luck over land.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/western-europe/2015-09-02/europes-broken-borders

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/world/europe/pope-calls-on-europeans-to-house-refugees.html



Reasons People Flee

UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards, September 25, 2015, Seven Factors Behind Movement of Syrian Refugees to Europe, http://www.unhcr.org/560523f26.html DOA: 9-25-15

While more than 4 million Syrian refugees are in countries neighbouring Syria, recent months have seen an increase in the number of Syrians seeking refuge further afield – there have been almost 429,000 asylum applications by Syrians in Europe since 2011. Based on ongoing monitoring and assessments, surveys, focus group discussions, and daily interaction with refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq, UNHCR has identified seven principal factors behind this. The information gathered here mainly applies to Syrians living as refugees in the region, rather than people moving directly out of Syria. ( See UNHCR briefing note of 8 September 2015 on drivers out of Syria.)

Loss of hope

With Syria's crisis now into its fifth year and no sign of a solution in sight, hope is dwindling for many refugees. Feelings of uncertainty about the future are compounded by miserable conditions, fuelling a sense of despair and desperation.

High costs of living/Deepening poverty

Refugees in Lebanon cite the high cost of living as a factor in deciding to stay or go. In Egypt, refugees say it is getting harder to pay rent, manage high levels of indebtedness and afford their basic needs. In Jordan, the inability to provide for one's family was the most common reason cited by people who knew someone who had left.

The cumulative effect of four years in exile with restricted access to legal employment was also said to be taking its toll. In many cases savings are long depleted, precious valuables have been sold off and many refugees across the region live in miserable conditions, struggling to pay rent, feed their families, and cover their basic needs.

Limited livelihood opportunities

Without ability to work, many refugees struggle to make a living. Lack of livelihood opportunities or access to the formal labour market was cited as a problem by refugees in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. Syrian refugees in Iraq say the large number of internally displaced people has increased competition for jobs in the Kurdistan region of the country. Meanwhile, work on construction sites in the region has dried up with the drop in oil prices.

The lack of access to legal work leads refugees, desperate to provide for themselves, to resort to informal employment – risking exploitation, working in unsafe conditions or having payment withheld by unscrupulous employers. If caught working illegally, some refugees face sanctions, for example in Jordan being returned to a camp. Under new regulations in Lebanon, refugees must sign a pledge not to work when renewing their residency status.

Aid shortfalls

Aid programmes for refugees and host communities in the region have been plagued by chronic funding shortages. The current inter-agency Syrian regional refugee and resilience (3RP) plan for 2015 is only 41% funded, which has meant cuts in food aid for thousands of refugees, and those that get it having to survive on US$0.45-0.50 a day. Many refugees in Jordan told UNHCR the WFP food aid cuts were the last straw in

http://www.unhcr.org/560523f26.html


their decision to leave the country. Tens of thousands miss out on cash assistance, sinking deeper into debt. As a result people resort to negative coping strategies – including begging, child labour, and increased indebtedness. Shrinking humanitarian aid was cited by refugees in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt as cause of desperation and a driver of onward movement.

In Jordan, inadequate funding has seen refugees losing free access to healthcare. As a result, 58.3 per cent of adults with chronic conditions do without medicine or health services, up from 23 per cent in 2014. There is also a marked decrease in access to curative and preventative health care.

Hurdles to renew legal residency

In Lebanon, new regulations for Syrian refugees have made it harder for Syrians to access asylum, and increasingly Syrians transit through Lebanon to Turkey. Refugees already in the country must pay US$200 per year to renew their stay. They are required to sign a pledge not to work and they must present a certified lease agreement. Many refugees are fearful of arrest or detention and feel vulnerable because of lapsed residency visas.

In Jordan, an urban verification exercise launched by the authorities in February to ensure that all Syrians residing outside of camps are issued with a new identity document to access services presents a number of challenges. The cost of obtaining a health certificate (JD30/US$42 for those over 12 years of age) as part of the process can be prohibitive.

Scant education opportunities

Limited education opportunities were cited as a problem for refugees in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq. Education is highly valued among Syrians, who enjoyed free and mandatory schooling at home before the war. The worsening conditions that refugees face in exile are having a devastating impact on the education of refugees. In Jordan, some 20 per cent of children are abandoning school in order to work and in some cases girls are being forced into early marriage. Some 90,000 Syrians of school age have no formal education, with 30,000 of those accessing informal education and the rest missing out completely.

In Lebanon, where education is free to Syrians in a two-shift system, many children struggle to attend or find the new curriculum too difficult while at the same time working to support their families. While the Ministry of Education has increased by 100% the number of places for Syrian children (that is, 200,000 in the 2015/2016 school year), another 200,000 Syrian children will be out of school this year.

Across the region, Syrian youth are missing out on tertiary education and losing hope about their future.

Feeling unsafe in Iraq

The majority of displaced Iraqis UNHCR spoke to who were travelling outside Iraq reported feeling unsafe in the country. Many people from minority groups have told UNHCR they see migration as the key to their physical safety.


Actions by Specific Countries


Germany Intake

Germany has taken 550,00 refugees, Spain has taken 230,000, others have taken very few

LA Times Editorial, September 5, 2015, LA Times, What Others Say: World Needs Moral Policy on Refugees, http://onlineathens.com/opinion/2015-09-05/what-others-say-world-needs-moral-policy-refugees-los-angeles-times DOA: 9-6-15

But those truths should not become excuses. Earlier this year, the European Union came up with a triage plan for trying to resettle 60,000 refugees around Europe, but the plan exempted Hungary and Bulgaria, and Britain opted out. Clearly, the EU plan is inadequate to the task. Germany’s reception centers have received nearly 550,000 migrants, and Sweden’s 230,000. Other European nations, such as financially troubled Spain, have taken only slivers of the population. Meanwhile, Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, has cynically sought to frame the crisis as a battle for European identity against Muslim interlopers, introducing a repugnant layer of intolerance

Germany expects 800,000 more this year

Alison Smale, 9-6-15, New York Times, Pope Calls on All of Europe’s Catholics to House Refugees, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/world/europe/pope-calls-on-europeans-to-house-refugees.html DOA: 9-6-15

In Germany, which has taken in the most refugees and expects 800,000 asylum seekers this year, volunteers were active again Sunday at the main Munich rail station and other locations across the country, welcoming the new arrivals in a determined display of hospitality that counters right-wing resistance to the newcomers.

Germany registered 10,000 in August

Michael Neinaber, 9-7-15, The Star, Merkel splits conservative bloc with green light to refugees, http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/2015/09/07/Merkel-splits-conservative-bloc-with-green-light-to-refugees/ DOA: 9-6-15

Germany expects a record influx of 800,000 migrants and refugees this year, by far the most in the European Union. More than 100,000 asylum seekers were registered in August alone.

Germany acting to implement more accommodations

Michael Neinaber, 9-7-15, The Star, Merkel splits conservative bloc with green light to refugees, http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/2015/09/07/Merkel-splits-conservative-bloc-with-green-light-to-refugees/ DOA: 9-6-15

Merkel's coalition was expected to agree a series of measures later on Sunday including cutting red tape to facilitate the construction of asylum shelters, increasing funds for federal states and towns, and speeding up asylum procedures. The agenda will include widening the list of countries deemed "safe" -- meaning their citizens have no claim to asylum -- probably to include Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro. Among those already in that category are Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia. The aim is to speed up asylum and extradition procedures for migrants from southeastern Europe, in order to focus on war refugees from states like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/2015/09/07/Merkel-splits-conservative-bloc-with-green-light-to-refugees/








Accepting the migrants will cost Germany $10 billion next year

BBC, 9-7-15, Migrant crisis: Influx will change Germany, says Merkel, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34173720 DOA: 9-7-15

Mrs Merkel thanked volunteers who had helped and welcomed those arriving, saying they had "painted a picture of Germany which can make us proud of our country". However, she said that although Germany was "a country willing to take people in", it was "time for the European Union to pull its weight". Germany - which expects 800,000 asylum requests this year - could face costs of €10bn (£7.3bn) next year because of the influx, she added.

Germany is Europe’s wealthiest countryBrinley Bruton, 9-5-15, NBC News, “Germany to Spend $6.6 billion on 800,000 Refugees and Migrants,” http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/europes-border-crisis/billions-migrants-germany-spend-6-6b-800-000-newcomers-n422811 DOA: 9-7-15

Germany, Europe's wealthiest country, also said it would make it easier to deport asylum seekers from countries considered "safe," such as Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania, to cope with the huge influx from war-torn states like Syria, Iraq and Eritrea.

Germany will spend $6.5 billion assist the refugees this year

Brinley Bruton, 9-5-15, NBC News, “Germany to Spend $6.6 billion on 800,000 Refugees and Migrants,” http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/europes-border-crisis/billions-migrants-germany-spend-6-6b-800-000-newcomers-n422811 DOA: 9-7-15

Germany will spend around $6.6 billion to cope with some 800,000 migrants and refugees expected to have crossed into the country by the end of 2015, the government said early Monday. The announcement by Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government came after Germany and neighboring Austria threw open their borders to the wave of refugees making their way north and west from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. Hungary has been letting the human tide move on after holding it up for days.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/europes-border-crisis/germanys-angela-merkel-hold-crisis-talks-migrants-refugees-stream-n422531

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/europes-border-crisis/germanys-angela-merkel-hold-crisis-talks-migrants-refugees-stream-n422531

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/europes-border-crisis/billions-migrants-germany-spend-6-6b-800-000-newcomers-n422811







Syrian Refugees Will Increase

Syria will continue to unravel, increasing refugees

Nicholas Kristof, September 10, 2015, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/opinion/nicholas-kristof-compassion-for-refugees-isnt-enough.html?_r=0 9-22-15

Then there’s the far more difficult task of trying to make Syria habitable again. This may be impossible, but let’s be clear: As things stand, we’re on a trajectory for Syria to become even more horrific than it is now. Many experts expect the war to drag on for years, kill hundreds of thousands more people, and lead to an exodus of millions more refugees. We’re likely to see street-to-street fighting soon in Damascus, lifting the suffering and emigration to a new level.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/opinion/nicholas-kristof-compassion-for-refugees-isnt-enough.html?_r=0



Status Quo Distribution Plan

EU has approved a plan to distribute 120,000 refugees though it is not clear if some of the Eastern European countries will comply

James Kanter, EU ministers approve plan to distribute refugees, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/world/europe/european-union-ministers-migrants-refugees.html?_r=0, DOA: 9-22-15

RUSSELS — European Union ministers approved a plan on Tuesday that would compel member countries to take in 120,000 migrants seeking refuge on the Continent — but only after overruling four countries in Central Europe. The plan to apportion the migrants, still only a small fraction of those flowing into Europe, was approved by home affairs and interior ministers of the member countries after a vigorous debate. In a departure from normal procedures that emphasize consensus, particularly on questions of national sovereignty, the ministers took a formal vote. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia voted no. Finland abstained. The plan will be discussed further on Wednesday by leaders from across the 28-member bloc, who will gather here for an emergency summit meeting. It is not clear if the dissenting countries, which have vigorously opposed mandatory quotas, will comply. The crisis has tested the limits of Europe’s ability to forge consensus on one of the most divisive issues to confront the union since the fall of communism. It has set right-wing politicians, including those who govern Hungary, against pan-European humanitarians, who have portrayed the crisis in stark moral terms.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_union/index.html?inline=nyt-org

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/world/europe/european-union-ministers-migrants-refugees.html?_r=0



Hungary’s Anti-Immigrant Response

Hungary using all but lethal force against refugees


One of the most intransigent countries in the migration crisis has been Hungary. It has built a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia and is fortifying its border with Croatia. It has also granted its army extra powers to deal with migrants, including allowing the use of tear gas, rubber bullets and other weapons, provided no lethal force is used.

Hungarian police allowed to use non-lethal force against refugees


Hungary’s parliament has passed a law allowing the government to deploy its army to handle refugees at its borders and the use of non-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets and tear gas grenades. Speaking ahead of the vote on Monday Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed that millions of refugees are “laying siege” to the borders of his country and of Europe, and said: “The migrants are not just banging on our door, they’re breaking it down,” before reiterating his view that most were coming for economic and not safety reasons. The new law will allow soldiers to be sent to help police manage the refugee crisis, carrying out many of the same tasks such as checking ID, detaining suspects and controlling the flow of traffic at the borders. It also allows the army to use non-lethal force against refugees, which includes the use of rubber bullets, pyrotechnical devices, tear gas grenades and net guns, according to the text posted on the parliament’s website.






Mediterranean Border Crossing

Greece’s construction of a border fence has made it more difficult for refugees to cross by land, meaning more deadly sea crossings

Danae Leivada, September 24, 2015, Huffington Post, Why Greece Shuts the Shortest, Safest Route for Migrants and Refugees, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/greece-turkey-border-fence_55f9ab73e4b0d6492d63ec12 DOA: 9-25-15

ATHENS, Greece -- As thousands of refugees arrived on Greece's shores this summer on their way to western Europe, and the harrowing images of young children who drowned in the Eastern Aegean Sea made headlines around the world, attention is shifting to Greece's land borders. The record numbers of migrants and refugees arriving in Greece from Turkey by boat -- more than 2,500 on Wednesday alone -- are a recent phenomenon. Not so long ago, the shortest, and safest, route was the 125 mile land border that runs along the Evros river in northern Greece. The river is a natural barrier, but a 6.5 mile strip of fields between the villages of Kastanies and the town of Nea Vyssa was a popular way to enter. This changed, however, when Greece started constructing a fence in October 2011. It was completed in December 2012, at a cost of about $3.3 million dollars. Built on a concrete base and made of strong barbed wire, it's 4 meters tall and equipped with thermal cameras, which scan the surrounding area. The decision to build the fence was controversial. The European Commission argued in 2011 that it "would not effectively discourage immigrants or smugglers who would simply seek alternative routes into the European Union.” But the government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras went ahead, fearing that access to Greece at the land border was too easy. The numbers of migrants and refugees arrested while trying to cross into the country from Turkey reached 100,000 in 2011, according to the UN refugee agency. The effects of the fence were instantly felt, according to the authorities, with migration numbers in the area falling as much as 90 percent immediately after it was erected.

Though the flow of migrants and refugees crossing the northern land border reduced, the numbers of those arriving on the Eastern Aegean islands rose considerably from 2012 to 2013, and dramatically from 2014 onwards, according to the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. The journey for those who still attempt to cross the river is perilous.

Three months before the fence was completed, Greece launched Operation Shield, which reinforced patrols along the length of the land and river border. Despite funding problems the operation's mandate was renewed indefinitely in June. A number of police officers even offered to continue working at the border voluntarily.

The fence in Evros almost collapsed last winter because of heavy rain and winds. While it was partially repaired, the incident renewed the debate about whether or not it should be there in the first place.

Discussion of border protection policy has been dividing opinion in Greece, among politicians and citizens. Though the previous New Democracy-PASOK government that built the fence considered it an easy and cost-effective way to protect Greek borders, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' Syriza party appears divided. Some prominent members, like former Migration Minister Tasia Christodoulopoulou, have explicitly argued against it, while others, like former Minister of Citizen Protection Giannis Panousis, have argued that the fence has been useful and should be kept.

The challenge of migrant and refugees flows has reached crisis levels and is an issue concerning politicians in Greece, and Europe more broadly. The heads of European governments convened for an emergency summit in Brussels on Wednesday. The leaders agreed to increase funding to humanitarian aid organizations, provide assistance to transit countries, relocate 120,000 migrants and refugees across the region, and intensify identification procedures in Italy and Greece by November. The EU leaders appeared

http://www.e-evros.gr/gr/eidhseis/3/den-exei-episkeyas8ei-akoma-o-fraxths-toy-ebroy/post27824?fb_comment_id=832377040203563_832779116830022#f20a8036fcf9a6e

http://www.e-evros.gr/gr/eidhseis/3/den-exei-episkeyas8ei-akoma-o-fraxths-toy-ebroy/post27824?fb_comment_id=832377040203563_832779116830022#f20a8036fcf9a6e

http://www.eliamep.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/MIDAS-REPORT.pdf

http://www.naftemporiki.gr/cmsutils/downloadpdf.aspx?id=516752

http://www.unhcr.gr/1againstracism/en/greek-fence-up-at-turkish-border-as-immigrants-come-by-sea/

http://www.ekathimerini.com/137519/article/ekathimerini/news/eu-will-not-fund-evros-fence

http://www.ekathimerini.com/137519/article/ekathimerini/news/eu-will-not-fund-evros-fence

http://www.eliamep.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/MIDAS-REPORT.pdf

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/23/us-europe-migrants-greece-idUSKCN0RN12K20150923

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/greece-turkey-border-fence_55f9ab73e4b0d6492d63ec12

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/greece-turkey-border-fence_55f9ab73e4b0d6492d63ec12


divided, however, over long-term solutions to deal with the massive flow of refugees and migrants arriving in Europe.


Greece

Greek refugee centers are inhumane


The results have been disastrous. Doctors Without Borders' Stathis Kyrouthis described the current refugee crisis in Greece as the worst he has ever seen. "I have worked in many refugee camps before, in Yemen, Malawi, and Angola. But here on the island of Kos, this is the first time in my life that I have seen people so totally abandoned." According to Human Rights Watch, the Greek reception centers, where arriving refugees are held, lack sufficient food and health care, and are so severely unsanitary and chronically overcrowded that the conditions in them may amount to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.

Greece does not have the economic resources to absorb the migrants and treats them poorly


The situation is especially acute in Greece, which has been hit hard by a five-year debt crisis and successive rounds of austerity measures. Overcrowded facilities lacking proper ventilation, clean water, and sanitation have been blamed for compromising migrants' health, and police mistreatment and harassment continue to elicit censure from rights groups. Right-wing extremist groups like Golden Dawn that campaign on anti-immigrant platforms have also contributed to an uptick in xenophobic violence. The country's soaring unemployment rates and drastic cuts in public spending mean there is scant economic opportunity and welfare support for migrants and refugees.

Most migrants entering through Greece


Greece: By 2012, 51 percent (PDF) of migrants entering the EU illegally did so via Greece. This trend shifted in 2013 after Greek authorities enhanced border controls under Operation Aspida (or "Shield"), which included the construction of a barbed-wire fence at the Greek-Turkish border. But by July 2015, Greece had once again become the preferred Mediterranean entry point, with Frontex reporting 132,240 illegal EU border crossings for the first half of 2015, five times the number detected for the same period last year. Syrians and Afghans made up the "lion's share" of migrants traveling from Turkey to Greece (primarily to the Greek islands of Kos, Chios, Lesbos, and Samos) in the first seven months of 2015. This most recent migrant surge coincided with the country's tumultuous debt crisis, which brought down its banking system and government this summer.


http://www.hrw.org/node/108554/section/1

https://www.amnesty.org/en/news/greece-alleged-racist-remarks-police-chief-must-be-investigated-2013-12-19

http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/04/25/updated-human-rights-watch-submission-united-nations-committee-against-torture-greec

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/2011/final_1106_Report_Evros_EN.pdf


https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/11/greece-humanitarian-crisis-islands

http://www.msf.org/article/greece-no-welcome-migrants-and-refugees-landing-greek-dodecanese-islands



Status Quo US Action

US taking in more refugees

Associated Press, 9-21-15, Kerry says US will take in 85,000 refugees next year; 100,000 in ’17, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/21/kerry-says-us-will-take-85000-refugees-next-year-100000-in-17/ DOA: 9-22-15

Scrambling to address a growing Syrian refugee crisis, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced Sunday that the United States would significantly increase the number of worldwide refugees it takes in over the next two years, though not by nearly the amount many activists and former officials have urged. The U.S. will accept 85,000 refugees from around the world next year, up from 70,000, and that total would rise to 100,000 in 2017, Kerry said at news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier after they discussed the mass migration of Syrians fleeing their civil war. Many, though not all, of the additional refugees would be Syrian, American officials have said. Others would come from strife-torn areas of Africa. The White House had previously announced it intended to take in 10,000 additional Syrian refugees over the next year. Asked why the U.S. couldn't take more, Kerry cited post-Sept. 11 screening requirements and a lack of money made available by Congress.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/21/kerry-says-us-will-take-85000-refugees-next-year-100000-in-17/



European Border Controls

Many countries reinstating border controls


Germany reinstated border controls along its border with Austria in September 2015, after receiving an estimated forty thousand migrants over one weekend. Implemented on the eve of an emergency migration summit, this move was seen by many experts as a signal to other EU member states about the pressing need for an EU-wide quota system. Austria, the Netherlands, and Slovakia soon followed with their own border controls. These developments have been called the greatest blow to Schengen in its twenty-year existence.

While Schengen rules allow member countries to erect temporary border controls under extenuating "public policy or national security" circumstances, CSIS' Conley fears that a sustained influx of migrants could spur more member states to suspend borderless travel for longer stretches of time. "I suspect if the politics surrounding migration really start getting messy, you'll see countries reintroducing internal borders with greater frequency, which means they would have chiseled away at one of the main pillars of Europe, which is the free movement of people," she says.



Italy Route

Italy is the main entry point


Illegal border crossings most often fall along several major routes spanning the southern and eastern borders of Europe. The central Mediterranean passage, with Italy serving as the main entry point to Europe, is currently the most frequented for migrants and asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, Eritrea, Egypt, and Somalia. Deteriorating security in Libya, Central African Republic, and South Sudan are also seen as contributing factors to the migrant influx.

Libya->Italy is the most common route


However, the most heavily trafficked route along Europe's Southern perimeter remains the Central Mediterranean passage from Libya to Italy, which has borne the burden of the most recent wave of irregular migration. According to the EU border agency Frontex, there were approximately forty thousand illegal border crossings (PDF) along this route in 2013, almost quadruple the number of crossings detected in 2012. This passage is also considered one of the most perilous: The IOM estimates that a majority of the 3,279 Mediterranean migrant deaths in 2014 occurred along this route; the organization says that the toll could reach 30,000 by the end of 2015. Several incidents involving capsized boats, including one in April 2015 that killed more than 800 people, have garnered global attention and elicited calls from human rights activists, Pope Francis, and policymakers for a united European response to the migrant crisis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/world/europe/italy-libya-migrant-boat-capsize.html

https://www.iom.int/cms/en/sites/iom/home/news-and-views/press-briefing-notes/pbn-2015/pbn-listing/at-least-3800-migrants-rescued-f.html

http://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_Analysis/Annual_Risk_Analysis_2014.pdf

http://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_Analysis/Annual_Risk_Analysis_2014.pdf




Pro


Morality


Morality -- General

Allowing refugees to die is immoral

Daniel Altman, 9-8-15, Foreign Policy, We Should Be Competing to Take in Refugees, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/08/we-should-all-be-competing-to-take-in-refugees-europe-syria/ DOA: 9-22-15 Daniel Altman is senior editor, economics at Foreign Policy and is an adjunct professor at New York University's Stern School of Business.

Refugees are spending thousands of euros to make treacherous journeys over land and sea. As the world has lately been reminded (but too infrequently for my taste), many die along the way. This is an economic problem as well as a moral one. An impoverished refugee will have a harder time making a fresh start, and a dead refugee never gets the chance. That’s why it makes sense for Germany and other host countries to pay for refugees’ safe transit; they’ll have to shell out less to support refugees upon arrival, and they’ll likely have more successful refugees paying taxes in the future.

Failure to help refugees is a moral failure

Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, Refugees Who Could Be Us, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-refugees-who-could-be-us.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0 DOA: 9-22-15

Granted, assimilating refugees is difficult. It’s easy to welcome people at the airport, but more complex to provide jobs and absorb people with different values. (In Jordan, I once visited a refugee family hoping for settlement in the United States and saw a poster of Saddam Hussein on the wall; I wondered how that adjustment would go.) In any case, let’s be clear that the ultimate solution isn’t to resettle Syrians but to allow them to go home. “Stopping the barrel bombs will save more refugees dying on the route to Europe than any other action, because people want to return to live in their homes,” noted Lina Sergie Attar, a Syrian-American writer and architect. There has been a vigorous public debate about whether the photo of Aylan’s drowned body should be shown by news organizations. But the real atrocity isn’t the photo but the death itself — and our ongoing moral failure to save the lives of children like Aylan.

Moral and humanitarian obligation to accept more refugees. US must lead


After months of dithering as Europe struggles to take in tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing the war in their homeland, the U.S. finally agreed over the weekend to increase the number of refugees it would admit to this country for resettlement. The U.S. isn't responsible for the brutal, three-sided civil conflict that has forced some 4 million Syrians to seek refuge outside their country. But it can no longer avoid addressing the crisis; not only is it the right thing to do on humanitarian and moral grounds, it's also vital that the U.S. show the kind of principled leadership that the rest of the world can respect. Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. will raise the number of refugees it accepts annually from around the world from 70,000 to 100,000 over the next two years, including some 10,000 Syrians the White House has proposed admitting next year. Given the hundreds of thousands of Syrians expected to arrive in the E.U. this year alone, those



http://www.karamfoundation.org/the-team/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-refugees-who-could-be-us.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0


http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/08/we-should-all-be-competing-to-take-in-refugees-europe-syria/



numbers are a drop in the bucket. Compare our efforts to those of Germany, which is preparing to resettle at least 800,000 refugees by the end of the year. The U.S. could surely do better than the token increase it announced, but at least it's a start.

Moral obligation to help refugees, economic benefits irrelevant

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3967804c-604b-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#ixzz3mWOWGivB

In deciding what to do, the EU must draw a distinction between refugees and immigrants. Countries have legal and moral obligations to refugees. They do not have such obligations to other immigrants. Compassion for the desperate has to be distinct from a cooler assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of immigration. It may be helpful to argue that refugees could provide economic benefits to the recipient country. In many cases, no doubt, resourceful people who so much want to enter will do just that. But that is not the reason why they should be accepted.


Morality – Golden Rule

We should follow the Golden Rule when dealing with refugees

Arizona Central, September 24, 2015, Pope Francis Urges Congress to Show Compassion for Immigrants, http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2015/09/24/pope-francis-urges-congress-show-compassion-immigrants/72734356/ DOA: 9-25-15

Pope Francis delivered lawmakers a message of compassion and understanding for immigrants Thursday as part of his historic, nearly hour-long speech to joint session of Congress, a bitterly divided body that has grappled with border-security and immigration-reform issues for a decade.In doing so, the pope appealed to the United States' time-honored reputation as a nation of immigrants."We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were at once foreigners," said Pope Francis, the first-ever leader of the Roman Catholic Church to address U.S. senators and representatives. "I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descendants of immigrants."Citing the global refugee crisis as well as immigration to the United States from Mexico and Central America, the pope, who was often interrupted by applause, reminded lawmakers of the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."He also told the joint session on Capitol Hill that immigrants are looking for a better life for themselves and their loved ones, which is the same that anyone would want for their children."We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation," the pope said. "To respond in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal. We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays, to discard whatever proves troublesome."The Golden Rule guides in "a clear direction," he said.

"Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated," Pope Francis said. "Let us seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves. Let us help others to grow, as we would like to be helped ourselves."In a word, if we want security, let us give security," he continued. "If we want life, let us give life. If we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities."

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2015/09/24/pope-francis-urges-congress-show-compassion-immigrants/72734356/

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2015/09/24/pope-francis-urges-congress-show-compassion-immigrants/72734356/


Morality – General – Empathy

Empathy compels us to help the refugees

Nicholas Kristof, 9-4-15, New York Times, Refugees Who Could Be Us, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-refugees-who-could-be-us.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0 DOA: 9-6-15

WATCHING the horrific images of Syrian refugees struggling toward safety — or in the case of Aylan Kurdi, 3, drowning on that journey — I think of other refugees. Albert Einstein. Madeleine Albright. The Dalai Lama. And my dad. In the aftermath of World War II, my father swam the Danube River to flee Romania and become part of a tide of refugees that nobody much cared about. Fortunately, a family in Portland, Ore., sponsored his way to the United States, making this column possible. If you don’t see yourself or your family members in those images of today’s refugees, you need an empathy transplant. Aylan’s death reflected a systematic failure of world leadership, from Arab capitals to European ones, from Moscow to Washington.

Empathy demands assistance for refugees

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a visiting professor at Brandeis University's Heller School. His latest book is Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility, Co-founder and co-editor, American Prospect, September 9, 2015, Huffington Post, Refugee Blues, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/post_10092_b_8097064.html DOA: 9-22-15

On Sunday, I accompanied the employment minister, Ylva Johansson, to a rally organized by the youth movements of the Social Democrats, the Greens, and other progressive parties. The featured speaker was the prime minister himself. As thousands braved a nasty rainstorm to attend the outdoor rally, Löfven declared, "We need to decide right now what kind of Europe we are going to be. My Europe takes in refugees. My Europe doesn't build walls," he said. Johansson added, in our conversation, "In Sweden we are different and we need to stay different. To feel empathy with the suffering of another person, a person who is not like ourselves, is part of being human. To solve this refugee crisis is not rocket science, it is not impossible."

We should have empathy and take in refugees

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a visiting professor at Brandeis University's Heller School. His latest book is Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility., 9-6-15, Huffington Post, Refugee Blues, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/post_10092_b_8097064.html DOA: 9-7-15

On Sunday, I accompanied the employment minister, Ylva Johansson, to a rally organized by the youth movements of the Social Democrats, the Greens, and other progressive parties. The featured speaker was the prime minister himself. As thousands braved a nasty rainstorm to attend the outdoor rally, Löfven declared, "We need to decide right now what kind of Europe we are going to be. My Europe takes in refugees. My Europe doesn't build walls," he said. Johansson added, in our conversation, "In Sweden we are different and we need to stay different. To feel empathy with the suffering of another person, a person who is not like ourselves, is part of being human. To solve this refugee crisis is not rocket science, it is not impossible."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/post_10092_b_8097064.html


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/opinion/20kristof.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/world/europe/syria-boy-drowning.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/world/europe/syria-boy-drowning.html?_r=0





Morality – Syrians HAVE to Leave Syria

Syrians have been massacred - -they have no choice but to leave

Michael Ignatieff is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, September 5, 2015, New York Times, The refugee crisis isn’t a ‘European Problem,” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/the-refugee-crisis-isnt-a-european-problem.html?_r=0 DOA: 9-22-15

The Vietnamese and Hungarians were fleeing Communism. What’s holding back sympathy for the Syrians? They’ve been barrel-bombed in Aleppo by their own regime, they’ve been tortured, kidnapped and massacred by miscellaneous jihadis and opposition militias. They’ve been in refugee camps for years, waiting for that cruelly deceiving fiction “the international community” to come to their aid. Now, when they take to the roads, to the boats and to the trains, all our political leaders can think of is fences, barbed wire and more police. What must Syrians, camped on the street outside the Budapest railway station, be thinking of all that fine rhetoric of ours about human rights and refugee protection? If we fail, once again, to show that we mean what we say, we will be creating a generation with abiding hatred in its heart. So if compassion won’t do it, maybe prudence and fear might. God help us if these Syrians do not forgive us our indifference.

Syria is unlivable

Baltimore Sun, September 21, 2015, A Limited Welcome for Syria’s Refugees, http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-refugees-20150921-story.html DOA: 9-23-15

Taking in more Syrian refugees is a humanitarian obligation the U.S. must share with its European allies by virtue of its being the world's most powerful and wealthy nation and the fact that it has a vital stake in stabilizing one of the world's most volatile regions. But increasing the U.S. quota of refugees won't by itself solve the larger problem of the intractable conflict in Syria that is driving the exodus to Europe. For civilians trapped between the brutality of Syrian President Bashar Assad and the barbarism of ISIS and its allies, the country has become unlivable, and it's likely to stay that way until the war there ends.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-refugees-20150921-story.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/the-refugee-crisis-isnt-a-european-problem.html?_r=0


http://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-directory/michael-ignatieff


Morality -- Responsibility

Failure to act is the cause of the refugee crisis


“This crisis is on the group of world leaders who have prioritized other things,” rather than Syria, Kitchen said. “This is the result of that inaction.” António Guterres, the head of the U.N. refugee agency, said the crisis was in part “a failure of

The world, including the US, has done nothing to stop the violence in Syria

Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Her most recent book is Iron Curtain: the

Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956. , 9-4-15, Slate, Europe’s Deadly Denial, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/09/europe_refugee_crisis_the_eu_has_failed_to_confront_the_wars_in_syria_and.html DOA: 9-7-15

But if those praising Merkel’s “brave” stance were honest, they would acknowledge that she isn’t offering any long-term solutions either. Even if Europe does take another couple of hundred thousand people, dividing them up between countries—as it should—won’t prevent others from coming. To avoid accusations of heartlessness, the Italian coast guard rescues thousands of people from tiny boats and rubber dinghies. As a result, people keep taking the terrible risk. Here is what no one wants to say: This is, in essence, a security crisis. For years now, Europeans have chosen to pretend that wars taking place in Syria and Libya were somebody else’s problem. It’s also a foreign policy crisis: At different times and for different reasons, all of the large European states—the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany—have blocked attempts to create a common foreign and defense policy, and as a result they have no diplomatic or political clout. They haven’t wanted European leadership, and most of them wouldn’t have wanted American leadership either, even if any had been on offer. The richest economy in the world has a power vacuum at its heart and no army. Now the consequences are literally washing up on Europe’s shores.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/09/europe_refugee_crisis_the_eu_has_failed_to_confront_the_wars_in_syria_and.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/09/europe_refugee_crisis_the_eu_has_failed_to_confront_the_wars_in_syria_and.html




Morality – Responsibility (US)

We have destroyed the countries + duty to show compassion

Komorowski et al, September 22, 2015, The Guardian, Our duty in Central Europe is to show compassion to refugees, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/our-duty-in-central-europe-is-to-show-compassion-to-refugees DOA: 9-22-15

But this rift within a united Europe resurfaces today. This time it has a moral dimension. It is true, we are not accountable for the instability and collapse of refugees’ home countries. We are not the ones who have turned them into states plagued by incessant fear, where people are at risk of violent death, and where human life is brutish and short. Unlike the former colonial and imperial powers that took in large numbers of immigrants after the second world war, we have little experience of coexisting with people of different cultures, from far-off lands.

Nonetheless, as human beings, we have a duty to show compassion and to provide them with assistance. This is also our duty as Europeans. The European community was founded on the principle of solidarity. Today we must not refuse to take joint responsibility for the union, nor turn a blind eye to human suffering and the situation of countries most affected by the rising tide of migration.

Bronisław Komorowski President of Poland from 2010 to 2015

Aleksander Kwaśniewski President of Poland from 1995 to 2005

Danilo Türk Former president, Slovenia

Jerzy Baczyński Editor-in-chief of the Polityka weekly, Poland

Gordon Bajnai Former prime minister, Hungary

Mirosław Bałka Sculptor, Poland

Zuzana Bargerova Lawyer, Human Rights League, Slovakia

Zygmunt Bauman Sociologist, University of Leeds, Poland/Great Britain

Igor Blaževič Founder of One World Festival

Uldis Bērziņš Poet and interpreter, Latvia

Henryka Bochniarz President of Konfederacja Lewiatan, Poland

Michał Boni Member of European Parliament, former minister of administration and

digitalisation, Poland

Marek Borowski Senator, former finance minister, vice prime minister and marshal of the

Sejm, Poland

Bogdan Borusewicz Marshall of the senate, Poland

Martin Bútora Sociologist, adviser to the president, Slovakia

Bogusław Chrabota Editor-in-chief of the Rzeczpospolita daily, Poland

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/our-duty-in-central-europe-is-to-show-compassion-to-refugees

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/our-duty-in-central-europe-is-to-show-compassion-to-refugees


Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz Former prime minister, Poland

Liudas Dapkus Deputy editor-in-chief of the Lietuvos rytas daily, Lithuania

Aleš Debeljak Poet and essayist, Slovenia

Pavol Demeš Former minister of foreign affairs, Slovakia

Tibor Dessewffy President of Demos Hungary

Ivaylo Ditchev Professor of social science, writer, Bulgaria

Magda Faltová Director, Association for Integration and Migration, Czech Republic

Zsuzsa Ferge Professor of social science, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary

Władysław Frasyniuk Former dissident and member of parliament, Poland

Rayna Gavrilova Historian of culture, University of Sofia, Bulgaria

Rajko Grlić Director, Croatia

István Gyarmati Diplomat, Hungary

Tomáš Halík Theologian and writer, Czech Republic

Agnes Heller Philosopher, Hungary

Agnieszka Holland Director, Poland

Štefan Hríb Editor-in-chief, .týždeň weekly, Slovakia

Michal Hvorecký Writer, Slovakia

Ivars Ījabs Political scientist, Latvia

Vlasta Jalusic Funding member, former director and current senior research fellow, Peace

Institute, Slovenia

Josef Jařab Former senator, rector emeritus of Palacký University in Olomous, Czech Republic

Leszek Jażdżewski Editor-in-chief of the Liberté! quarterly, Poland

Jerzy Jedlicki Historian of ideas, former dissident, Poland

Jana Juráňová Writer, Slovakia

Aleksander Kaczorowski Journalist and essayist, Poland

Éva Karádi Editor-in chief of the Magyar Lettre Internationale quarterly, Hungary

Dávid Korányi Former undersecretary of state, deputy director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia

Center, Hungary/United States

János Kornai Professor emeritus, Harvard University and Corvinus, University of Budapest,

Hungary

András Kováts Director, Menedék – Hungarian Association for Migrants

Dominika Kozłowska Editor-in-chief of the Znak monthly, Poland

Ivan Krastev Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Bulgaria

Marcin Król Historian of ideas, University of Warsaw, Poland

Andrius Kubilius Former prime minister, Lithuania

Jarosław Kuisz Editor-in-chief of the Kultura Liberalna internet weekly, Poland


Ewa Kulik-Bielińska Director of the Stefan Batory Foundation, chairman of the European

Foundation Centre

Miroslav Kusý Political scientist, former dissident, Slovakia

Tomasz Lis Editor-in-chief of the Newsweek Polska weekly, Poland

Ondřej Liška Former minister of education, chairman of the Green party, Czech Republic

Ewa Łętowska Former ombudsman, Poland

Vita Matiss Political analyst, essayist, Latvia

Jiří Menzel Director, Czech Republic

Adam Michnik Editor-in-chief of the Gazeta Wyborcza daily, Poland

Piotr Mucharski Editor-in-chief of the Tygodnik Powszechny weekly, Poland

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi Chairwoman of the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and

State Building Research, Romania

Alvydas Nikžentaitis President of Lithuanian National Historians Committee

Jan Němec Writer, chairman of Czech Writers Association

Zbigniew Nosowski Editor-in-chief of the Więź monthly, Poland

Janina Ochojska President of Polish Humanitarian Action

Andrzej Olechowski Former finance minister and minister of foreign affairs, Poland

Jurica Pavičić Writer, Croatia

Márta Pardavi Co-chair, Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Hungary

Solomon Passy Former minister of foreign affairs, Bulgaria

Jiří Pehe Political scientist and writer, Czech Republic

Dimitrina Petrova Executive director Equal Rights Trust, Bulgaria

Petr Pithart Former prime minister, Czech Republic

Adam Pomorski President of the Polish PEN Club

Wojciech Przybylski Editor-in-chief Respublica Nowa and Eurozine, Austria/Poland

Zoran Pusić President of Civic Committee for Human Rights, Croatia

László Rajk Jr Architect, designer and political activist, Hungary

Rein Raud Author and cultural theorist, Estonia

Pauls Raudseps Journalist, Diena daily, Latvia

Adam Daniel Rotfeld Former minister of foreign affairs, Poland

Martin Rozumek Director, Organisation for Aid to Refugees , Czech Republic

Peter Salner Ethnologist, Slovakia

Andrzej Seweryn Theatre actor and director, Poland

Sławomir Sierakowski Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Poland

Martin Milan Šimečka Writer, journalist, Slovakia/Czech Republic

Marta Šimečková Journalist, interpreter, Slovakia

http://www.theguardian.com/world/refugees


Karel Schwarzenberg Former minister of foreign affairs, Czech Republic

Aleksander Smolar Chairman of the Stefan Batory Foundation, Poland

Ladislav Snopko Playwright, former minister of culture, Slovakia

Jan Sokol Philosopher, former dissident, Czech Republic

Andrzej Stasiuk Writer, Poland

Petruška Šustrová Former dissident, Czech Republic

Jerzy Szacki Sociologist, University of Warsaw, Poland

Małgorzata Szczęśniak Set designer, Poland

Monika Sznajderman Editor, Wydawnictwo Czarne, Poland

Soňa Szomolányi Political scientist and sociologist, Slovakia

Erik Tabery Editor-in-chief of the Respekt weekly, Czech Republic

Béla Tarr Director, Hungary

Stefan Tafrov Diplomat, human rights activist, Bulgaria

Vesna Teršelič Director, Documenta – Center for Dealing with the Past, Croatia

Róża von Thun und Hohenstein Member of European Parliament, Poland

Dubravka Ugrešić Poet and essayist, Croatia

Rimvydas Valatka Journalist, former member of parliament, Lithuania

Magdaléna Vášáryová Member of parliament, Slovakia

Tomas Venclova Poet, Lithuania

Krzysztof Warlikowski Theatre director, Poland

Jakub Wygnański Chairman of the board, Unit for Social Innovation and Research – Shipyard,

Poland

Adam Zagajewski Poet and essayist, University of Chicago, Poland/United States

Péter Zilahy Writer, Hungary

Andrzej Zoll Former president of the Constitutional Tribunal, Poland

US responsible for the refugee crisis -- the war in Iraq triggered it

Steve Hilton is co-founder and chief executive of Crowdpac and former senior adviser to the British prime minister, New York Times, September 10, 2015, Who’s Responsible for the Refugees? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/opinion/whos-responsible-for-the-refugees.html DOA: 9-10-15

And here’s the second simple truth. While we can argue forever about the causes of conflict in the Middle East, it is impossible to ignore the impact of American foreign policy on what’s happening in Europe. It was shocking to see an “expert” from the Council on Foreign Relations quoted on Saturday saying that the situation is “largely Europe’s responsibility.” How, exactly? The Iraq invasion (which could reasonably be described as “largely America’s responsibility”)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/05/us/many-obstacles-are-seen-to-us-taking-in-large-number-of-syrian-refugees.html?src=me&_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/opinion/whos-responsible-for-the-refugees.html


http://www.crowdpac.com/

https://twitter.com/stevehiltonx


unleashed a period of instability and competition in the region that is collapsing states and fueling sectarian conflict.

US responsible -- failure to intervene in the Syrian civil war is caused the crisis

Steve Hilton is co-founder and chief executive of Crowdpac and former senior adviser to the British prime minister, New York Times, September 10, 2015, Who’s Responsible for the Refugees? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/opinion/whos-responsible-for-the-refugees.html DOA: 9-10-15

European leaders wanted, years ago, to intervene directly in Syria in order to check President Bashar al-Assad’s cruelty; the United States didn’t. You can understand why — I wouldn’t for one second question the judgment of American political leaders that their country was reluctant to participate in another military conflict. But at least acknowledge the consequences of nonintervention: the protracted Syrian civil war, the emergence of a lawless territory ripe for exploitation by the sick zealots of the Islamic State, and the resulting flood of millions of displaced people.

Obama miscalculated on Syria


Yet as long as we’re talking about Syrian dysfunction, let’s also note European and American dysfunction. The Obama administration has repeatedly miscalculated on Syria and underestimated the problem, even as the crisis has steadily worsened. And some leading Republicans want to send in troops to confront the Islamic State (think Iraq redux).

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/opinion/nicholas-kristof-from-dc-to-syria-a-mess.html





http://www.crowdpac.com/

https://twitter.com/stevehiltonx


Morality – Responsibility (US) – A2: Nothing US Could Have Done

A No-Fly-Zone would substantially reduce violence in Syria


The least bad option today is to create a no-fly zone in the south of Syria. This could be done on a shoestring, enforced by U.S. Navy ships in the Mediterranean firing missiles, without ground troops. If we can simply declare a "no-fly zone," then why can't we just as easily declare that the war is over? Doesn't a no-fly zone have to be... That would end barrel bombings. Just as important, the no-fly zone would create leverage to pressure the Syrian regime — and its Russian and Iranian backers — to negotiate. “If they can’t use their aircraft, the day after they will know they can’t survive, and that will bring them to the table,” said Reza Afshar, a former British diplomat who now advises the Syrian opposition through his group, Independent Diplomat.

http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/middle-east-north-africa/syria-lebanon/syria/163-new-approach-in-southern-syria.aspx




Morality – General

We have an ethical obligation to be hospitable – to open our borders to those in need

Zylinska 04 (Joanna Zylinska, Professor of New Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, “The Universal Acts: Judith Butler and the biopolitics of immigration,” Cultural Studies Vol.18 No.4, July 2004, pg. 526) The problem of openness which is to be extended to our current and prospective guests - even, or perhaps especially , unwanted ones - is, according to Derrida, coextensive with the ethical problem. ‘ It is always about answering for a dwelling place , for one’s identity, one’s space, one’s limits, for the ethos as abode, habitation, house, hearth, family, home’ (Derrida 2000, pp. 149/151, emphasis added). Of course, this absolute and unlimited hospitality can be seen as crazy, self-harming or even impossible . But ethics in fact spans two different realms: it is always suspended between this unconditional hyperbolic order of the demand to answer for my plac e under the sun and open to the alterity of the other that precedes m e , and the conditional order of ethnos, of singular customs, norms, rules, places and political acts. If we see ethics as situated between these two different poles, it becomes clearer why we always remain in a relationship to ethics , why we must respond to it, or, in fact, why we will be responding to it no matter what. Even if we respond ‘nonethically’ to our guest by imposing on him a norm or political legislation as if it came from us ; even if we decide to close the door in the face of the other, make him wait outside for an extended period of time, send him back, cut off his benefits or place him in a detention centre, we must already respond to an ethical call. In this sense, our politics is preceded by an ethical injunction , which does not of course mean that we will ‘respond ethically’ to it (by offering him unlimited hospitality or welcome). However, and here lies the paradox, we will respond ethically to it (in the sense that the injunction coming from the other will make us take a stand, even if we choose to do nothing whatsoever and pretend that we may carry on as if nothing has happened). The ethics of

bodies that matter also entails the possibility of changing the laws and acts of the polis and

delineating some new forms of political identification and belonging . Indeed, in their respective readings of Antigone, Butler and Derrida show us not only that the paternal law towards the foreigner that regulates the idea of kinship in Western democracies can be altered but also that we can think community and kinship otherwise. If traditional hospitality is based on what Derrida calls ‘a conjugal model, paternal and phallocentric’, in which ‘[i]t’s the familial despot, the father, the spouse, and the boss, the master of the house who lays down the laws of hospitality’ (2000, p. 149), openness towards the alien and the foreign changes the very nature of the polis , with its Oedipal kinship structures and gender laws. Since, as Butler shows us, due to new family affiliations developed by queer communities but also as a result of developments in genomics it is no longer clear who my brother is, the logic of national identity and kinship that protects state boundaries against the ‘influx’ of asylum seekers is to be left wanting. This is not necessarily to advise a carnivalesque political strategy of abandoning all laws, burning all passports and opening all borders (although such actions should at least be considered ), but to point to the possibility of resignifying these laws through their (improper) reiteration. Enacted by political subjects whose own embodiment remains in the state of tension with the


normative assumptions regarding propriety, gender and kinship that underlie these laws, the laws of hospitality are never carried out according to the idea/l they are supposed to entail (cf. Butler 1993, p. 231).It is precisely Butler’s account of corporeality and matter, of political subjectivity and kinship, which makes Levinas’ ethics (and Derrida’s reworking of it) particularly relevant to this project. Although the concepts of the body and materiality are not absent from Levinas’ writings - indeed, he was one of the first thinkers to identify embodiment as a philosophical blindspot - Butler allows us to redraw the boundaries of the bodies that matter and question the mechanisms of their constitution. Her ‘others’ are not limited to ‘the stranger’, ‘the orphan’ and the ‘widow’ of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the more acceptable others who evoke sympathy and generate pity.10 It is also the AIDS sufferer, the transsexual and the drag queen / people whose bodies and relationships violate traditional gender and kinship structures - that matter to her. By investigating the contingent limits of universalization, Butler mobilizes us against naturalizing exclusion from the democratic polis and thus creates an opportunity for its radicalization (1997, p. 90). The ethics of bodies that matter does not thus amount to waiting at the door for a needy and humble asylum seeker to knock, and extending a helping hand to him or her. It also involves realizing that the s/he may intrude, invade and change my life to the extent that it will never be the same again, and that I may even become a stranger in the skin of my own home .

We have an obligation to act on behalf of the rights of refugees—without a commitment to preserve dignity we risk totalitarianism.

Jeffrey ISAAC Poli Sci @ Indiana ’96 “A New Guarantee on Earth: Hannah Arendt on Human Dignity and the Politics of Human Rights” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 70-72

Such examples of political praxis illustrate two of the most important features of Arendt's vision of the politics of human dignity. The first is that the most important locus of such a politics is neither the nation-state nor the international covenant or tribunal. These are, of course, crucial loci of power. The nation-state is still the preeminent political actor on the world scene. Constitutional limitations on the exercise of state power, forms of federated authority, and international legal codes--each a way of placing a kind of constraint upon state sovereignty--are all necessary if the rights of minorities, refugees, and dissenters are to be secured. But the primary impetus for such rights will always come from elsewhere, from the praxis of citizens who insist upon these rights and who are prepared to back up this insistence through political means. The words of Albert Camus are apposite: "Little is to be expected from present-day governments, since these live and act according to a murderous code. Hope remains only in the most difficult task of all: to reconsider everything from the ground up, so as to shape a living society inside a dying society. Men must therefore, as individuals, draw up among themselves, within frontiers and across them, a new social contract, which will unite them according to more reasonable principles" (1991, 135-36).Arendt's essays "Civil Disobedience" and On Revolution take up this very theme of a new social contract. Both deal with the subject of resistance to moribund and oppressive power and treat this resistance as a prefiguration of a new politics centered upon voluntary associations and council forms rather than formal or official state institutions. The "lost treasure" of the revolutionary tradition is, for Arendt, the model of an associational politics that exists beneath and across frontiers, shaking up the boundaries of the political and articulating alternative forms of allegiance, accountability, and citizenship (see Isaac 1994). Echoing Camus, Arendt writes that if there exists an alternative to national sovereignty, then it is such an associational politics, which works according to "a completely different principle of organization, which begins from below, continues upward, and finally leads to a parliament." She quickly adds that the details of such a politics are less important than its civic spirit, a spirit that resists the deracinating tendencies of modern political life (1972, 231-33).(29) That such a politics runs against the principle of sovereignty is for Arendt one of its strengths. As many commentators have observed, there is a deep pathos to Arendt's treatment of revolution, which is for her a glorious, empowering, and yet evanescent phenomenon, like a fire that burns brightly for only a moment (see Miller 1979). Arendt recognized the paradox of rebellion in the modern world, namely, that powerful associational impulses would be coopted by more official forms of politics. Yet, this can be viewed as the great virtue of this kind of politics--that it challenges the status quo and calls attention to itself in ways which demand redress and incorporation. In other words, such forms of resistance invigorate formal politics and keep it true to the spirit of human dignity. Their vigilant insistence


gives force to the support for human rights that is proclaimed, but often honored in the breach, by more authoritative domestic and international bodies. The second important feature of Arendt's vision of the politics of human dignity is that there is no single community, or single category of citizenship, that can once and for all solve the problem of human rights in the late modern world. One arena of human rights praxis is clearly the state itself, and one kind of citizenship appropriate to it is clearly what we think of as "domestic" citizenship--membership in the nation state as an American, or Italian, or Croatian. But i should be clear that the idea of "domestic" is simply an adjunct of the idea of sovereignty itself; it denotes those matters contained within the boundaries of sovereign power and subject to it. As such it encourages domesticity where vigor is also needed. For there is no reason to imagine that relevant human rights issues, or relevant communities, correspond to the boundaries of nation-states. Local, regional, and global forms of citizenship are equally possible and equally real. One can speak about the rights of aborigines, for example, as a Mohawk, as a Canadian, as a North American, as a human. In each case different forms of organization would be appropriate; in each case one would speak to a different, though not necessarily mutually exclusive, audience. How human rights claims are articulated and mobilized can and will vary from case to case and from time to time, as political identities are transformed and new alliances forged.(30) It would be equally mistaken to conflate ideas of community and citizenship with formal political organizations, be they states, nations, or confederations. In On Revolution Arendt writes about self-chosen "elites," groups of citizens distinguished by nothing but their deep interest and participation in specific public matters. She describes such elites as constituting, through their very own efforts, "elementary republics." In the Arendtian view it is possible to imagine a multiplicity of overlapping "republics," sometimes in tension with one another, sometimes in support of one another. The kinds of international legal institutions and federated state arrangements that she endorses would constitute ineffective security for human rights were they not authorized, empowered, and invigorated by a robust civil society of such "republics."The Helsinki Citizens' Assembly, formed in 1990 as an outgrowth of links formed between East European dissidents and West European peace activists after the Helsinki Accords in 1975, is an interesting example of what Arendt might have envisioned.(31) As Mary Kaldor, a co-founder, describes the assembly, "it is not addressed to governments except in so far as they are asked to guarantee freedom of travel and freedom of assembly so that citizens' groups can meet and communicate. It is a strategy of dialogue, an attempt to change society through the actions of citizens rather than governments...in short, to create a new political culture. In such a situation, the behavior of governments either changes or becomes less and less relevant" (Kaldor 1989, 15). The assembly has been described as a loose association of citizens acting together in self-organized associations, movements, and initiatives across national boundaries. It is hardly indifferent to the policies of governments; petitioning, demonstrating, and fostering debate about state policies regarding human rights have been central to its activities. But the power that its members have been able to constitute is an important force in its own right; indeed, it is only because of this power, an organizational and an ethical power, that it is capable of supporting more directly "political" efforts, such as legislation, and of influencing the course of state action. According to Kaldor, "we don't represent anyone except the movements and institutions in which we are involved. In many cases, we represent no one but ourselves. And our power rests not on whom we represent but in what we do--in what we say, in our ideas, in our quest for truth, in the projects we undertake. It rests on our energy and commitment" (Kaldor 1991, 215). Groups such as the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly and Amnesty International embody the kind of associational politics central to Arendt's conception of modern citizenship. They are forms of collective empowerment that might provide a new foundation for human dignity. They play an indispensable role in calling attention to human rights abuses, giving voice to the disenfranchised and persecuted, and empowering citizens to act in concert on behalf of the expansion of rights. They seek not only to alter state policies, for example, on matters such as minority and refugee rights, but also to offer their own, unofficial support for displaced or persecuted people. A group such as Spanish Refugee Aid, with which Arendt was involved, was no substitute for state policies hospitable to the rights of Spanish refugees, nor was it a substitute for diplomatic efforts to change a dictatorial regime; but the voluntary organization of relief efforts and forms of solidarity is itself an indispensable and preeminently political effort, without which more hospitable state policies would not be possible. Not a wholesale alternative to other, more inclusive or official, forms of political community, such endeavors themselves constitute vital forms of civic participation and empowerment. They can be viewed as "elementary republics" of citizens committed to human rights. Our world is in many ways different from the one Arendt described in her Preface to the first edition of The Origins of Totalitarianism. Writing in 1951, with the recent experiences of world war and Holocaust seared into her memory, and another world conflict dangerously imminent, she noted that "this moment of anticipation is like the calm that settles after all hopes have died" (1973, vii). From her perspective the world, still reeling after the traumatic shocks of totalitarianism and mass destruction, seemed to be hurtling toward other, no less disturbing, forms of violence and human suffering. In contrast, we are witnesses to the end of the Cold War. Our more optimistic contemporaries, invoking Hegel with apparent conviction, only yesterday proclaimed the end of history and the triumph of liberal democracy. Yet, few today are sanguine about the state of the world. As I write this essay millions of innocent civilians are starving in Rwanda and Kenya, the victims of brutal civil conflict. Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, Tamils in Sri Lanka, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and countless other national minorities clamor for human rights. In the heart of Europe, Sarajevo is under Serbian siege, and Bosnian Muslims suffer a brutal, murderous campaign of "ethnic cleansing."(32) German neo-Nazi youth regularly vandalize and burn refugee hostels, to the cheers of large crowds of sympathetic bystanders. Throughout France, Italy, and Germany there are increasingly audible calls to exclude "foreigners" in the name of "real citizens," "true" French, or Italians, or Germans who do not wish to share their country with the others. Across the Atlantic Ocean things are no different, as the Clinton administration recently turned back Haitian refugees fleeing a brutal dictatorship, just as its predecessors had done before with refugees displaced by economic trauma and civil war in El Salvador and Guatemala (see United Nations 1993, Zolberg 1989).


The 1992 Human Rights Watch World Report notes that in the wake of the Cold War "respect for human rights faces a dangerous challenge in the rise of exclusionary ideologies...the quest for ethnic, linguistic or religious purity, pursued by growing numbers, lies behind much of today's bloodshed. By closing the community to diversity and stripping outsiders of essential rights, these dangerous visions of enforced conformity nourish a climate of often brutal intolerance" (1992, 1). Arendt, writing more than forty years ago, observed that "under the most diverse conditions and disparate circumstances, we watch the development of the same phenomena--homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth" (1973, vii). Such a vision sounds grimly familiar.While Arendt is not a theorist well known for her reflections on human rights, her writing is an indispensable resource for thinking about the threats to human dignity in the late modern world. As she recognized, human rights are not a given of human nature; they are the always tenuous results of a politics that seeks to establish them, a vigorous politics intent on constituting relatively secure spaces of human freedom and dignity. And as she saw, the nation-state, far from being the vehicle of the self-determination of individuals and peoples, is in many ways an obstacle to the dignity that individuals and communities seek. Those interested in human rights, who wish to provide a new guarantee for human dignity, have no alternative but to take responsibility upon themselves, to act politically as members of elementary republics, locally and globally, on behalf of a dignity that is in perpetual jeopardy in the world in which we live. A

As the Human Rights Watch Report makes chillingly clear, such a politics is hardly a matter of mere academic interest.

Jacqueline Bhabha, Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, director of Harvard’s University Committee on Human Rights Studies, 2009, Human Rights Quarterly, “Arendt’s Children: Do Today’s Migrant Children Have a Right to Have Rights?” Project Muse. http://muse.jhu.edu/search/results?action=search&searchtype=author&section1=author&search1=%22Bhabha%2C%20Jacqueline.%22.

Access to basic shelter, subsistence level welfare payments, and in-kind benefits is as fundamental to modern conceptions of rights in general, and children’s rights in particular, as is protection from physical violence. The same is true for access to such social and economic rights as education and health care, as the Committee on the Rights of the Child has frequently noted in its concluding observations on states parties’ periodic reports. 38 Yet here too, public officials operate under personal codes of conduct that translate into dramatic rights denials. Sylvia da Lomba has remarked, “Curtailments of social rights for irregular migrants in host countries have become essential components of restrictive immigration policies. . . . The threat of destitution as a deterrent against irregular migration generates acute tensions within host states between immigration laws and human rights protections.” 39 Consider this Spanish case: Sixteen-year-old ‘Abd al Samad R. has been in Ceuta [an autonomous Spanish city located on the Moroccan coast] for about five years, including two and a half years living at the San Antonio Center. While at San Antonio he was diagnosed as suffering from renal disease, a potentially life-threatening medical condition, and he received medical treatment. Then, in October 2001 he was told to leave San Antonio, apparently for disciplinary infractions. When we interviewed ‘Abd al Samad on November 8, 2001, he was living with a group of other children and youth in makeshift hovels squeezed between a breakwater and piles of ceramic tiles and other building supplies. He had received no medical treatment since leaving San Antonio, although he was frequently in severe pain. “The pain comes often, when it is cold, or when someone hits me,” he said. “I tried to go to the hospital when I was in pain but they wouldn’t admit me. They won’t accept you at the hospital unless some one from San Antonio comes with you. When the pain comes I can’t move so who will come to take me to the hospital?” 40 Without official confirmation of the child’s social entitlements, he remained outside the categories established by the state—in effect not a person


before the law. These exclusionary attitudes were translated directly into rightlessness. The acute risks to which this willful exclusion, combined with the fear of detection as an irregular migrant by state officials, can give rise were noted by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Siliadin v. France. In this case, an unaccompanied child from Togo, “unlawfully present in [France] and in fear of arrest by the police . . . was . . . subjected to forced labour . . . [and] held in servitude,” compelled to carry out housework and child care for fifteen hours a day without holidays. 41 The Court commented that the applicant “was entirely at [her employers’] mercy, since her papers had been confiscated . . . [S]he had no freedom of movement or free time. As she had not been sent to school . . . the applicant could not hope that her situation would improve.” 42

Irregular migration status increases the risk of invisibility and thus gross rights violations. As the Court pointed out, states parties must recognize this serious risk and act “with greater firmness . . . in assessing the infringements of the fundamental values of democratic societies.” 43 In other words, according to the Court, states have an obligation to “see” 44 Arendt’s children—willful and selective blindness is not a legitimate option .

Statelessness is equal to losing the right to have rights- leads to totalitarianism

Seyla Benhabib, professor of political science and philosophy at Yale, June 2004, “The Rights of Others.” http://books.google.com/books?id=3cuUHAJNmuYC&dq=Seyla+Benhabib+“Rights+of+Others”&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=d-pqxd2bJq&sig=Oyb7-wKlE-80M8AlnsdkH3bLD80&hl=en&ei=rqtKSqWVIYqmNurxjIoO&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

The previous chapter analyzed Kant’s formulation and defense of cosmopolitan right and argued that the text left unclear which of the following premises justified the cosmopolitan right to hospitality: the right to seek human association, which in fact, could be viewed as an extension of the human claim to freedom; or the premise of the sphericality of the earth’s surface and the juridical fiction of the common possession of the earth. Kant’s discussion of cosmopolitan right, whatever its shortcomings, delineates a new terrain in the history of political thought. In formulating a sphere of right - in the juridical and moral senses of the term — between domestic constitutional and customary international law, Kant charted a terrain onto which the nations of this world began to venture only at the end two world wars. Kant was concerned that the granting of the right to permanent residency (Gusrrecht) should remain a privilege of self-governing republican communities. Naturalization is a sovereign privilege. The obverse side of naturalization is "denationalization." or loss of citizenship status. After Kant, it was Hannah Arendt who turned to the ambiguous legacy of cosmopolitan law, and who dissected the paradoxes at the heart of the terminally based sovereign state system. One of the great political thinkers of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt argued that the twin phenomena of "political evil" and “statelessness” would remain the most daunting problems into the twenty-first century as well (Arendt 1349.;,134; [1951]1968;seeBenhabib[1996] 21103). Arendt always insisted that among the root causes of totalitarianism was the collapse of the nation—state system in Europe during the two world wars. The totalitarian disregard for human life and the eventual treatment of human beings as "superfluous" entities began, for Hannah Arendt, when millions of human beings were rendered “stateless" and denied the "right to have rights." Statelessness, or the loss of nationality status, she argued, was tantamount to the loss of all rights. The stateless were deprived not only of their citizenship rights; they were deprived of any human rights. The rights of man and the rights of the citizen, which the modem bourgeois revolutions had so clearly delineated were deeply imbricated. The loss of citizenship rights, therefore, contrary to all human rights declarations, was politically tantamount to the loss of human rights altogether. This chapter begins with an examination of Arendt contribution; thereafter, l develop a series of systematic considerations which are aimed to show why neither the right to naturalization nor the


prerogative of denaturalization can be considered sovereign privileges alone; the airs: is a universal human right, while the second - denaturalization · is its abrogation.

Moral obligation –government has responsibility to safeguard vulnerable unaccompanied alien children.Julianne Duncan, Ph.D. Director, Office of Children's Services Migration and Refugee Services/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Joint Testimony of Migration and Refugee Services/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service before The Senate Subcommittee on Immigration February 28, 2002. http://www.usccb.org/mrs/duncantestimony.shtml

Because of our long experience in caring for and advocating on behalf of unaccompanied minors, Mr. Chairman, our testimony today will point out changes in law we believe are required, as laid out in Senator Feinstein's bill, to reform the current system. In the view of MRS/USCCB and LIRS, our government's treatment of unaccompanied alien children should be governed by the following principles: The Federal government has a special responsibility to ensure that unaccompanied alien children are treated with dignity and care. Children are our most precious gifts. Their youthfulness, lack of maturity, and inexperience make them inherently vulnerable and in the need of the protection of adults. Unaccompanied alien children are among the most vulnerable of this vulnerable population. They are separated from both their families and their communities of origin, they are often escaping persecution and exploitation, they often find themselves in a land in which the language and culture are alien to them, and they are thrust into complex legal proceedings that even adults have great difficulty navigating and understanding. Unaccompanied minors should be held in the least restrictive setting as possible, preferably with family members or with a foster family. Secure facilities should be used on a very limited basis and only when absolutely necessary to protect a child's immediate safety or the safety of the community. Minors should be reunited with parents, guardians, or other family members within the United States as soon as possible. While a family is in temporary detention, they should not be separated unless it is in the best interest of the child. Because of their special vulnerability and inability to represent themselves, unaccompanied children should be provided with legal representation and guardians ad litem to assist them in immigration proceedings and to see that care and placement decisions are made with a child's best interest in mind. Mr. Chairman, these principles are not currently governing U.S. policy toward unaccompanied alien children in the United States. Instead, thousands of children each year are held in detention, some with juvenile criminal offenders, with little or no access to legal assistance and with decreasing ability to reunite with family members. Some children are detained for months awaiting their asylum hearing, while others are deported immediately back to their country-of-origin without substantial attempts to locate their parents or immediate family members. Moreover, as a child welfare expert with knowledge of the foster care and juvenile justice systems, I find it shocking to see how children in INS custody are treated. Equally disturbing is that children in immigration proceedings are not ensured legal representation, a practice which is not accepted in other types of court proceedings.

International consensus – US must fulfill moral responsibility to protect child asylee seekers.Rachel Bien an associate at Outten & Golden LLP, clerked for Judge Thomas G. Nelson on the

http://www.usccb.org/mrs/duncantestimony.shtml


United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, ‘03. “NOTHING TO DECLARE BUT THEIR CHILDHOOD: REFORMING U.S. ASYLUM LAW TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN” Journal of Law and Policy 12 pg. 840-841

The growing international consensus that child asylum seekers require special protections has important implications for U.S. asylum laws. Although the U.S. asylum system currently does not differentiate between adult and child applicants, the United States should build on recent proposals to afford greater procedural protections to child asylum seekers with substantive provisions that address the forms of persecution unique to children. With millions of children suffering from the consequences of armed conflicts around the world, the international community has a special legal and moral obligation to ensure that child asylum seekers receive adequate care and protection. As this record of violence makes clear, a world unwilling to protect children is one in which “children are slaughtered, raped, and maimed . . . exploited as soldiers . . . starved and exposed to extreme brutality.”202 In short, it is a world devoid of the most basic of human values. The United States has an important role to play in ensuring that children who escape such turmoil are properly protected.

Refugee children suffer trauma and often do not receive the help they need

National Child Traumatic Stress Network and Refugee Trauma Task Force, Established by Congress in 2000 is a collaboration of academic and community-based service centers whose mission is to raise the standard of care and increase access to services for traumatized children and their families across the United States. Combining knowledge of child development, expertise in the full range of child traumatic experiences, and attention to cultural perspectives, the NCTSN serves as a national resource for developing and disseminating evidence-based interventions, trauma-informed services, and public and professional education. 2005 <http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:8wvH_mjc7L0J:www.nctsnet.org/nctsn_assets/pdfs/promising_practices/MH_Interventions_for_Refugee_Children.pdf+social+services+available+for+refugee+children&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us>

As discussed extensively in the White Paper I, refugee children experience a great number of stressors throughout their pre-migration, flight, and resettlement experiences that impact on their psychological well being. Refugee children experience trauma resulting from war and political violence in their countries of origin prior to migration, as well as during flight or in refugee camps. These multiple stressors include direct exposure to war time violence and combat experience, displacement and loss of home, malnutrition, separation from caregivers, detention and torture and a multitude of other traumatic circumstances affecting the children’s health, mental health and general well being. A large number of studies have documented a wide range of symptoms experienced by refugee children, including anxiety, recurring nightmares, insomnia, secondary enuresis, introversion, anxiety and depressive symptoms, relationship problems, behavioral problems, academic difficulties, anorexia, and somatic problems (Allodi, 1980; Almqvist & Brandell-Forsberg, 1997; Angel, Hjern, & Ingleby, 2001; Arroyo & Eth, 1985; Boothby, 1994; Cohn, Holzer, Koch, & Severin, 1980; Felsman, Leong, Johnson, & Felsman, 1990; Gibson, 1989; Goldstein, Wampler, & Wise, 1997; Hjern, Angel, & Hoejer, 1991; Hodes, 2000; Kinzie, Sack, Angell, Manson, & Roth, 1986; Krener & Sabin, 1985; Macksoud & Aber, 1996; Masser, 1992; McCloskey & Southwick, 1996; McCloskey, Southwick, Fernandez-Esquer, & Locke, 1995; Mollica, Poole, Son, Murray, & Tor, 1997; Muecke & Sassi, 1992; Paaredekooper, de Jong, & Hermanns, 1999; Papageorgiou et al., 2000; Weine, Becker, Levy, & McGlashan, 1997; C. Williams & Westermeyer, 1983), and linked the presence of these symptoms to exposure to trauma prior to migration. With high prevalence of posttraumatic


stress symptoms among refugee children reported to be between 50-90% (Lustig et al., 2004), many refugee children are in need of trauma-informed treatment and services. Despite evidence for the need for such treatment, refugee children in resettlement are unlikely to benefit from mental health services because they rarely use them. This problem is not unique to refugee children, as many recent reviews have observed that few U.S. children in need of mental health services receive care (Collins & Collins, 1994; Kataoka, Zhang, & Wells, 2002; Stephenson, 2000; Surgeon General's Report, 1999). Epidemiological studies report that fewer than 20% of children who need mental health care actually receive services (Lahey, Flagg, Bird, & Schwab-Stone, 1996). In addition, of those children who do receive services, fewer than 50% receive the appropriate service relative to their need (Kazdin, 1996). Because refugee children face additional barriers to receiving care, experts suspect that most refugee children in need of mental health services do not find their way into the existing mental health care system (Geltman, Augustyn, Barnett, Klass, & Groves, 2000; Westermeyer & Wahmanholm, 1996). One survey of refugee health programs in nine metropolitan areas in the U.S. found that while 78% of the sites offered mental health care, only 33% of the sites carried out mental health status examinations (Vergara, Miller, Martin, & Cookson, 2003). This suggests that refugees with mental health problems are unlikely to be identified, and thus unlikely to receive treatment. Overall, these findings suggest that interventions that facilitate access and engagement in mental health services for refugee children are needed.


Morality – General -- Hospitality

We should be hospitable and welcome others in need

LAACHIR IN 2007 [Karima, lecturer in cultural theory at university of Birmingham, Mobilizing Hospitality, isbn: 9780754670155, p _177-178___]

The European popular imagination has been haunted by images of Europe inundated by foreigners — economic and political refugees — perceived as 'we scroungers', job-snatchers' and 'threats to security' .' Some politicians started to foment these fears to pick up extra votes, especially extreme right- movements , which have been gaining ground in local and parliamentary elect The increasing popularity of leaders of far right parties, who all publicly voice xenophobia and racism against those perceived as foreigners, are alarming examples of the return of exclusionist popular nationalism and fascism to haunt postcolonial Europe. 'Immigration' demands and those of ethnic minorities, especially religious demands, have become contentious issues in Europe. Hospitality has become more difficult since the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent 'war on terror' led by the American Government . The terrorist bombings in Madrid (March 2004) and London (July 2005) have been interpreted by some as a conflict between contending civilizations, Western and Islamic. The lives of diasporic Muslims and of immigrants in Europe and the United States have become subject to constant surveillance and are the subject of various regulations that aim to keep Muslim Fundamentalist networks under control. However, the lives of ordinary European Muslims have been deeply affected by these changes and, as a result, their loyalty, together with their European citizenship and strong cultural affiliation to Europe as their homeland, have been brought into question. They are now viewed with distrust and caution. Hospitality is important , therefore, as an analytical concept since it opens up the debates of welcoming 'otherness' beyond issues of the reception of immigrants by their 'host' countries, towards more important problems of living together with people of 'different' cultural, religious and social affiliations . More than ever before, the world is a melting pot of different cultures and thus we are confronted with the theme of how to survive with the 'other', or those perceived as others, without seeing them as a threat or danger. The problem of xenophobia and racism ( which is not limited to Europe) in the last decades after the horrors of colonialism and fascism raises a crucial question about the relationships between communities of different `race', religion and culture. The ùs' and 'them' differentiation — camouflaged in various discourses: 'ethnic' (a soft word for `racial'), 'religious', but mainly cultural terms — is marked by a strong degree of xenophobia, fear and racism . Technological and communicative revolutions, economic and political upheavals, such as de industrialization, unemployment, poverty and the mass displacement of populations are all factors that have 'once again invited many to find in populist ultranationalism. racism, and authoritarianism, reassurance and a variety of certainty that can answer radical doubts and anxieties over self-hood, being, and belonging ' (Gilroy, 2000: 155).

OUR AFFIRMATIVE IS AN EMBRACE OF INFINITE HOSPITALITY TO THE OTHER. THERE IS DANGER SURROUNDING GIVING FULL ACCESS TO NONCITIZENS, AND WE INVITE IT ANYWAYS. THE STATUS QUO’S PLACING OF CONDITIONS ON HOSPITALITY, THIS INSPIRES NATIONALISM AND VIOLENCE OVER THE OTHER. OUR INFINITE HOSPITALITY TOWARD THE OTHER INTERRUPTS THESE ATTEMPTS AT MASTERY AND CREATES A NEW POSSIBILITY FOR ETHICS.

MOLZ AND GIBSON IN 2007 [Jennie, asst prof of sociology, college of Holy Cross, and Sarah, lecturer in cultural studies at University of Surrey, Mobilizing Hospitality, isbn: 9780754670155, p __8-10__]

The metaphor of hospitality structures contemporary debates on nationalism, migration, multiculturalism, and asylum. Who feels at home within the nation? Who is excluded or fails to feel at home in the nation? Is a host necessarily a citizen of the host nation-state? Why are immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers imagined as guests of the host nation-state? These are


important questions for understanding the metaphors of hospitality and the home in contemporary debates on national identity and citizenship (see Kelly 2006). Hospitality is intimately connected to nationalism where crossing the border into the nation (whether as an immigrant or as a tourist is dependent upon national definitions of what counts as hospitality, and the figure towards whom hospitality is offered and received (Rosello, 2001, viii). In the context of debates on nationalism and immigration, discourses of hospitality work to blur 'the distinction between a discourse of rights and a discourse of generosity, the language of social contracts and the language of excess and gift-giving' (Rosello (2001: 9). In these debates, the Kantian cosmopolitan right to ùniversal hospitality' is in tension with the sovereignty of the nation-state (see Benhabib, 2004, 2005). In studies of migration, multiculturalism and postcolonialism, the metaphor of hospitality is frequently invoked (Ahmed, 2000, 2004; Rosello, 2001; Hage, 2002, 2003; Chan, 2005; Still, 2006). But this metaphor of hospitality is a dead metaphor (Rosello, 2001: 3) since such studies employ the metaphor of 'hospitality' precisely to reveal the hostility present within such policies of managing diversity within the ̀ host nation'. In constructing `the immigrant as guest' (Rosello, 2001), the host nation excludes the immigrant from feeling at home in the nation. This opposition between host/guest, native/stranger maintains the line between power/powerlessness, ownership/dispossession, stability/nomadism (Rosello, 2001: 18). Such a rhetoric of hospitality is ideological as it enables `some people to have fantasies of control' (Hage, 2002: 165; see Gibson, this volume) in the power to host and welcome. Similarly multicultural national imaginaries which often employ the metaphor of hospitality are revealed to be, in fact, 'not very hospitable' (Ahmed, 2000: 190) as they continue to position 'the natives' as hosts who decide which guests/ strangers will or will not be welcomed. Discourses of multiculturalism involve the contradictory processes of ìncorporation and expulsion' (Ahmed, 2000: 97) or an ìnclusive exclusion' (Laachir this volume). The guests/strangers in such a narrative of multiculturalism are consequently placed under a 'debt of hospitality' (Chan, 2005: 21) to the host nation . Such uses of the metaphor of hospitality in studies of migration and multiculturalism similarly ignore the historical social relations of colonialism, which involved the transformation of guests into hosts (Ahmed, 2000: 190). Whether the host nation welcomes, expels, or deters the stranger these responses to the other are all premised on the same power relation. It is the native who is empowered to feel at home and to assume the position of the host. If the immigrant is imagined as `the guest,' the 'host nation' maintains its historical position of power and privilege in determining who is or is not welcome to enter the country, but also under what conditions of entry. Hospitality, however, is not simply a question of crossing (or not) the border. The question today, Bauman argues, is how to live with strangers daily and permanently (1997: 55).The host nation, despite explicit evidence to its contrary, often imagines itself narcissistically as being hospitable. Derrida's distinction between a limited, conditional hospitality and an infinite, unconditional hospitality has been critically engaged with to puncture these narcissistic myths nations use to construct the current so-called problem of asylum (on Britain see Ahmed, 2004, and Gibson, 2003, 2006, and in this volume; on the Netherlands see Metselaar, 2005; on France see Rosello, 2001, and Still, 2004; on Australia see Kelly, 2006, Pugliese, 2002, and Schlunke, 2002; and on New Zealand see Worth, 2006). In such studies, the figure of the asylum seeker is constructed as `the uninvited' (Harding, 2000), where the nation- state imagines itself to be a 'reluctant host' (Joly and Cohen, 1989) who is unwilling to generously offer hospitality to such unwelcome and parasitical guests . The tension between the human right to asylum (which is ratified in international agreements) is often in contrast to the right of the nation-state to maintain control over its borders.While the metaphor ofhospitality in discourses of nationalism and immigration has empowered the native to assume the powerful position of the host, it is precisely this metaphor that needs to be deconstructed in order to conceive new ways of figuring the social relations between citizens, immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers and nation- states. The metaphor of hospitality needs to be deconstructed in order to interrogate the different contexts in which it is deployed as a means of legitimating the power of some while disavowing the rights of others. If the immigrant is imagined as a guest (Rosello, 2001), the figure of the immigrant is conceived either negatively in anti- immigration discourses as a parasite or positively

in discourses of multiculturalism as a grateful guest. While the host-guest paradigm has been useful in theorizing social relations between strangers within studies of nationalism, immigration, and multiculturalism, rather than imagining the immigrant through the binary opposition of host/guest it is important to re-conceive the social relations that characterize the relationships between host and guest, citizen and immigrant. Hospitality is about the other questioning and interrupting the self, rather than reasserting the mastery of the self . Instead of rejecting the metaphor of hospitality, the contributors to this book take the opportunity to consider the promise of hospitality (see the chapters by Gibson, Kuntsman, Laachir, and Still in this volume) in reconfiguring social relations between strangers within studies of nationalism, immigration, and multiculturalism.A key point of intersection between the discourses we have just described is the way the concept of home is evoked in the ethics and politics of welcoming the other. National discourses of hospitality frame the nation-state as a 'home' that is open to (certain) foreigners, but whose borders must be protected; while in tourism, the notion of hospitality suggests a range of possible homes, including the cities and local places tourists visit, the homes of friends and family members who host travellers, or the hotel or resort that serves as the tourist's 'home-away-from-home'. Tourism and migration mobilities both imply a movement away from home, but also toward a new (permanent or temporary) home. For example, migration studies often `foreground acts of "homing" and "re-grounding" which point towards the complex interrelation between travel and dwelling' (Hannam, Sheller and Urry, 2006:


10; and see Hage 1997 on 'migrant home-building' and Brah 1996 on diasporic 'homing desires'). The chapters in this book suggest that as much as hospitality is associated with mobility, it is equally concerned with stasis and rest (a place to eat, sleep, or recuperate). Indeed, hospitality occurs precisely at this intersection between travel and dwelling. To host or to be hosted are both forms of travelling-in-dwelling and dwelling-in-travelling where the mobilities of guests, travellers and foreigners intersect with hosts and homes.

OUR AFFIRMATIVE IS AN EXTENSION OF INFINITE HOSPITALITY TO THE OTHER THAT CHALLENGES THE WAY THAT STATES ONLY RELATE POSITIVELY TO ITS OWN CITIZENS. THIS SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE ALLOWS A NEW MODEL OF LIVING WITH DIFFERENCEMOLZ AND GIBSON IN 2007 [Jennie, asst prof of sociology, college of Holy Cross, and Sarah, lecturer in cultural studies at University of Surrey, Mobilizing Hospitality, isbn: 9780754670155, p __4-5__]Because several of the chapters in this collection engage directly with Derrida's work on hospitality, we want to take a moment here to outline Derrida's critique of Kant's universal hospitality and to reflect on Derrida's contribution to our understanding of hospitality as a framework for thinking about the ethics of social relations in a mobile world. Derrida explains that because Kant's notion of hospitality relies on conditions of reciprocity, duties and obligations between people and nation- states it delimits rather than opens up borders and possibilities. Derrida admonishes that Kant's hospitality is 'only juridical and political: it grants only the right of temporary sojourn and not the right of residence; it concerns only the citizens of States' (Derrida, 1999: 87). In contrast, Derrida draws a distinction 'between an ethics of hospitality (an ethics as hospitality) and a law or apolitics of hospitality ' (Derrida, 1999: 19), seeing Kant's formulation of hospitality as a politics of conditional hospitality as opposed to an ethics of infinite, unconditional and absolute hospitality (Gibson, 2003). The laws of hospitality place a series of conditions upon the welcoming of others, but the law of hospitality — hospitality as an ethics — 'tells us or invites us, or gives us the order or injunction to welcome anyone, any other one, without checking at the border ' (Derrida and Duttmann, 1997: 8).What Derrida encourages us to think about is a hospitality that is infinite, absolute and completely open — a welcoming of the other and regardless of who that other is, regardless of the potential dangers and risks involved. An ethics of hospitality entails opening one's borders or doors to anyone, acting beyond our own self-interest. It is not an easy thing to imagine, and indeed Derrida is fully aware of this difficulty. As Gibson observes:Absolute hospitality is impossible as it undermines the very condition of a nation or state, which is constituted through the erection of frontiers and borders. Absolute hospitality requires the "generosity" of the state even as the ethical notion of absolute hospitality goes beyond any frontier or border of the state (2003: 374-375). Absolute hospitality is impossible for the nation-state, and equally aporetic in the case of interpersonal exchanges of hospitality, for in welcoming the foreigner unconditionally, the host must relinquish the mastery of his or her home which is the condition of being able to offer hospitality in the first place. In other words, absolute hospitality requires us to go beyond, even beyond the very conditions that enable a state or a person to offer hospitality at all. Derrida is concerned with the difficulty in thinking through these two supplementary meanings of hospitality as an ethics and as a politics.If the two meanings of hospitality remain mutually irreducible, it is always in the name pure and hyberbolic hospitality that it is necessary, in order to render it as effective as possible, to invent the best arrangements [dispositions], the least bad conditions, the most just legislation. This is necessary to avoid the perverse effects of an unlimited hospitality whose risks I tried to define. This is the double law of hospitality: to calculate the risks, yes, but without closing the door on the incalculable, that is, on the future and the foreigner (Derrida and Duttmann, 2005: 6). His concern is not to reconcile the politics of hospitality with an ethics of hospitality, but rather to extend a provocative challenge that speaks to the politics of self-other relations and draws out a model for living with difference .

OUR POLITICS IS PART OF A CONSTANT ONGOING ATTEMPT AT INSTITUTING A TRUE DEMOCRATIC TREATMENT OF THE OTHER. OUR PLAN ALLOWS A GLIMPSE OF EMBRACE TOWARD NONCITIZENS WHICH MAKES POSSIBLE A MORE DEMOCRATIC POLITICSLAACHIR IN 2007 [Karima, lecturer in cultural theory at university of Birmingham, Mobilizing Hospitality, isbn: 9780754670155, p __188-189__]

Derrida introduces the absolute irreducibility between the ethics of unconditional hospitality, which is based on the absolute welcome of the Other without any restrictions, and the politics of conditional hospitality, which is based on the restrictions of law making . Even though the hiatus between the ethics (the law) of hospitality and the politics (the laws) of hospitality exists, the two cannot exist separately. This aporia does not mean paralysis, but in fact, it means the primacy of the ethics of hospitality over politics, and thus, keeping alive the danger of hostility in the making of the politics of hospitality by 'political invention' that respects the uniqueness of the other every time a decision is taken .Derrida stresses that neither hospitality nor ethics can exist without politics or democracy and vice versa. Democracy, like hospitality is marked by the same aporia between the law and the laws, between incalculation, unconditionality and calculability,


conditionality. Derrida suggests the idea of democracy-to-come that would free the interpretation of the concept of equality from its `phallogocentric schema of fraternity', which has dominated Western democracies. The concept of fraternization has played an important role in the history of the formation of political discourse in Europe, especially in France. Such a democracy would be 'a matter of thinking alterity without hierarchical difference' (Derrida, 1997a: 232). Democracyto-come has the character of 'the incalculable', like that of unconditional hospitality, but its incalculability, that resists 'fraternization', or the tribal and the national, allows the calculability of politicization and thus ameliorates the existing democracy. It is an opening of democracy beyond the juridical and towards a space where the juridical and the ethical can intersect, where the law and laws of hospitality could uncomfortably and paradoxically cohabit. It is a form of 'providing constant pressure on the state, a pressure of emancipatory intent aiming at its infinite amelioration, the perfectibility of politics, the endless betterment of actually existing democracy' (Critchley, 1999: 281).If post-war immigrants in Europe were considered for a long time as a temporary foreign labour force and thus had to be kept outside political and social affairs, the most recent realization of their settlement in the host countries has given rise to a 'sociological approach' that still grants them a marginal place in society. The immigrants and their descendants are used to 'strengthen' the coherence of the main community and thus reinforce the dialectic of proximity and distance, which situates the immigrants and their descendants (who are European citizens) in a position of social foreignness and territorial exteriority. Moreover, the cultural specificity of Europe's postcolonial diaspora has been constructed in terms of the 'double culture', that is, a culture that cannot integrate with the European one (especially Muslim cultures) because of their irreducible differences. The emergence of Islam in the public sphere has made Islamic rituals visible and thus has raised the idea of its incompatibility with Europe's 'secular' values. Therefore, hospitality is not only marked by the àutochthonous', the 'familial' and the national that exclude other, but it is also marked by the legacy of colonialism with its hierarchical and racist subordination of other cultures and people. Descendants of postcolonial migrants still carry the image of the ex-colonial 'immigrant' with its violent colonial residue that relegates them to the margins of society on the basis of their 'cultural', èthnic', 'religious' and social affiliations that are sometimes deemed incompatible with European values. The history of post-war migration to Europe must not be limited to the crude economic perspective (Europe's need of a labour force after the Second World War) because that denies the historical complexity of colonialism and postcolonialism. The history of immigration is part of the imperial history of Europe. With their mixed origins and cultures, descendants of post-war immigrants can resist monolithic representations of cultures and histories and can suggest new alliances and solidarity that transcend skin colour and thus open hospitality beyond nationalistic and ethnic determinism.

UR AFFIRMATIVE IS NOT CONDITIONAL HOSPITALITY. WE ARE ETHICAL BECAUSE WE INVITE THE OTHER INTO THE HOME WITH INFINITE HOSPITALITYLAACHIR IN 2007 [Karima, lecturer in cultural theory at university of Birmingham, Mobilizing Hospitality, isbn: 9780754670155, p __178-179__]

This chapter engages with Derrida's critique of the concept of hospitality in Western philosophy and culture, which he defines as being a conditional hospitality, a hospitality of invitation and not visitation. You invite someone to your country, to your house and you set the rules for that invitation. In that sense, your welcome of the other remains limited by law and jurisdiction. This type of hospitality, according to Derrida, does not interrupt the mastery of the host over his/her home or national space, quite the opposite; it is a reassertion of that mastery. Unconditional hospitality, on the other hand, is about allowing the self to be interrupted or questioned by the welcome of the other, that is, to welcome the other without setting restrictions or limitations. My question is how can we use Derrida's idea of the intervention of unconditional hospitality or ethics in the making of conditional hospitality or politics at a time when hospitality is marked by closure and fear, especially in France, his 'home' country? I examine the way hospitality is marked by an 'inclusive exclusion' of Europe's postcolonial settlers, who are still perceived as aliens with no links to their host country and who are viewed as a threat to the uniformity and integrity of the nation. I argue that the attempt to fix the social, economic and cultural mobility of these diverse postcolonial diasporic communities is a manifestation of the perpetuation of colonial culture that still preserves the same power structures that existed in the colonies.

CONDITIONAL HOSPITALITY IS A GESTURE THAT MAINTAINS CONTROL OVER THE OTHER. UNCONDITIONAL HOSPITALITY INTERRUPTS THIS.MOLZ AND GIBSON IN 2007 [Jennie, asst prof of sociology, college of Holy Cross, and Sarah, lecturer in cultural studies at University of Surrey, Mobilizing Hospitality, isbn: 9780754670155, p __5-6__]

As critics working especially in the area of migration and multiculturalism remind us, our official and informal policies toward welcoming the other for the most part fall far short of Derrida's ideal of


absolute hospitality (see Gibson in this volume). While we might find in political and popular rhetoric gestures toward multiculturalist tolerance and metaphors of generous hospitality surrounding the reception of migrants, these discourses often serve to reiterate a specific power relation between the self and the other . As Yegenoglu (2003) notes, 'far from laying the grounds for an interruption of sovereign identity of the self, multiculturalist respect and tolerance implies the conditional welcoming of the guest within the prescribed limits of the law and hence implies a reassertion of mastery over the national space' (16). In other words, hospitality tends to reassert the identity and belonging-ness of the host against the movement, shifting, unstable, un-belonging- ness of the guest . But in Derrida's deconstruction of hospitality, the binary opposition between host and guest unravels:The h&c' who receives (the host), the one who welcomes the invited or received hóte (the guest), the welcoming h&c, who considers himself the owner of the place, is in truth a hóte received in his own home. He receives the hospitality that he offers in his own home; he receives it from his own home — which, in the end, does not belong to him. The hôte as host is a guest (Derrida, 1999: 41). Like Derrida, we want to destabilize hospitality as a paradigm and 'host' and ̀ guest' as distinct categories, by 'mobilizing hospitality' — by opening it up and by questioning its closures, by examining the nuanced fluidity of categories such as host and guest , and by disassociating stasis with hosts/homes and movement with guests/travel. We take as our starting point the mobilities of tourism and migration, which are generating new patterns of circulation, intersection and proximity between strangers . The chapters in this book bring debates around voluntary and obligatory mobilities into conversation by examining the politics of travelling and staying still and by interrogating the ethical responses to mobile others who are more or less invited, more or less welcome. >

CURRENT WESTERN HOSPITALITY IS MARKED BY PATERNALISTIC CONTROL. OUR HOSPITALITY THROWS THAT NTO QUESTION. WE INTERVENE IN THE NAME OF THE UNCONDITIONAL. WE SHOULD REFUSE RISK MANAGEMENT POLITICS BECAUSE IT IS THE CONTROL OF THESE CALCULATIONS THAT CLOSES US OFF TO THE BORDERS. WE MUST HOLD OPEN A SPACE FOR THE INCALCULABLE OTHER.LAACHIR IN 2007 [Karima, lecturer in cultural theory at university of Birmingham, Mobilizing Hospitality, isbn: 9780754670155, p __182-183__]

According to Derrida, hospitality in the 'Western' tradition is marked by the paternal and the phallogocentric, or by the logic of the master/host, nation, the door or the threshold. His critique calls into question the limitations of this specifically ̀European' history of hospitality and suggests a future beyond this history, and thus a hospitality beyond the logic of 'paternity' (and its extension to the nation) or the logos. This does not mean that nation states should open their borders unconditionally to any 'new' comer or that they should go beyond their national interests to 'welcome' the other . In fact, Derrida's critique is a call to resist the tyranny of the state and its law making while opening up democratic institutions beyond a certain patriotic reductionism. That is what Derrida calls his 'New International', a rebellion against patriotism: 'compatriots of every country, translator-poets rebel against patriotism' (1997a: 57). Hospitality lives on the paradox of presupposing a nation, a home, a door for it to happen but once one establishes a threshold, a door or a nation, hospitality ceases to happen and becomes hostility (Derrida, 2001: 6). Therefore, hospitality is marked by a double bind and its impossibility is the condition of its possibility. It stays on the threshold that keeps it alive and open to new-corners. The distinction introduced in Derrida's works between, on the one hand, unconditional hospitality or 'absolute desire for hospitality' and on the other, conditional hospitality or the rights and duties that condition hospitality Ca law, a conditional ethics, a politics') is not a distinction that 'paralyses' hospitality . In fact, it aims at directing our attention to find an 'intermediate schema' between the two, 'a radical heterogeneity, but also indissociability' in the sense of calling for the other or prescribing the other. To keep alive the aporia between ethics (the law of hospitality) and politics (the laws of hospitality) is to keep political laws and regulations open to new changes and circumstances and to keep alive the fact that hospitality is always inhabited by hostility. It is the question of intervening in the conditional hospitality in the name of the unconditional, an intervention that, though surrounded by contradictions and aporias, recognizes the need of 'perverting' the laws for the sake of 'perfecting' them. Derrida stresses the aporetic relationship between the unconditional hospitality or ethics, which starts with risks, and the conditional hospitality or politics that starts with the calculation or controlling of these risks. However, if this calculation means the closure of all boundaries, not only territorial but also cultural,


social and linguistic, this would mean the death of the nation. If the other by definition is incalculable, political calculations have to include a margin for the incalculable . In other words, Derrida (1997a: 13) refuses to close down hospitality to the logic of 'paternity' and (its extension the nation) or the logos because hospitality is the anti-logic of the logos, that is, of closure and determinism.

OUR HOSPITALITY CANNOT BE CALCULATED – IT IS INFINITELY RELATABLE TO THE OTHERLAACHIR IN 2007 [Karima, lecturer in cultural theory at university of Birmingham, Mobilizing Hospitality, isbn: 9780754670155, p _180-181___]

Kant's universal hospitality as a condition for world peace does not leave any space for any form of ethical consideration as it is solely based on the 'legal' or the juridical . In light of this, Derrida (2001: 22) accuses Kant of restricting hospitality to sovereignty, as he defines it as a law: 'Hospitality signifies here the public nature (publicite) of public space, as it is always the case for the juridical in the Kantian sense; hospitality is dependent on and is controlled by the law and the state police'. Kant limits universal hospitality to a number of juridical and political conditions (it is first limited only to citizens of states, it is only temporary, and so on) which, though institutional, are based on a common 'natural right' of the possession of surface of the earth . Unlike Kant, Emmanuel Levinas introduces the disjunction between the host and the guest, the host becoming the guest of the guest in his/her own home as the home of the other, that is, to be welcomed by the face of the other that one intends to welcome . In Totalite et Infini, Levinas (1961) criticizes the 'tyranny of the state' when hospitality becomes part of the state or becomes political because even though this becoming political is a response to the call of the third and a response to an 'aspiration', it still deforms the I and the other and thus introduces 'tyrannical violence'. Politics, therefore, should not be left on its own, because in Levinas's words 'it judges them [the I and the other who have given rise it] according to universal rules, and thus as [being] in absentia' .4 In other words, the political renders the face invisible at the moment of bringing it into the space of public phenomenality. In Adieu To Emmanuel Levinas (1999a: 21), Derrida reflects on Levinas' Totalite et Infini, which he perceives as 'an immense treatise of hospitality'. In this treatise, Levinas insists that the face that must be welcomed, must not be reduced to `thematization' (thematization) or description, and neither must hospitality. The face refers to the infinite alterity of the other who is free from any theme and who cannot be described. In other words, the other cannot be possessed or mastered. Hospitality, therefore, is opposed to thematization because it is the welcoming of the other who cannot be calculated or known, that is, the other is infinite and 'withdraws from the theme ' (Derrida, 1999a: 23). Welcoming or receiving in the Levinasian sense implies the act of receiving as an ethical relation. Thus, the welcome to come presupposes `recollection' (le recueillement) or the 'the intimacy of the at-home-with-oneself'. He claims that the 'at-home-with-oneself does not mean to close oneself off, but rather is a 'desire' towards the transcendence of the other (Derrida, 1999a: 92). Therefore, Levinas recognizes that there can be no welcome of the other or hospitality without this radical alterity which in turn presupposes 'infinite separation'. Thus, 'the athome-with-oneself would thus no longer be a sort of nature or rootedness but a response to a wandering, the phenomenon of wandering it brings to a halt' ( Derrida, 1999a: 92). Levinas suggests a theory of respecting the other instead of 'mastering' him/her; that is, a theory of desire that bases itself on infinite separation instead of negation and assimilation.' Levinas attempts to change the conventional tradition of the relation to alterity as an appropriation of the same in its totality to a different mode of relation based on respect of the infinity and heterogeneity of the other. Hospitality in the Levinasian sense also presupposes feminine alterity. 6 Hospitality comes before or precedes property and thus its law dictates that the host who welcomes the invited or received guest is in truth a guest received in his own home. It is this absolute precedence of the welcome where the master of the house is already a received h&c' (host) or a guest in his own home, that would be called `feminine alterity' (Talterit6 feminine'). The pervertible or perverting nature of the law of hospitality implies that absolute hospitality should break with hospitality as a pact or a right or duty, as the former means the welcoming not only of the foreigner but of the absolute, unknown other. What is needed today in comparing Kant and Levinas, and with regard to the right of refuge in a world of millions of displaced people, Derrida argues (1999a: 101), is to 'call out for another international law, another border politics, another humanitarian politics, indeed a humanitarian commitment that effectively operates beyond the interests of the Nation-States.'

OUR AFFIRMATIVE INVIGORATES A POLITICS NOT BASED ON DESPAIR OR INJURY, BUT HOPE.MOLZ AND GIBSON IN 2007 [Jennie, asst prof of sociology, college of Holy Cross, and Sarah, lecturer in cultural studies at University of Surrey, Mobilizing Hospitality, isbn: 9780754670155, p _15___

The metaphor of mooring moves us in this direction, suggesting as it does the notion of safe harbour, but also the possibility of (re)launching our journey. For Ghassan Hage (2002, 2003) hospitality is intertwined with hope:[W]hat we are talking about when it comes to discussing hospitality towards asylum seekers, or compensation for the colonised indigenous people of the world, or compassion towards the chronically unemployed [is]: the availability, the circulation and the exchange of hope.


Compassion, hospitality and the recognition of oppression are all about giving hope to marginalised people (2003: 9).Thus, hospitality is not just about the gift of repose, but also about the gift of hope. Making the guest feel at home is not just about seeing to his or her physical comfort or embodied needs (though these are certainly important); it is also about instilling the guest with a feeling of hope and a sense of being 'propelled' forward (Hage, 2005). As Hage has eloquently argued. hospitality provides not only a place to be safely still, but also the hope of moving:For what is security if it isn't the capacity to move confidently? And what is 'home' if not the ground that allows such a confident form of mobility [... ]. A home has to be both closed enough to offer shelter and open enough to allow for this capacity to perceive what the world has to offer and to provide us with enough energy to go and seek it (2003: 28.) In other words, hospitality mobilizes the guest. Hospitality, home and hope are all intricately inscribed upon one another as the gift of staying still and moving forward.


Morality – General – Obligation to the Other

Our obligation to the other extends to addressing material miseryVan Der Merwe, professor of philosophy at Stellenbosch, 2006W.L. van der Merwe, professor of philosophy at University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, “The Ethics of Responsibility”, http://hdl.handle.net/10019/49

“The other concerns me in all his material misery. It is a matter, eventually, of nourishing him, of clothing him”, says Levinas (2001: 52). In the same vein his notion of substitution aims to disclose our capacity to feel the other’s pain in our own flesh (Levinas 1981: 117). In fact, one’s responsibility for the other can be likened to one’s devotion to oneself (Levinas 1989b: 83). Levinas’s understanding of “ethics” does not provide for responsibility as a psychological event theorisation remains in order to solve moral and practical problems. The other person is both the ethical other and the political third (Levinas 1981: 160), and it is the presence of the third that necessitates justice, knowledge, equality, politics, and so forth, for decisions need to be made as to how responsibility has to be divided and fulfilled. The third therefore enables a respite from infinite responsibility and includes the I in an equality and a reciprocity.

Acting in obligation to the other prior to acting for the self is essential to founding a basis for ethics.Peter Jowers Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of the West of England. 2005 Trust, Risk, and Uncertainty. “Risk, Sensibility, Ethics and Justice in the Later Levinas” Pgs. 47-73

During the Rwandan massacres of 1997, Paul Rusesabagina, manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali, repeatedly used a fax line which the Hutu leaders had forgotten to cut, vainly attempting to alert the White House, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in France and others to the horrors of the genocide there, knowing that if caught, he faced instant death. 'He would stay up until four in the morning - sending faxes, calling, ringing the whole world.' The church of Sainte Famille was just down the hill from the hotel. Later, Paul exclaimed, 'But you know, Sainte Famille also had a working phone line, and that priest Father Wenceslas, never used it. My goodness!' Asked why, he answered, 'That's a mystery ... Everyone could have done it.' Challenged during the period as to the incongruity of carrying a gun, Father Wenceslas replied, 'They've already killed fifty-nine priests; I don't want to be the sixtieth' (Gourevitch, 1998: 132-6). Anton Schmidt was a German soldier whose name came up in the course of the Adolf Eichmann trial. He helped Jewish partisans by supplying them with forged papers and trucks until apprehended and executed by the Germans. Hannah Arendt, noting the silence which descended on the court on hearing this tale, remarks, 'How utterly different everything would be today in this courtroom, in Israel, in Germany, in all of Europe, and perhaps in all countries of the world, if only more such stories could have been told' (Arendt, cited in Bernstein, 2002: 259). Under these extreme conditions, of maximum uncertainty risking almost certain death, why did two men act on behalf of others rather than themselves? Why are we not prepared to risk hospitality in the form of asylum when we know that she whom we turn away risks death? Why do we not trust our instinct to help her? I examine Emmanuel Levinas’s


contribution to these pressing questions and his contention that to act ethically is to be willing to go to the point of substituting one’s life, for strangers

The obligation to the other precedes alternate concerns.Peter Jowers Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of the West of England. 2005 Trust, Risk, and Uncertainty. “Risk, Sensibility, Ethics and Justice in the Later Levinas” Pgs. 47-73

We cannot refuse responsibility to the Other in this sensible dimension. Levinas never ceases to hammer this point home. It is not an issue of conscious choice. For the moment let us imagine that he means that in proximity, one creature as minimal self necessarily responds to another. True to his phenomenological leanings, Levinas is concerned with first-person experience. Proximity is conceived as the self's experience as 'mine'. I am called into question. My enjoyment is traumatically blown apart. I alone am responsible. As only a little more than sensate creature, I am passive, my responsibility is affective not cognitive, I have no choice in the matter and do not seek reciprocity, exchange or return care. The space between creatures is asymmetrical, curved. The Other, my 'neighbour' or the stranger, and so forth, is 'higher', and as my ethical master as teacher, is inspirational and holy in the sense that as infinite, unknowable, non reducible, she opens out onto the infinite beyond totality, beyond or otherwise than any cognized being (OR: 63).6

Levinas is driving at a form of encounter between human beings prior to consciousness which, through proximity, 'is the implication of approaching one in fraternity'. Response to the Other's subjectivity as self, is 'prior to consciousness, but via sensibility one is caught up with him in fraternity [sic]' (OR: 82-3). Proximity arises neither from the 'the troubled tranquillity' of a sovereign ego which wants to be left alone, nor is it merely an intersection of random affective flows, nor 'the makeshift of an impossible confusion'. The once ego now become self and now 'almost' creature is exposed. This is the minimal point at which proximity, the opening of one to the Other, occurs. Here, or then, the self is open, vulnerable, restless, decentred and metaphorically naked, without defence. Not all the metaphors are negative. Proximity might be regarded as 'better than all the rest’ or other momnts, it might be the ‘plentitude of an instant arrested’ (OB: 92).

The relationship to the other is the most important ethical encounter – even in the presence of another we must not abandon the other.Peter Jowers Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of the West of England. 2005 Trust, Risk, and Uncertainty. “Risk, Sensibility, Ethics and Justice in the Later Levinas” Pgs. 47-73

Justice stems from the entry of the third party. All questioning and consciousness, and hence philosophy, stems from the incipient realization in any proximity there is, implied, in another. Paying attention, being taken hostage by the Other, excludes the possibility at the same relation with another at the same time. Her suffering might be more urgent! We do her an injustice, but to turn from our neighbor, from the immediacy of the present encounter, would also be to commit a crime. We are trapped in debt we have not chosen, but which we have incurred. The responsibility to the Other is an immediacy antecedent to questions', but ills troubled, becomes a problem 1when a third party enters'. The entry of another or the scene perturbs the one-way relation from the self to the Other; my responsibility to you. It introduces an experiential contradiction in the 'Saying'. Whom should we respond to? Why? At this point 'the limit of responsibility' is reached. The question is born. Levinas notes:


Justice is necessary, that is, comparison, coexistence, contemporaneousness, assembling order, thematisatlon, the visibility of faces, and thus intentionality and the intellect, and in intentionality and the intellect, the intelligibility of a system arid thence also a Co presence on an equal footing as before a court of justice. (OR: 157)If the entry of the third party triggers the emergence of consciousness, it is one founded in proximity. Without proximity would be mere enjoyment and suffering, utterly egotistical and hence pointless, fatal, lonely and inhuman. The reversal of the ethical and ontological is to he found in these simple lines.

Levinas is careful to specify that the entry of the third is not necessarily empirically present, the 'other is from the first, the brother [sic] of all other men' (08: 157). Sensibility prior to cognition must contain an inherent movement beyond itself, in the direction of consciousness as transition towards proto-abstractive abilities if that thesis can be sustained. Levinas's logic at this point is extremely opaque when he argues that weighing, thought, objectification' depends on a decree which betrays the Illeity of the Other (OR: 158). lllelty understood in one way is the sheer sensed presence, the himness [sic] of the Others presence, prior to arty demanding of shibholeths, identification as one of mine or theirs, before all questions, before language as the said, before any discernment as benign stranger or malevolent alien. The absurdity of traumatised asylum-seekers having to resister their request within a few hours in a language and bureaucratic system they cannot understand sustains the more general point (Derrida, 2002a:' I cannot discuss here the 'gratingly patriarchal' (Sandford, 2002: 147) tone of Levinas's treatment, exclusion and subordination of the feminine nor the full complexities surrounding Illeity.

The emergence of justice betrays Illelty, it is a violence perpetrated on the one-for-another relationship of proximity, but simultaneously it opens a different relation to 'her', that of justice. I am now responsible to her, still not as understood as abstraction, but simultaneously as a member of society and as citizen, The betrayal has cooled the immediacy of proximity, but still informs it with its 'warmth'. The movement to abstraction, to questioning informed by the demand for justice, signals the origins (arcS) of society, legally secured rights and specified responsibilities or duties. The scales of justice as comparative weighing up of competing claims demand representation; the Saying becomes and must be fixed in the said as book. law and science. Philosophy's time has cone.

Derrida's beautiful Archive Fever is a profound meditation on this necessity and the dangers of ethical betrayal on the part of those with the authority (archons) who control access to and interpretation of the book as written law (Derrida, 1996). This 'violent' betrayal of ethical proximity necessarily persists. Ethics is entwined 'before' the law emerges. Betrayal occurs because, as conscious subjects, we become concerned with justice. As citizens we have become subject to, or always potentially capable of, being hauled 'before' the law. These themes are developed in Derrida's seminal essay 'Force of Law: The "Mystical Foundation of Authority" (1990).

Justice is given meaning because it is always entwined with and can draw breath from proximity. 'The one for the other of proximity is not a deforming abstraction. In it justice is shown from the first ... It is born from ... the one-for-the-other, signification' (08: 159). Proximity is the 'centre of gravitation' around which the edifice of being, the state, politics and techniques revolve. It is important that 'society' for Levirias does not mean our ethnos, ir notion, us'. The state is always 'on the verge of integrating into a we, which congeals both me and my neighbor (GB: 161). Thus, 'justice remains justice only in a society where there is no distinction between those close and those far off, but in which there also remains the impossibility of passing by the closest' (OR: 139). There the guest has no responsibility. I only have it for and to her. Our hospitable laws should welcome her. The motif of the ethical encounter in I.evinas's late work has been explored. Its dependence on materiality and sensibility has been established. The creature as sensibility was distinguished from self and ego- An examination of saying, proximity, pain, worked towards understanding Levinas's conception of the psyche, singular responsibility and being for others. The source and point of justice were traced. The ethical encounter is one of almost absolute risk. Few take it consciously. Is Levinas convincing when arguing that it happens to us all as sensate creatures? Was Levinas whistling in the wind, merely offering hope when lacing the appalling horrors of the age? Paul and Anton showed that some act both responsibly and consciously!


Our existence is inherently violent-we must address this by being for the other.Van Der Merwe, professor of philosophy at Stellenbosch, 2006W.L. van der Merwe, professor of philosophy at University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, “The Ethics of Responsibility”, http://hdl.handle.net/10019/49

As is clear from his interviews,6 Levinas (1985) is not unaware of the implications of the gravity which he affords ethics, but counters these by recounting that he lives and thinks in a wounded world.7 His philosophy is an attempt to give a voice to the unbear-able guilt experienced by the survivors — the survived victims of the Holocaust — at having survived (Peperzak 1995: 5). The focus of such a person is not his own innocence, but instead his implicit contribution to the fact that another, with one digit differing from his own serial number, did not make it. It is the shattered innocence of a human being who knows that his usurpation of the position of survivor could only have come about by denying an other a chance

to life. The survived victim is the vivid symbol of all people — despite our own victimisation or innocence, we are responsible for our neighbour beyond choice or excuse. As Pascal stated in his Pensées, one’s “being in the world” or “place in the sun” is the beginning of usurpation of the whole earth (Levinas 1999: 130). Thus, one is violent and murderous toward all others whom one displaces by the simple act of taking up a place. And so it is not the suffering of the other per se that gives rise to the ethics of responsibility, but this capacity of the self both to harm and to “be-for” the other. As we have seen, this responsibility is already embedded in the “neutrality” of simply maintaining one’s own space and merely facing the other, being exposed to his alterity and infinity. Though the other may not actually be suffering, I discover myself in the nakedness of his face as one who can hurt him or simply choose to live only for myself. Not “being-for-the-other” results in hunger, poverty, and ultimately killing (Levinas 1985: 96-7). Hence, denying the humane within ourselves manifests these concrete examples of the “flesh of life” and ultimately points to a responsibility prior to any action or neglect on the part of the individual.

Levinas’s distinction between our suffering and the suffering of other is crucial-it’s crucial we take steps to alleviate the suffering of others

Edelglass, professor philosophy Colby, 2006William Edelglass, professor of philosophy at Colby College, 10/26/2006, “Levinas on Suffering and Compassion”, http://www.springerlink.com/content/r626p602m2r7kg02/ [Luke]

With the end of theodicy, the end of theories that subsume the singular suffering of the Other into systems of knowledge, Levinas finds a grounding for ethics in the compassionate exposure to the suffering Other. The end of theodicy poses the question of the value and truth of morality, the question which inspires much of Levinas's philosophy, if not his project as a whole. Echoing the well-known sentence that begins Totality and Infinity, in 'Useless Suffering' Levinas writes, 'The philosophical problem, then, that is posed by the useless pain that appears in its fundamental malignancy through the events of the twentieth century, concerns the meaning that religiosity, but also the human morality of goodness, can continue to have after the end of theodicy' (US99). With the end of theodicy, Levinas hears a commandment 'that now demands even more from the resources of the I in each one of us, and from its suffering inspired by the suffering of the other, from its compassion which is a non-useless suffering (or love), which is no longer suffering 'for nothing,' and immediately has meaning' (US 100). In the 'ethical perspective of the interhuman' suffering can be meaningful when it is the


compassionate suffering for the Other: 'In this perspective,' Levinas writes, 'there is a radical difference between the suffering in the other, where it is unforgivable to me, solicits me and calls me, and suffering in me, my own experience of suffering, whose constitutional or colagenital uselessness can take on a meaning, the only one of which suffering is capable, in becoming a suffering for the suffering (inexorable though it may be) of someone else' (US94). 15



Germany/France Economy Advantage

Distributing people across Europe takes pressure of Germany and France


The idea behind the plan — backed by Germany and France, the dominant powers in Europe — is to relieve the pressure on front-line nations like Italy and Greece, which migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa have been flooding. Germany has estimated that it will give refuge to as many as one million people this year. The dispute has highlighted a political divide between wealthier countries like Germany and Sweden, which have emphasized multiculturalism and humanitarian aid, and poorer countries from the former Communist bloc, like Hungary and Slovakia, that are alarmed at the economic and social challenges of absorbing so many migrants.




Should Act on Ethics

Human survival requires acting with a conscious

Ketels, 1996[Violet, associate professor of English at Temple University, where she formerly directed the Intellectual Heritage Program, THE HOLOCAUST: REMEMBERING FOR THE FUTURE: "Havel to the Castle!" The Power of the Word, The American Academy of Political and Social Science, November, 1996, 548 Annals 45, Lexis] /Wyo-MBEven though, as Americans, we have not experienced "by fire, hunger and the sword" n19 the terrible disasters in war overtaking other human beings on their home ground, we know the consequences of human hospitality to evil. We know about human perfidy: the chasm that separates proclaiming virtue from acting decently. Even those of us trained to linguistic skepticism and the relativity of moral judgment can grasp the verity in the stark warning, "If something exists in one place, it will exist everywhere." n20 That the dreadful something warned against

continues to exist anywhere should fill us with an inextinguishable yearning to do something. Our impotence to action against the brutality of mass slaughter shames us. We have the historical record to ransack for precedent and corollaries--letters, documents, testaments, books--written words that would even "preserve their validity in the eyes of a man threatened with instant death." n21 The truths gleanable from the record of totalitarian barbarism cited in

them may be common knowledge; they are by no means commonly acknowledged. n22 They appear in print upon many a page; they have not yet--still not yet--sufficiently penetrated human consciousness. Herein lies the supreme lesson for intellectuals, those who have the projective power to grasp what is not yet evident to the general human consciousness : it is possible to bring down totalitarian regimes either by violence or by a gradual transformation of human consciousness; it is not possible to bring them down " if we ignore them , make excuses for them, yield to them or accept their way of playing the game" n23 in order to avoid violence. The history of the gentle revolutions of Poland, Hungary, and [*51] Czechoslovakia suggests that those revolutions would not have happened at all, and certainly not bloodlessly, without the moral engagement and political activism of intellectuals in those besieged cultures. Hundreds of thousands of students, workers, and peasants joined in the final efforts to defeat the totalitarian regimes that collapsed in 1989. Still, it was the intellectuals , during decades when they repeatedly risked careers, freedom, and their very lives, often in dangerous solitary challenges to power , who formed the unifying consensus, developed the liberating philosophy, wrote the rallying cries, framed the politics , mobilized the will and energies of disparate groups, and literally took to the streets to lead nonviolent protests that became revolutions. The most profound insights into this process that gradually penetrated social consciousness sufficiently to make revolution possible can be read in the role Vaclav Havel played before and during Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution. As

George Steiner reflects, while "the mystery of creative and analytic genius . . . is given to the very few," others can be "woken to its presence and exposed to its demands." n24 Havel possesses that

rare creative and analytic genius. We see it in the spaciousness of his moral vision for the future, distilled from the crucible of personal suffering and observation; in his poet's ability to translate both experience and vision into language that comes as close as possible to truth and survives translation across cultures; in the compelling force of his personal heroism. Characteristically, Havel raises local experience to universal relevance. "If today's planetary civilization has any hope of survival ," he begins, " that hope lies chiefly in what we understand as the human spirit ." He continues: If we don't wish to destroy ourselves in national, religious or political discord; if we don't wish to find our world


with twice its current population, half of it dying of hunger; if we don't wish to kill ourselves with ballistic missiles armed with atomic warheads or eliminate ourselves with bacteria specially cultivated for the purpose; if we don't wish to see some people go desperately hungry while others throw tons of wheat into the ocean; if we don't wish to suffocate in the global greenhouse we are heating up for ourselves or to be burned by radiation leaking through holes we have made in the ozone; if we don't wish to exhaust the nonrenewable, mineral resources of this planet , without which we cannot survive; if, in short, we don't wish any of this to happen, then we must --as humanity, as people, as conscious beings with spirit, mind and a sense of responsibility--somehow come to our senses. n25 Somehow we must come together in "a kind of general mobilization of human consciousness , of the human mind and spirit, human responsibility , human reason ." n26

We should extend hospitality to stop oppression

Fasching 95 1995 (Darrell J. Fasching, “Response to Peter Haas,” The Ellul Forum, January) KD

Finally, let me say that I have little patience for the argument that narratives of hospitality

andhuman dignity (for after all, to offer hospitality to the stranger is to recognize the dignity of precisely theone who does not

share my story) are exclusively Western and a form of liberal Western imperialism through which we are trying to impose our morality on other societies. First of all, in The Ethical Challenge, I show that Buddhism is the bearer of the tradition of hospitality to the stranger and human dignity in Asia (i.e., welcoming the outcast) in much the same way that Judaism is in the West But secondly, wherever you go around the world it is not the persecuted and oppressed who are say ing that the ethics of human dignity and human rights are a form of cultural imperialism . On the contrary, this is an argument you find promoted by those in power who are doing the persecuting and oppressing . I see no reason why I should be co-opted by that shoddy little game

into legitimating the suffering imposed on my brothers and sisters in every culture around the world. Our ethical task is to unmask the bad faith of all such ideologies that legitimate violence under the guise of cultural diversity.

The ethical and the political are not separated-politics is the ethical relationship between more than one Other. Infusing Levinasian ethics into politics will create a more ethical, less violent state.Simmons, associate prof social sciences ASU, 2003William Paul Simmons, associate professor of social sciences at Arizona State University, 2003, “An-Archy and Justice: An Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas’s Political Thought”

Therefore, Levinas distinguishes the ethical relationship with the Other from justice which involves three or more people.2° The an-archical relationship with the Other is the pre-linguistic world of the saying. Language is unnecessary to respond to the Other. The Third, however, demands an explanation. "In its frankness it [language] refuses the clandestinity of love, where it loses its frankness and meaning and turns into laughter or cooing. The third party looks at me in the eyes of the Other-.language is justice."2' In order to judge between Others, they must be co-present, or synchronous. Thus, the Third also opens up the world of knowledge and consciousness. "Here is the hour and birthplace of the question: a demand for justice! Here is the obligation to compare unique and incomparable others; here is the hour of knowledge and, then, of the objectivity beyond or on the hither side of the nudity of the face; here is the hour of consciousness and intentionality."22Finally, the Third introduces the realm of politics. The ego's infinite respon-


sibility must be extended to all humanity, no matter how far off. Ethics must be universalized and institutionalized to affect the others. "To the extent that someone else's Face brings us in relation with a third party, My metaphysical relation to the Other is transformed into a We, and works toward a State, institutions and laws which form the source of universality."

Before delving into the relationship between ethics and politics, several implications of Levinas's move from the Other to the Third need to be addressed. First, does the ego still have an infinite responsibility for the Other? In Otherwise than Being, Levinas defines justice as "the limit of responsibility and the birth of the question?'24 However, in the same work, he also claims that "in no way is justice a degradation of obsession, a degeneration of the for-the-other, a diminution, a limitation of anarchic responsibility.us How can these conflicting statements be resolved? Either justice limits the responsibility for the Other or it does not. The contradiction is resolved by considering, once again, Levinas's theoretical emphasis on the separation between the saying and the said. Ethics is found in the an-archical realm of the saying, while justice is a part of the totalizing realm of the said. Ethics and justice exist in both relation and separation. Neither can be reduced to the other. Thus, justice cannot diminish the infinite responsibility for the Other the ego remains infinitely, asymmetrically, and concretely responsible for the Other. This responsibility always maintains its potency. However, the ego is also invariably transported by the Third into the realm of the said. The ego must weigh its obligations. It is not possible to respond infinitely to all Others. The original demand for an infinite responsibility remains, but it cannot be fulfilled. Ethics must be universalized, but in attempting to do so, the ego has already reneged on its responsibility for the Other. Thus, Levinas's peculiar formulation; justice is un-ethical and violent "Only justice can wipe it [ethical responsibility] away by bringing this giving-oneself to my neighbor under measure, or moderating it by thinking in relation to the third and the fourth, who are also my 'others,' but justice is already the first violence."

War is inevitable in the current utilitarian politics-the only escape from world war is embracing ethicsXiangchen, Professor of Philosophy at Fudan, 2008Sun Xiangchen, Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University, China, “Emmanuel Levinas and the Critique of Modern Political Philosophy” http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121573478/HTMLSTART?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

According to Hobbes's logic, there is initially a natural state of war. In order to escape violent death, people want to enter into political society, and finally morality is established to guarantee peace and stability within this political framework. This logic is opposed by Lévinas, who holds to a logic according to which we have no possibility of escaping war. For Lévinas, war is a normal state of the Western world, and the Second World War is the necessary result of the Western political tradition. We can even say that it resulted from traditional Western philosophy, which has a possessive orientation, as the extreme expression of the Western ontological tradition. Even in ancient Greece, Heraclitus had already held that being reveals itself as war.The modern world shows this tendency to war more strongly than ever, but the root of this tendency is still in the ancient ontological tradition, which pursues sameness and totality, implying some kind of violence. I think that this is the ultimate reason why Lévinas is prepared to struggle with the whole Western philosophical tradition. The defect of this tradition is not, as claimed by Heidegger, in the oblivion of Being, but is in the oblivion of the other, or rather, in the suppression of the other. Hegel seemed to pay more attention to the other than other philosophers in the Western tradition, but in fact what Hegel does is to transform the other into his own wholeness. Lévinas's position is totally different, opposing this tradition from Greece to Heidegger, including the Hegelian attitude to the other, by placing not ontology but ethics as first philosophy. From this point of


view, he also opposes the structure of modern society by claiming that society should be based on the ethical and not the political. If politics is the basis of the whole society, Lévinas's question in the preface to Totality and Infinity, "whether we are not duped by morality"1 would be crucial. Because war, which is behind modern politics, suspends the strength of morality, Hobbes held that morality could be a cheat. For political reasons, the sovereign could even burn all the books of geometry, which Hobbes regards as the sole gift from God.2 Because this is precisely what Lévinas cannot accept, he must seek another foundation for society in order to limit the logic of politics and violence within politics. Lévinas wants to establish a prepolitical ethics, which can overturn the logic of war underlying the political. Lévinas thinks that modern political theory is based on individualism and calculation, by which modern society is built up. If so, there is no chance to avoid violence and war. From the viewpoint of Hobbes, there are only two kinds of peace: Cold peace, in which people are scared of each other and keep a terrible balance, and the peace of sovereignty, in which there is one sovereignty with the rest of the population as subjects. We can imagine that the background of this theory of peace is war. From Hobbes to utilitarianism, the inner logic of calculation is same. By this calculation, peace is temporary, utilitarian, and only the interval between wars.Regarding the question of whether the basis of society is political or ethical, Lévinas's answer is clear: It is definitely ethical. When Lévinas tries to resolve the tension between the political and the ethical, he does not rest on the political, like modern philosophers. He seeks to justify a prepolitical ethical life-world to serve as the foundation of the political. This is what Lévinas has done in Totality and Infinity. He appeals to other resource of thought in the world, such as Jewish tradition, although he does not refer to it directly. He considers that the only real peace is a kind of messianic peace: Morality will oppose politics in history and will have gone beyond the functions of prudence or the canons of the beautiful to proclaim itself unconditional and universal when the eschatology of messianic peace will have come to superpose itself upon the ontology of war.3

The State is the beginning of all violence-not helping those who aren’t “its own” ignores responsibility for the other and is the root cause of all violence. Aronowicz, prof Judaism Franklin and Marshall, 2006Annette Aronowicz, professor of Judaic studies at Franklin and Marshall College, Summer 2006, “Levinas and Politics” http://66.102.1.104/scholar?q=cache:5L5lnjhcUSgJ:scholar.google.com/+levinas%2Bholocaust%2Bpolitics&hl=en

What remains after so much bloodshed and tears shed in the name of immortal principles is individual sacrifice, which, amidst the dialectical rebounds of justice and all its contradictory aboutfaces, without any hesitation finds a straight and sure way (1990: 29). Once again, we have a very violent reality, “the cruelty inherent in rational order (andperhaps simply in Order)” says Levinas (1990: 29). Countering this is the act of protection and mercy extended from one to the other. This is not to suggest that Levinas’ solution to the problem of violence lies simply in the individual’s act of responsibility. It is neither that simple nor that simplistic. In ‘Judaism and revolution’, a very complex commentary dealing with the relationship of the Jewish tradition and the State, Levinas makes clear that the State itself is responsible for guaranteeing conditions that permit for the fulfillment of the human (Levinas 1990: 99). Yet the State claims a universalism that is deceptive, for while it attempts to protect the individual person, it limits that protection to its own and thus divides the world


into an ‘us and them’, quelling the responsibility of one to the other, beyond any distinctions whatsoever. The Jewish tradition’s universalism, on the other hand, does not recognize limits to responsibility for the other person. It thus introduces a wedge between the Jewish people and the State, for the latter cannot limit the responsibility of the former. As such, the Jewish tradition always signals a loyalty beyond the State, and propels political activity in two directions. The first is in the direction of care for the most vulnerable members within it, setting the standard by which the State offers guarantees against dehumanization (Levinas 1990: 99-100). The second is in refusing to identify the good with a particular State, thus preventing the State from turning into an object of idolatry. Levinas warns, however, that even arevolutionary movement whose aim is to overthrow a hopelessly corrupt government can turn into a mirror image of the violence it contests, dividing the world into us and them just as much. A revolution always risks the very thing it is opposing. This does not mean that revolution is never justified but once again, we are left, as our only recourse, vigilance against abuses, rather than a once and for all transformation: Revolutionary action is first of all the action of the isolated man who plans revolution not only in danger but also in the agony of conscience. In the agony of conscience that risks making revolution impossible: for it is not only a question of seizing the evil-doer but also of not making the innocent suffer (Levinas 1990:110).

This recognition of violence creates an infinite responsibility for us to push for justice regardless of the consequences.Smith, dept phil Berry, 03Dr. Michael Smith, Depts of Religion and Philosophy at Berry College, “Emmanuel Levinas's Ethics of Responsibility," Mike Ryan Lecture Series, Kennesaw State College, October 7, 2003 (http://www.kennesaw.edu/clubs/psa/pdfs/Smith_2003_PSA.pdf) (GENDER MODIFIED)

One of the most surprising aspects of Levinas’s ethics—perhaps “meta-ethics,” or better yet “proto-ethics,” would be a preferable term, since Levinas’s philosophical work is really a revamping of philosophy that replaces ontology by ethics: his “ethics” is not simply layered onto thinking-as-usual — one of the most surprising

aspects of this protoethics, then, is that there is no parity between my situation and yours from an ethical standpoint. You are always better than me. I am responsible, not only for my transgressions, but for yours as well! There are two aspects or stages of Levinas’s ethical thought: my relation to you (as if you were the only other person in the world) and my relation to you seen in relation to the other of you, my other. Your other may have conflicting claims, so that I am put in the position of comparing incomparables, to the extent that each person is a world. From the relation of me to my other, you, love is enough. To realize the intention of love in a broader sociality, justice is necessary. Justice, the harsh name of love, must realize love’s intentions, and in doing so may lose sight of its original intent, become alienated into a self-serving institution . This risk, in Levinas’s view, is one that must be taken. 8 Here Levinas seldom develops his thought along the lines of strict reasoning. One senses that the stays of being are relaxed and

we would have no possible means of directing our thought beyond this point without a certain “inspiration.” Knowledge is no longer sought after: it is inescapable. We are the “hostage” of the other. No discussion, even as brief a one

as this, can be complete without some mention of the face . This is a term that Levinas elevates to status of a philosopheme, a term endowed with a specific

philosophical role. The face does not refer to the plasticity of a visual form in Levinas, nor is it just the look of the other , since the face speaks in Levinas. It is perhaps the phenomenal basis, or as Levinas sometimes says, the “mise-enscène” or

theatrical “production” of the appearance of the person, and it is the way in which we may become aware of God. I quote: “ The face puts into question the sufficiency of my identity as an I, it compels me to an infinite responsibility.”4 It is by substitution for the other, or by taking on the fate of the other, that I embrace a responsibility for which I never signed up. Here Levinas diverges from the usual notion of responsibility, since the ethical meaning of responsibility is bound up with the notion of freedom. We are not to imagine that Levinas is involved in some sort of


Skinnerian “beyond freedom,” but Levinas does enter a realm that is distinct from the dialectic of promise and promise-keeping and

freedom such as we find in the thinking of Jean-Paul Sartre, for example. This taking up of responsibility is not a virtue (virtue in the sense of strength), nor is it a weakness (as suggested by the late Michel de Certeau), but precisely the carrying out of the mitzvah, or commandment of God. We should not expect gratitude, for this would entangle us in an endless dialectic of quid pro quos . ( It is interesting to note in passing that Levinas praises the institution of money, despite its possible abuses, because if frees us from having to have a personal relation with each person with whom we deal in life. We can carry on without this burden.) If we should expect anything, it is rather ingratitude. There is an impersonal—transpersonal?—sense in which action, good conduct, is nothing more nor less than a going beyond the bog of being. What is ethical behavior? It is (I quote) “the original goodness of [hu]man toward the other in which, in an ethical dis-inter-estedness—word of God—the inter-ested effort of brute being persevering in its being is interrupted.”5 This “ethics of ethics,” as it has been termed (by Jacques Derrida in his critical essay on Levinas, “Violence and Metaphysics” in 1964), is not only so called because it does not prescribe any specific acts, but also because Levinas’s ethics of responsibility cannot, as the philosopher himself states, be preached. Is it because humility (which is not listed among the virtues by Aristotle) permeates Levinas’s manner? No doubt, but it is also the case for what could be called a technical reason. We noted that the I-Thou relation in Levinas is not symmetrical. The other is always greater than I, and my responsibility cannot be transferred to anyone else. This responsibility extends to and includes responsibility for the evil perpetrated against me! In commenting on Philippe

Nemo’s book Job and the Excess of Evil, Levinas ventures a surprising interpretation of a well-known biblical verse of the book of Job ( Job 38: 4). “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” The usual interpretation is that God is reprimanding the creature for questioning His ways, and perhaps also implying that if man knew the whole story a theodicy would be possible—and this would be seen as being the best of all possible worlds after

all. Levinas: Can one not hear in this “Where were you?” a statement of deficiency (constat

de carence) that cannot have meaning unless the humanity of man is fraternally bound up with creation, that is, responsible for that which has been neither his I (son moi) nor his work? Might this solidarity and this responsibility for any and all—which cannot be without pain—be spirit itself?6 A remarkable interpretation indeed, worthy of the Talmudic spirit of interpretation Levinas studied and admired so ardently. I

liken the observation to the following extraordinary remark made by a child to his mother, spontaneously metaphysical: “Mother, when did we have me?” This retrogressive movement of being is very close to the sense of retrogressive and all-encompassing responsibility Levinas finds in this passage from Job. Neither his “I” nor his work. “I” in the sense of his ego, that limited “moi” that must, in Levinas’s view, be transcended by the ethical self toward responsibility for the other.

Obligation solves war and catastrophe Hanley, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola, 2007Catriona Hanley, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola College, “Levinas on Peace and War”, www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id [Luke]

Justice provokes justice; injustice perpetrates injustice. On what grounds do we argue for peace in a time when the resort to violence is increasingly tolerated and even championed by both individuals and governments? Do we need an ethical foundation for the practice of justice beyond that of the recognition that the rights extended to the other should match those I expect to enjoy? Is the continued affirmation of the sameness of the other not enough to ensure that my principled outrage at abuses be grounded? This form of universality may provide a ground – but so far it has not led to true peace. It has not led to an equal co-recognition of subjects, since the equality was always only theoretical, and outside the real context of historical suffering. It has led to war, to the imposition of my interests over others, since it begins with the assumption that


you are me, and the forgetting that you are precisely not me, and in your uniqueness, inassimilable to me. The calculation of what we, who are equal but wounded, owe to each other always seems to devolve to the logic of revenge – or worse, “pre-emptive” action. You are me – then you might do to me what I could do to you, or what I have in mind to do to you – so I had better do it first. And we are all wounded by history, by circumstance, by origin, by experience, by the very particularity, which makes each of us who we uniquely are. My wounds, my suffering is not universal, but intimately particular.

We must constantly interrupt the political with the ethical-exposing the other’s face in all available venues is key to creating a more ethical state.

Jordaan, prof Poli Sci at Stellenbosch, 2006, we reject the gendered languageEduard Jordaan, Professor of Political Science at Stellenbosch, 2006, “Responsibility, Indifference, and Global Poverty: A Levinasian Perspective”

In light of the above preliminaries, every self has a responsibility to bring about a society that maintains and treats the other as complexly and as sensitively as possible. Since much injustice and cruelty are committed unwittingly and unintentionally, a political strategy that emphasizes and describes human complexity will help us to become aware of the (unnoticed) ways in which we have neglected and oppressed the other, and of all the ways in which he should be protected and cared for. However, an element is missing, that of activating our concern for the other. For Levinas, it is imperative that the political be forever interrupted by the ethical; the question is how? Awakening us to our responsibility for the other is the second function of the proposed strategy, which is intended to describe and emphasize human complexity to the greatest extent possible.Throughout this study, authors in the cosmopolitan-communitarian debate have been criticized for suppressing various aspects of the ethical relation with the other, which has resulted in us being left in good conscience, despite having failed the global other. At the start of this chapter it was argued that the cosmopolitan strategy to convince us of our guilt and responsibility for the global poor is counterproductive given that its emphasis on human equality numbs that which incites us to responsibility for the other, namely glimpses of him as inexpressibly different from everyone else, unique. So, it seems as though our task is to confront the world with the ‘face’ of the other, to accuse the world of having left the other to quite literally ‘die alone’. It is imperative that we “expose” the ‘skins’ of complacent selves to “wounds and outrage,” that we elicit a “suffering for the suffering of the other” (CPP 146). In order to bring the world into proximity to the other, to expose third parties to his ‘face,’ it is claimed that actions aimed at conveying the other in as great a complexity as possible can help us do this. Human complexity/difference/dissimilarity is therefore not important for its own sake (and therefore to be maintained at all costs), but insofar as it insinuates the uniqueness of the other.Of course, this ‘strategy’ immediately has to confront the objection that all representations of the other betray his alterity and suppress his otherness (see Broody, 2001). Granting this, the claim made here is that there are representations (and positionings) of the other and articulations of his situation that are more suggestive of his otherness and therefore of my ethical responsibility for him. That this is so is suggested by the opposite, namely an extreme form of negating the other’s alterity, his de-humanisation through racist and stereotyped representations whereby the way is paved for social and political disregard,


maltreatment, or ‘disciplining’. Though one cannot be sure of the direction of causality, there seems to be a direct correlation between the fullness with which people are viewed and the extent of the concern we have for them. Is it not generally the case that the people we are most indifferent towards are also those most absent from our imaginations, those persons/groups we know least about? Returning to the group of people I am most concerned with in this study, the global poor, is it not the case that we generally know very little about tem, compared to say, Americans? And, for example , is this not part of the reason that while the world reacted with great sympathy for the victims of the September 11th attacks in which approximately three thousand people died, we do not pay much attention to the fact that every day approximately 30,000 children die from preventable illnesses, which translates into more than 10 million deaths per year (UNDP 2003: 5; World Bank, 2004)? It is my contention that there is a relationship between the fullness with which we view people and the concern we have for them, and a large part of the reason is that a fuller conception of the other person is a stronger suggestion of his altery and the ethical command that issues from the fact of his otherness.


Other Advantages


Economy

Refugees a huge economic boost to aging and shrinking populations

Christian Bodewig, program leader, World Bank, September 24, 2015, Newsweek, Refugees should be welcomed by Europe’s aging nations, http://www.newsweek.com/refugees-should-be-welcomed-aging-european-nations-376201 DOA: 9-25-15

But wait a minute. Opposition to immigration appears counterintuitive for countries that face the prospect of aging and rapid population declines.

For example, the Baltic countries and Bulgaria have already seen their populations shrink by more than 15 percent since 1990, Croatia by 10 percent and Romania and Hungary by more than 5 percent. The share of the population aged 65 and above in the countries of Central Europe and the Baltics increased by more than a third between 1990 and 2010.

Unlike in Western Europe, where people are living longer, aging in Central Europe and the Baltic countries has driven significant emigration, especially of young people of child-bearing age and often to Western Europe, and by substantial drops in fertility.

Fertility rates in Central Europe and the Baltic countries today are generally below 1.6. They are as low as 1.3 in Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia—far below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1.

Population projections suggest that aging and demographic decline will continue and even accelerate, putting economic growth at risk and adding to fiscal pressures through a greater reliance on old age pensions and health services.

How can Europe turn this challenge around? Countries can minimize economic and social consequences of demographic change through policies that makes smaller workforces more productive, including through improvements in workers’ skills and health so that they can be employed more productively and during longer working lives.

Given the vast size of emigration from countries in Central Europe and the Baltics over the last two decades, immigration will not make up for the decline in working-age populations. But with refugee numbers in Europe surging, immigration will gradually become an element of the policy response.

The real policy question for the countries of Central Europe and the Baltics today is therefore not whether to accept migrants or not but, rather, how to turn the challenge of today’s refugee crisis into an opportunity. At a minimum, the examples of Turkey and Jordan show that hosting far larger numbers of refugees than Europe need not be an economic drag.

Given the terrible and intractable conditions in their countries of origin, refugees from Syria, Iraq and Eritrea arriving in Europe today are likely to stay for a while. This suggests that once short-term humanitarian emergency needs are met, they require stable housing, schooling, health and employment solutions for the medium term.

For example, since large numbers of refugees are coming with children of schooling age, schools need capacity for introductory classes to allow children to learn the language of the host country and to get integrated into general classrooms. Education systems in countries in Central Europe and the Baltics are adjusting to declining student numbers, so there should be infrastructure and teacher capacity to accommodate incoming refugee children and youth.

http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2012/06/05/000425962_20120605171239/Rendered/PDF/548900ESW0P1180choolAutonomyReforms.pdf

http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2012/06/05/000425962_20120605171239/Rendered/PDF/548900ESW0P1180choolAutonomyReforms.pdf

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/future-development/posts/2015/09/16-economic-impact-refugees-cali

http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/Publications/ECA/aging%20europe.pdf

http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/Publications/ECA/aging-europe-background-papers.zip

http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/Publications/ECA/aging-europe-background-papers.zip



http://www.newsweek.com/refugees-should-be-welcomed-aging-european-nations-376201

http://www.newsweek.com/refugees-should-be-welcomed-aging-european-nations-376201


Many migrants arriving in Europe today come with the skills and motivation to be successful and to make a contribution to their host countries’ economies. Many come with children. They have the potential to not just alleviate declining numbers of workers but also to boost innovation through bringing fresh ideas and perspectives. Integrating migrants is challenging.

I can think of plenty of examples across Europe where integration has not been successful. But there are others.

Take the example of the Vietnamese community that has been living in the Czech Republic for decades. There are more than 60,000 ethnic Vietnamese in the Czech Republic today—20 times more than the European Commission’s refugee quota would allocate to the country. Many Vietnamese have excelled in education and are active in the business community.

Examples of both failure and success of integration provide lessons to inform policy about how to make Europe’s response to the refugee crisis not just an essential humanitarian act but also a smart investment in its economic prosperity.

https://www.czso.cz/documents/11292/27914491/1506_c01t13.pdf/f11adb42-34bd-42a5-a418-274129f1e4b1?version=1.0

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/10/20/vietnamese-in-the-czech-republic-fruit-veg-and-beyond/


Smuggling Advantage

No help for refugees leaves them vulnerable to smugglers


Most of all, however, leaders aren’t acting because no one back home is putting any pressure on them. Now, thanks to heart-sickening photographs, let’s hope the pressure grows. This is a truly biblical movement of refugees and it demands a global response. If governments won’t help refugees escape Syria, smugglers and human traffickers will, and the deadly toll will rise.





Forgetting

Protecting refugees is an important way to overcome the culture of forgetting the holocaust

Daniel Blei, 9-4-15, Foreign Policy, The Banality of History, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/04/the-banality-of-history-germany-migrants-neo-nazis/ DOA: 9-6-15 Blei is a historian and editor of scholarly books

Few public figures have connected the current refugee crisis to the culture of forgetting. Green Party politicians Cem Özdemir and Sven-Christian Kindler have warned in recent years that waning public memory of the Holocaust threatens present-day politics, especially for minority communities. The case for German pluralism depends heavily on the past, but for young citizens, a population more diverse than the country’s gray-haired generations, history has become more abstract; emotional ties to it are fading. In several German states, education officials are grappling with changing demographics. Diversity challenges how German history is taught and culturally constructed beyond the classroom. A 2010 poll published in Die Zeit highlighted Turkish-German ambivalence toward the Holocaust and limited knowledge about the Nazi past.

A small minority in the media has begun speaking out against the culture of forgetting in light of recent events. On Aug. 31, Alan Posener, the British-German journalist and influential blogger at “Strong Opinions,” issued a call to readers to remember that millions of Germans, not so long ago, were homeless, starving, and bedraggled. In the aftermath of World War II, entire towns of Germans fled Poland, the Czech Sudetenland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the former eastern lands of Germany, East Prussia, Silesia, and parts of Brandenburg, and Pomerania. The first postwar population census, conducted in 1946, counted 9.6 million German refugees in the four occupation zones of the vanquished Reich. In subsequent decades, hundreds of thousands of Germans left the communist East, seeking the freedoms of the Federal Republic. In each case, refugees were absorbed and integrated into German society without conflict.

This July, in the closing arguments of Gröning’s trial, state prosecutors made their case for putting a contrite former Nazi in his twilight years behind bars. Gröning’s conviction mattered, they explained, as a commitment to pluralism in the 21st century. This was the disavowal of a Germany in which only one culture was present. The notion that the German nation must share one culture has deep historical roots, going back to the 19th-century philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. For Fichte, shaped by the experience of French occupation and writing before the creation of a German state, the nation was more of a cultural than political concept, based on a common language and shared forms of public life.

The German past is sometimes understood as a long search for national unity, the Third Reich being the perverse fulfillment of this dream. It is easy, even for Germans, to forget that German history is not just Nazism. It is also the stories of Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Sinti, and Roma, of various immigrants and guest workers and their descendants. To fight the culture of forgetting is to stand up for refugees and asylum-seekers. In Germany, the past isn’t a foreign country. It is the knowledge that history will never repeat itself.

https://books.google.com/books?id=EGPZIenDpjwC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=9.6+million+German+refugees&source=bl&ots=eDQVRjKMbg&sig=M_o-hWNRAOgUtfNRNQbyRLHqbUE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAGoVChMIt7DVyLnexwIVjFuOCh3j_wEx#v=onepage&q=9.6%20million%20German%20refugees&f=false

http://www.starke-meinungen.de/

http://www.starke-meinungen.de/

http://www.publikative.org/2014/05/08/erinnerung-mehr-als-ein-ritual/

http://www.zeit.de/2010/04/Cem-Oezdemir

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/04/the-banality-of-history-germany-migrants-neo-nazis/


http://www.zeit.de/2010/04/Editorial-Umfrage


Migrant Detention Centers Bad

Migrant detention centers violate human rights


Migrant detention centers along Europe's southern periphery—in Greece, Italy, Malta, and Spain—have all invited charges of abuse and neglect over the years. Many rights groups contend that a number of these centers violate Article III of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment. “We used to think of migration as a human security issue: protecting people and providing assistance,” says Geneva Center for Security Policy deputy director Khalid Koser. “Now we clearly perceive—or misperceive—migration as a national security issue. And the risk of securitizing migration is that you risk legitimizing extraordinary responses.

http://www.gcsp.ch/About-Us-Qui-sommes-nous/Staff/Management/Senior-Management-Team/Dr-Khalid-KOSER

http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf

http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/Detention-centres-opened-to-the-media-20130719

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/world/europe/italys-migrant-detention-centers-are-cruel-rights-groups-say.html?pagewanted=2

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2011/09/21/eu-s-dirty-hands



Starvation

Refugees lack adequate food aid

EU Observor, September 25, 2015, Six EU States Slash Food Aid for Syrian Refugees, https://euobserver.com/migration/130400 DOA: 9-25-15

Every member state, except the Netherlands, has slashed contributions to the World Food Progamme (WFP) in 2015. EU leaders at an emergency summit in Brussels on Wednesday (23 September) are being asked to shore up contributions. The drastic cuts over the past year mean the UN agency has been unable to hand out food vouchers to hundreds of thousands of Syrians at refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and Turkey. The lack of food and deplorable conditions at the camps is, in part, compelling many to take the journey to the EU. At the camp in Jordan, some 229,000 Syrians stopped receiving food aid in September. In Turkey, around 60,000 women gave birth in the camps since the start of the conflict. WFP has since had to halve assistance to almost 1.3 million Syrian refugees in the region. Most live off $0.50 a day. The agency is warning that disruptions to water supplies could provoke major outbreaks of disease. “Faced with such harsh conditions who can blame people for seeking a safe haven in Europe”, said European parliament president Martin Schulz. Austria, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, and Slovakia made the most drastic cuts. All sliced their contributions by 100 percent this year, compared to last year. Sweden’s contribution dropped by 95 percent, followed by Lithuania at 69.5 percent, and Belgium at 54.7 percent. The UK also dropped by 29.5 percent. Others like Croatia, Latvia, Poland, and Romania gave nothing in the past two years. The Netherlands stands alone as the only member state, at plus 5.8 percent, which has increased contributions. It means member state contributions went from €895 million in 2014 to €675 million this year, a 38 percent drop. But Sweden, for its part, contested the 95 percent drop in figures given by the European Commission. It says it usually makes the disbursements quite late in the year, which was not reflected in the commission's data. "The Swedish contribution for 2015 at the moment stands at $69.3 million. This is without the increase just announced, which takes the total to about $72.3 million", said a contact at Sweden's ministry of international development cooperation. The WFP said Sweden's contribution was registered last week.

http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/proposal-implementation-package/docs/communication_on_managing_the_refugee_crisis_annex_5_en.pdf

https://euobserver.com/migration/130400


Health Risks

Refugees face health risks, including diseases (spreading), mental health, injuries, exposure, and dehydration

Ashley Welch, September 25, 2015, Amid crisis, refugees face numerous health risks, CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/amid-crisis-refugees-face-numerous-health-risks/ DOA: 9-25-15

The current refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe has seen millions of people flee their homes amid horrific violence. While escaping immediate threats is their first priority, experts say displaced people go on to face numerous health risks, from trauma injuries to disease-causing pathogens to mental illness. And a new report from Jane's Intelligence Review cautions of the danger of potential outbreaks among refugees and, to a lesser extent, host populations. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the civil war in Syria has left 12.2 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. More than 7 million Syrians are internally displaced and over 4 million are registered as refugees living outside the country. Deteriorating security in Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen, as well as dire living conditions for refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, have also increased the number of people seeking safe haven in the European Union. "For the refugees coming by boat, the immediate health concerns are exposure, dehydration, and if there's capsizing, there's going to be the risk of drowning or near-drownings," Dr. E. Anne Peterson, Senior Vice President of Global Programs at AmeriCares, a disaster relief organization that has delivered millions of dollars in medical aid to the region, told CBS News. "There's also a portion of refugees who end up in local communities with relatives or places that are culturally similar where they're squatting, so there's overcrowding and displacing of the health care resources available there," she said. "These refugees embedded in host communities are also not always eligible for health care services, making them particularly vulnerable because they're not in the refugee camps where refugee organizations typically go." Refugee camps present a host of their own health problems, including over-crowding, inadequate access to water and poor sanitation services. This can subsequently lead to outbreaks, such as cholera and typhoid.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/uniformed-men-accost-refugees-leave-them-adrift-at-sea/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/syria-crisis-europe-diplomats-strategy-end-fighting/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/european-countries-tighten-borders-to-stem-flow-of-refugees/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/amid-crisis-refugees-face-numerous-health-risks/


Human Rights

Refugees have a number of rights


D. Rights of Refugees

27 Within the scope of the Refugee Convention, refugees have a status under international law implying State obligations and individual rights. The Refugee Convention accords a variety of treatments and a variety of rights to persons satisfying different criteria. The set of rights granted to a refugee by a State accrues with the level of factual attachment to the State and the level of legal recognition. Some rights apply as soon as a refugee comes under a State’s (de facto) authority, a second group of rights applies when the refugee enters the territory and falls under the effective jurisdiction of the State of refuge. A third group of rights applies once the refugee is lawfully in the territory of a State Party and a fourth group when the refugee lawfully stays or durably resides in the State’s territory. It has to be carefully examined which refugee is entitled to hold which kind of rights according to the Refugee Convention.

1. Refugee Status

28 The recognition of refugee status by a State is of declaratory character, but it may often be necessary to assure an adequate protection of the refugee. States may grant the rights linked to the refugee status only if there was a formal determination of the status. Before the authorities of the State can take this decision, it has to be examined if the person satisfies the relevant criteria, especially if a ground of persecution provided for by Art. 1 A (2) Refugee Convention is given. During the procedure, the refugee is in most cases physically present in the State and enjoys procedural rights. The State of refuge is obliged to guarantee fairness and a minimum standard of substantial rights. Fair and effective procedures are an essential element in the full application of the Refugee Convention. The right to free access to the courts laid down in Art. 16 Refugee Convention can only be effectively exercised if the procedure for the determination of refugee status is fair. As the Refugee Convention does not explicitly provide for procedural rules, the content and realm of the procedural rights can not be easily identified and State practice is not coherent. In many countries, the UNHCR participates in the procedures or, at least, tries to influence the procedure of determination of refugee status.

2. The Principle of Non-refoulement(a) Legal Basis29 The principle of non-refoulement is embodied in Art. 33 Refugee Convention stipulating that

[n]o Contracting State shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

For the international protection of refugees, the right not to be returned or expelled to a situation which would threaten one’s life or freedom is of crucial importance. The principle of non-refoulement finds further expression in Art. 3 (1) United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (‘CAT’ [adopted on 10








December 1984, entered into force 26 June 1987] 1465 UNTS 85; Torture, Prohibition of) which stipulates that

[n]o State Party shall expel, return (‘refouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

Furthermore, Art. 3 (2) CAT lays down that

[f]or the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

30 The principle of non-refoulement affects State sovereignty because Art. 33 Refugee Convention gives rise to duties of the State of protection which may constrain the State to admit the refugee to its territory. Therefore, Art. 33 Refugee Convention is one of the most discussed provisions of the Refugee Convention. Bearing in mind that States are reluctant in acknowledging an individual right to asylum, the State duties resulting from Art. 33 Refugee Convention must nevertheless endorse an effective protection of the refugee. It has been evoked that a prohibition of refoulement has evolved on the level of customary international law. However, a careful examination of opinio iuris and State practice does not confirm this view for the time being.

(b) Scope of Application

31 The principle of non-refoulement laid down in Art. 33 Refugee Convention applies to refugees within the meaning of Art. 1 Refugee Convention. All refugees physically present give rise to an obligation for the State of refuge, to grant effective protection to persons falling under its de facto jurisdiction. The scope of application can be extended to all asylum seekers, although this interpretation of Art. 33 Refugee Convention may not yet be consented to by the majority of States and scholars. However, the development in the interpretation of effective protection, for example by the Member States of the European Union, seems to point in the direction of a wide interpretation of the obligation including asylum seekers.

32 Blunt denials of access or turn-back policies of States are hardly compatible with the principle of non-refoulement. States are entitled to introduce or continue a system of immigration control including the imposition of visa requirements. However, mechanisms of non-entrée like the ‘safe country rules’ must comply with Art. 33 Refugee Convention. These restrictions on the admission and the stay of aliens are applied, for example, in the European Union as a procedural device (Arts 26–27 and 29–31 Council Directive 2005/85/EC in relation to third States and Council Regulation [EC] 343/2003 between Member States). The ‘first country of arrival rule’ or ‘safe third country rule’ may lead to a deportation chain at the end of which the refugees will find themselves back in the country where they first arrived after leaving their home States out of fear of persecution. If the ‘safe country of origin rule’ is applied, the refugee is deported to his country of origin, because the State of refuge estimates that there is no persecution in the country of origin. The design of these rules has to take into account that the refugees should enjoy sufficient protection in the State they are deported to. If a State sends back a refugee to a State, where the status determination procedure or the understanding of the refugee definition is deficient, this constitutes a breach of the duty to avoid the refoulement of a refugee ‘in any manner whatsoever’ (Art. 33 (1) Refugee Convention).

33 States Parties to the Refugee Convention cannot escape their responsibilities by intercepting refugees or by deporting them to areas outside the State borders including the territorial sea or the so-called international zones. Extraterritorial refoulement is subject to the same rules as any other refoulement. The practice of the US of intercepting Haitians in international waters and sending them back to Haiti was approved by the majority of the US Supreme Court (Sale v Haitian Centers Council [21 June 1993] 509 US 155), but it was found to breach Art. 33 Refugee Convention by the Inter-American Commission on








Human Rights (IACommHR) (Haitian Interdiction Case 10.675 IACommHR Report No 51/96 OEA/Ser.L/V/II.95 doc.7 Rev [1997] 550 paras 156–58).

(c) Exceptions

34 Exceptions to the principle of non-refoulement are laid down in Art. 33 (2) Refugee Convention. If the refugee can be regarded as a danger to the security of the country, they can be expelled or deported. Unlike persons falling under the narrow scope of Art. 1 (F) Refugee Convention and thus being excluded from protection, individuals who are covered by the criminality provision of Art. 33 (2) Refugee Convention fulfil the requirements of the refugee definition. According to Art. 33 (2) Refugee Convention, the danger to national security must lie within the very person of the refugee. Hence, if a refugee arrives as part of a mass influx causing a danger to national security, the application of the principle of non-refoulement cannot be suspended. Scholars assuming an inherent exception for mass influx situations refer to the high costs and propose a more effective international burden-shearing. However, the concept of the principle of non-refoulement only allows exceptions on individual grounds.

3. Rights of Refugee Status

35 Refugees lawfully staying in the territory enjoy non-discrimination in relation to the nationals of the State with respect to public relief and assistance (Art. 23 Refugee Convention) or relating to aspects of labour legislation and social security (Art. 24 Refugee Convention). This group of refugees also enjoys the most favourable treatment accorded to nationals of a foreign country concerning the right to association (Art. 15 Refugee Convention; Association, Freedom of, International Protection) and on behalf of wage-earning employment (Art. 17 Refugee Convention). Refugees lawfully staying in the territory enjoy a treatment as favourable as possible and, in any event, not less favourable than that generally accorded to aliens regarding the right to self-employment (Art. 18 Refugee Convention), the right to exercise liberal professions (Art. 19 Refugee Convention) or regarding housing (Art. 21 Refugee Convention; Housing, Right to, International Protection). Refugees having their habitual residence in the State possess a non-discriminatory position concerning artistic rights and intellectual property (Art. 14 Refugee Convention; Intellectual Property, International Protection). If they enter the territory of the State of protection and fall under the State’s effective jurisdiction, refugees are entitled to exercise their freedom of religion (Art. 4 Refugee Convention), the State shall issue them identity papers (Art. 27 Refugee Convention), and they shall not be expelled save on grounds of national security or public order (Art. 32 (1) Refugee Convention). A number of core rights apply to refugees with no further qualification. The State applies the provision of the Refugee Convention without discrimination as to race, religion, or country of origin (Art. 3 Refugee Convention) and it accords to a refugee exercising his property rights a treatment as favourable as possible and, in any event, not less favourable than that accorded to aliens generally in the same circumstances (Art. 13 Refugee Convention; Property, Right to, International Protection). Every refugee has free access to courts (Art. 16 Refugee Convention) and enjoys the same treatment as accorded to nationals with respect to elementary education (Art. 22 Refugee Convention). Finally, the duty of non-refoulement obliges States not to return refugees to a place where they risk being persecuted for a reason laid down in the Refugee Convention (Art. 33 Refugee Convention).

4. Subsidiary Protection

36 Subsidiary protection is granted to persons who do not fulfil the criteria of Art. 1 A (2) Refugee Convention. It can guarantee the right not to be expelled. The relationship between subsidiary protection and refugee protection is not explicitly determined. Persons in a refugee-like situation and asylum seekers who fail to qualify as refugees under the Refugee Convention do nevertheless fall under the scope of international refugee law. As the Refugee Convention does not explicitly govern the granting of subsidiary protection, the safeguards and entitlements provided for by subsidiary protection widely depend on the interpretation of international law by States.



















37 A common approach to subsidiary protection by the Member States of the European Union is laid down in Council Directive 2004/83/EC on Minimum Standards for the Qualification and Status of Third Country Nationals and Stateless Persons as Refugees or as Persons who Otherwise Need International Protection. According to its Art. 2 lit. e, a

‘person eligible for subsidiary protection’ means a third country national or a stateless person who does not qualify as a refugee but in respect of whom substantial grounds have been shown for believing that the person concerned, if returned to his country of origin, or in the case of a stateless person, to his country of former habitual residence, would face a real risk of suffering serious harm as defined in Article 15, and to whom Article 17(1) and (2) do not apply, and is unable, or, owing to such risk, unwilling to avail him or herself of the protection of that country.

Art 2 lit. f Council Directive 2004/83/EC stipulates that ‘“subsidiary protection status” means the recognition by a Member State of a third country national or a stateless person as a person eligible for subsidiary protection’.

Sources of Human Rights for Refugees

38 There are relevant provisions on refugees in human rights instruments. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates some habeas corpus rights which are applicable without discrimination (Art. 9 UDHR), the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution (Art. 14 UDHR), the right to a nationality (Art. 15 UDHR), and the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State (Art. 13 UDHR; Movement, Freedom of, International Protection). The latter right is also provided for in Art. 12 ICCPR. The two Covenants are based on the non-discriminatory character of human rights. According to Art. 2 (1) ICCPR, each State Party must ensure the rights in the ICCPR to ‘all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction’. Referring to this provision, the Human Rights Committee has adopted General Comment No 15: The Positions of Aliens under the Covenant ([9 April 1986] GAOR 41st Session Supp 40, 117), in which it holds that the ICCPR does not recognize the right of aliens to enter or reside in the territory of a State Party. Yet it also states that in certain circumstances the ICCPR may afford protection to an alien ‘even in relation to entry or residence, for example, when considerations of non-discrimination, prohibition of inhuman treatment and respect for family life arise’ (No 5 General Comment No 15).

39 The protection of children seeking refuge is guaranteed by Art. 22 Convention on the Rights of the Child (‘CROC’ [adopted 20 November 1989, entered into force 2 September 1990] 1577 UNTS 3). The duty of States to protect the family unity of refugees is in general affirmed by State practice, and the necessary opinio iuris can be derived from legal material. The obligation of States to protect the family is laid down in Art. 23 ICCPR and relating to family unification in Art. 10 CROC. The obligations of States do not necessarily result in an individual right of a family member.

40 The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) holds the view that States have the right to control the entry, residence, and expulsion of aliens (Vilvarajah v the United Kingdom [ECtHR] Series A No 215 at 34 para. 102). There is no right to political asylum in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950) (‘ECHR’) or its Protocols. Nevertheless, the ECtHR holds that the rights safeguarded by the ECHR can provide for a legal position of aliens implying far-reaching State obligations towards refugees.

41 Within the scope of Art. 3 ECHR, the ECtHR has strengthened the protection of aliens from torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (eg Chahal v UK [ECtHR] Reports 1996-V 1831 at 21 para. 74); see also Human Dignity, International Protection). It is well established in the case-law of the ECtHR that expulsion or any other kind of removal by a State Party may engage the responsibility of that State. If













substantial grounds have been shown for believing that the person in question, if expelled, would face a real risk of being subjected to treatment contrary to Art. 3 ECHR in the receiving country, Art. 3 ECHR implies the obligation not to expel the person in question to that country (see Soering Case [ECtHR] Series A No 161 at 35 paras 90–91; Cruz Varas v Sweden [ECtHR] Series A No 201 at 28 paras 69–70) . In favour of third-country nationals, the right to family life guaranteed in Art. 8 ECHR can—on exceptional conditions—encompass the right to remain in a country (Dalia v France [ECtHR] Reports 1998-I 76 at 91 para. 52; Boultif v Switzerland [ECtHR] Reports 2001-IX 119 at 130 para. 46) . For specific situations, the ECtHR holds that the right to family life provides for the right to legalize the stay by granting a formal residence permit or a similar document (Sisojeva v Latvia [ECtHR] App 60654/00 paras 104–107; in this case, the Grand Chamber struck the application in its judgment of 15 January 2007; in Rodrigues da Silva v Netherlands [ECtHR] Reports 2006-I 223 , the Grand Chamber rejected the application on 3 July 2006).

42 Interpreting the law of the European Union, the European Court of Justice ruled in its judgment of 27 June 2006 (C–540/03 European Parliament v Council of the European Union [2006] ECR I-05769 ) on some aspects of Council Directive 2003/86/EC on the Right to Family Reunification but also stressed in its judgment the human rights dimension and the State obligations in international law, especially stemming from the CROC.










International Law

Refugees cannot be returned – it’s a fundamental principle of refugee law


Besides identifying the essential characteristics of the refugee, states party to the Convention also accept specific obligations which are crucial to achieving the goal of protection, and thereafter an appropriate solution. Foremost among these is the principle of non-refoulement. As set out in the Convention, this prescribes broadly that no refugee shall be returned in any manner whatsoever to any country where he or she would be at risk of persecution.7

The word refoulement derives from the French refouler, which means to drive back or to repel. The idea that a state ought not to return persons to other states in certain circumstances was first referred to in Article 3 of the 1933 Convention relating to the International Status of Refugees. It was not widely ratified, but a new era began with the (p. 40) General Assembly’s 1946 endorsement of the principle that refugees with valid objections should not be compelled to return to their country of origin.8 An initial proposal that the prohibition of refoulement be absolute and without exception was qualified by the 1951 Conference, which added a paragraph to deny the benefit of non-refoulement to the refugee whom there are ‘reasonable grounds for regarding as a danger to the security of the country...or who, having been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime, constitutes a danger to the community of that country.’ Apart from such limited exceptions, however, the drafters of the 1951 Convention made it clear that refugees should not be returned, either to their country of origin or to other countries in which they would be at risk; they also categorically rejected a proposal allowing for ‘cancellation’ of refugee status in cases of criminal or delinquent behaviour after recognition.

Today, the principle of non-refoulement is not only the essential foundation for international refugee law, but also an integral part of human rights protection, implicit in the subject matter of many such rights, and a rule of customary international law.

Read in connection to other treaties and agreements, the 1951 Convention establishes a responsibility to protect refugees









The 1951 Convention is sometimes portrayed today as a relic of the Cold War, inadequate in the face of ‘new’ refugees from ethnic violence and gender-based persecution, (p. 45) insensitive to security concerns, particularly terrorism and organized crime, and even redundant, given the protection now due in principle to everyone under international human rights law.

The 1951 Convention does not deal with the question of admission, and neither does it oblige a state of refuge to accord asylum as such, or provide for the sharing of responsibilities (for example, by prescribing which state should deal with a claim to refugee status). The Convention does not address the question of ‘causes’ of flight, or make provision for prevention; its scope does not include internally displaced persons, and it is not concerned with the better management of international migration. At the regional level, and notwithstanding the 1967 Protocol, refugee movements have necessitated more focused responses, such as the 1969 OAU Convention and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration; while in Europe, the development of protection doctrine under the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights has led to the adoption of provisions on ‘subsidiary’ or ‘complementary’ protection within the legal system of the European Union.

Nevertheless, within the context of the international refugee regime, which brings together states, UNHCR, and other international organizations, the UNHCR Executive Committee, and non-governmental organizations, among others, the 1951 Convention continues to play an important part in the protection of refugees, in the promotion and provision of solutions for refugees, in ensuring the security and related interests of states, sharing responsibility, and generally promoting human rights. Ministerial Meetings of States Parties, convened in Geneva by the government of Switzerland to mark the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the Convention in December 2001 and December 2011, expressly acknowledged, ‘the continuing relevance and resilience of this international regime of rights and principles...’ and reaffirmed that the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol ‘are the foundation of the international refugee protection regime and have enduring value and relevance in the twenty-first century’.25

In many states, judicial and administrative procedures for the determination of refugee status have established the necessary legal link between refugee status and protection, contributed to a broader and deeper understanding of key elements in the Convention refugee definition, and helped to consolidate the fundamental principle of non-refoulement. While initially concluded as an agreement between states on the treatment of refugees, the 1951 Convention has inspired both doctrine and practice in which the language of refugee rights is entirely appropriate.

The concept of the refugee as an individual with a well-founded fear of persecution continues to carry weight, and to symbolize one of the essential, if not exclusive, reasons for flight. The scope and extent of the refugee definition, however, have matured under the influence of human rights law and practice, to the







point that, in certain well-defined circumstances, the necessity for protection against the risk of harm can trigger an obligation to protect.

Persons can be persecuted for many different reasons


2. Grounds and Criteria of Persecution

8 For the purposes of the Refugee Convention, a person is persecuted if life, freedom, or other substantial rights of the person are endangered or threatened by measures or a menacing situation which can be ascribed to a State or a State-like entity. Thus, persecution is a concept based on the possible or actual violation of substantial rights of the refugee. Persecution is mostly intentional, but the violation of the individual sphere of a refugee can also be caused by a situation without an intentional measure directed against the refugee. Persons can be persecuted as victims of armed conflicts, of violence motivated by ethnic conflicts (Ethnicity) or other political and social upheavals. The prerequisites and the scope of persecution are subject to discussion.

9 The definition of persecution in Art. 7 (2) lit. g Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court ([adopted 17 July 1998, entered into force 1 July 2002] 2187 UNTS 90) is limited to the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights, since—for the purposes of the Rome Statute—persecution is part of the concept of crimes against humanity committed by individuals against other individuals. However, the question of individual guilt of a person is different from the question of responsibility of a State and the protection of the victims of persecution (Individual Criminal Responsibility; State Responsibility). The purpose of the Refugee Convention is the protection of refugees, implying a wider notion of persecution.

10 Originally, the concept of persecution referred to State persecution. Still, State authorities are responsible for many cases of persecution, causing individuals to flee their countries. However, non-State actors can also be held responsible, for example in civil wars or in a failing State situation (Failing States). As the Refugee Convention does not limit the concept of persecution, the well-founded fear of persecution can be a result of any danger to individual integrity and human dignity resulting in a lack of protection in the territory the refugee leaves to seek refuge elsewhere.

11 The list of the five grounds of persecution laid down in Art. 1 A (2) Refugee Convention limits the concept of persecution. Although the Refugee Convention creates a specific regime, other international instruments may be consulted in interpreting the terms (see Art. 31 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties [1969] 1155 UNTS 331). With regard to race, the definition of Art. 1 (1) International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination ([opened for signature 7 March 1966, entered into force 4 January 1969] 660 UNTS 195) contributes to the determination of the notion in refugee law. Racial discrimination can be based on race, colour, descent, or national ethnic origin (Racial and Religious Discrimination). Persecution on grounds of religion has a long history. The violation of the freedom of religion as set forth by Art. 18 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) (‘ICCPR’) constitutes a breach of international law (Religion or Belief, Freedom of, International Protection). Violations of Art. 18 ICCPR can lead to a qualification as refugee under the Refugee Convention. Nationality in Art. 1 A (2) Refugee Convention does not only refer to the situation that a State persecutes its own nationals, but can be interpreted as including origins and even the membership of particular ethnic, religious, cultural, and linguistic communities. This overlaps with the persecution on account of the membership of a particular social group. Cross-over effects occur with the international protection of minorities (Minorities, International Protection). With respect to the wide notion of social groups, this ground of persecution implies an extensive interpretation. The self-perception of a person as member of a social group may play an important role. Therefore, criteria for the membership of a social group may be





















sexual orientation or the linguistic or economic background. Part of the concept is the gender-related persecution of women (see also Women, Rights of, International Protection). Even if details may be of controversial character, the persecution due to the membership of a particular social group represents an evolving concept which enables States and international organizations to include recent social developments into refugee law. However, a possible restrictive State practice should be taken into account. With respect to persecution due to political opinion, the Refugee Convention can be understood as a safeguard for the right to freedom of opinion and expression (Opinion and Expression, Freedom of, International Protection). This right is laid down in Art. 19 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) (‘UDHR’) and in Art. 19 ICCPR. As the expression of a political opinion is linked to political activity, members of the political opposition or a minority in their respective home States can refer to this reason of persecution.

12 There can be other grounds for persons to flee their home States than the grounds set forth in Art. 1 A (2) Refugee Convention. Persons may leave their home on grounds of war or famine, natural disasters, over-population, or mass expulsions of populations (Forced Population Transfer). Purely economic reasons do not entitle to refugee status (Migration). However, in combination of several reasons motivating a person to leave his home and to seek refuge, one of the relevant grounds of Art. 1 A (2) Refugee Convention may play an important role, eg in the combination of economic reasons and membership of a particular social group. Then, it is possible to qualify the person as a refugee under the Refugee Convention.

International law establishes that refugees are protected under parts I and III of Geneva Convention IV


The fundamental legal instrument for the protection of refugees is the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (‘Refugee Convention’), modified by the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (‘Refugee Protocol’). Both the Refugee Convention and the Refugee Protocol are in force for 144 States, with a slight difference of States Parties as of March 2010. There are further legally binding international provisions relating to the situation of refugees or their status, eg Art. 44 Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (‘Geneva Convention IV’ [adopted 12 August 1949, entered into force 21 October 1950] 75 UNTS 287; Geneva Conventions I–IV [1949]), which deal with refugees and displaced persons, and Art. 73 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts ([adopted 8 June 1977, entered into force 7 December 1978] 1125 UNTS 3; Geneva Conventions Additional Protocol I [1977]), which stipulates that refugees and stateless persons shall be protected persons under parts I and III Geneva Convention IV.























A2: Con Arguments


A2: Refugees Hurt the Economy

Refugees are not an economic drain


First, let’s be clear: Countries that refuse refugees are usually damaging their own prospects. Refugees are some of the best bets for almost any economy. The extraordinary journeys they undertake to flee conflict and insecurity show that they’re motivated, enterprising, and able-bodied. They want to work and support their families — they just prefer to do it somewhere safe. In the United States, a higher share of foreign-born people join the labor force than native-born people, and their unemployment rate is typically lower as well.

Germany has a low unemployment rate, needs new workers


Perversely, the realities of politics and prejudice have stopped many countries from opening their doors more than a crack, if at all. An exception is Germany, which is expecting 800,000 asylum applications this year and is prepared to take in 500,000 more refugees annually for the foreseeable future. With the unemployment rate hovering around its lowest levels in decades, Germany is ready to absorb new workers.

Refugees improve the economy by boosting consumption


But countries with tight labor markets aren’t the only ones for which refugees can provide an economic boost. Refugees are consumers before they’re workers, in fact as soon as they arrive in their new homes. Before they have jobs, they typically receive financial aid from relatives, community groups, charities, and the government so they can pay rent and buy necessities. In each of these cases, money is converted from savings to consumption. Donations that might otherwise have sat in bank accounts join funds from treasury coffers in a massive short-term stimulus to the economy. This stimulus doesn’t come at the cost of future growth, either. Instead, it’s an upfront payment for a wellspring of long-term economic activity.

Refugees net positive economically



https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LRHUTTTTDEM156N




http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/forbrn.pdf




New Scientist, September 9, 2015, Why Welcoming More Refugees Makes Economic Sense for Europe, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730383-800-why-welcoming-more-refugees-makes-economic-sense-for-europe/ DOA: 9-22-15

Even without a worker shortage, migrants needn’t be a burden. On 4 September the World Bank, the UN’s International Labour Organization and the OECD club of rich countries issued a report concluding that “in most countries migrants pay more in taxes and social contributions than they receive.”

In a study last year, researchers at University College London found both European and non-European immigrants to the UK more than pay their way. Non-Europeans living in the UK since 1995 brought £35 billion worth of education with them. Those who arrived between 2000 and 2011 were less likely than native Brits to be on state benefits, and no more likely to live in social housing. Unlike natives, they contributed a net £5 billion in taxes during that period.

That is partly because most migrants are young and need relatively little in the way of benefits. Their economic impact approaches that of natives as they age and assimilate. But the positive effect can be substantial: Carlos Vargas-Silva of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford reported this year that letting in 260,000 immigrants a year could halve the UK’s public debt 50 years from now. “There are more than a dozen good studies now that point to a net positive effect of migrants on the economy,” says Goldin.

Most data shows the economic impact is generally positive,” agrees Betts, especially when immigrants are well educated, as most Syrians are. “Unlike ordinary migrants, refugees didn’t choose to come,” says Betts, potentially making their impact slightly different.. But that means they will go home if they can, or if not, adapt like other migrants. “There can be local negative effects on jobs, but that can be managed,” says Betts. For example minimum wages can stop immigrants undercutting locals. Some studies show migrants create jobs for locals, says Mathias Czaika of the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford. “An influx of migrants can depress wages, but mostly for other migrants, and only 1 to 3 per cent. Mostly the impact on wages or jobs is neutral or positive.” Germany has no doubts. “Every euro we spend on training migrants is a euro to avoid a shortage of skilled labour,” German state governments declared last week. Otherwise, they say, they would have to spend more on benefits, as the labour shortage hurts industry and jobs.

Refugees tend to be ambitious and entrepreneurial

CNN, September 10, 2015, Today’s refugee could be tomorrow’s entrepreneur, http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/10/news/migrant-crisis-refugees-business/ DOA: 9-22-15

But for countries that agree to take more refugees from Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and Afghanistan, the payoff could be significant. Those nations could benefit from an influx of new, largely young, workers, and may even become home to future stars of the business world. "Migrants who take huge risks to get where they want to go often tend to be more entrepreneurial people ... that may also help to keep an aging economy vibrant," noted Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg bank. History is studded with migrants who have made it to the top. Some fled persecution, others left their native lands in search of more opportunity. George Soros is one of the most famous examples. Soros fled communist Hungary in 1947 after surviving the Nazi occupation of his home country during World War II. He emigrated first to England and later settled in the U.S.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/30/investing/ukraine-soros-billion-russia/?iid=EL

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/09/europe/europe-migrant-crisis/?iid=EL

http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/10/news/migrant-crisis-refugees-business/

http://eu.boell.org/en/2015/09/02/joint-declaration-current-state-refugee-policy

http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/people/mathias-czaika

http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/fiscal-impact-immigration-uk

http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/fiscal-impact-immigration-uk

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26605-opening-the-door-to-immigrants-is-good-for-the-economy

http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/how-the-ilo-works/multilateral-system/g20/reports/WCMS_398078/lang--en/index.htm

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730383-800-why-welcoming-more-refugees-makes-economic-sense-for-europe/



A2: Too Expensive

The issue isn’t money—Europe can afford it


That problem would be much easier to solve if it were just a question of money. Europe is wealthy, and so are Australia and the United States. There is no doubt that we could bear the costs of resettling and sheltering the refugees who need help, even with their growing numbers. And in the long run, such a program would likely pay for itself: immigration tends to be a net economic positive for immigrants and their new home countries alike. But the problem isn't really about money. Rather, the challenge is about overcoming the domestic political forces that drive nativism, right-wing populism, and anti-immigration policies. The political forces are complex, but they often come down to an anxiety about change.

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/7/9117143/immigration-debate-discrimination



A2: Refugees Could be Terrorists

Rare for refugees to be terrorists

Anne Speckhard is adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University in the School of Medicine and of security studies in the School of Foreign Service. She served with her husband, U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Daniel Speckhard from 2007-2010 during which time a large influx of refugees made their way from Turkey to Greece. She is author of Talking to Terrorists, coauthor of Undercover Jihadi, and her newly released book is Bride of ISIS, September 9, 2015, Taking Refugees is not a risk to National Security, http://time.com/4024473/taking-in-refugees-is-not-a-risk-to-national-security/ DOA: 9-22-15

But as a national security expert who has spent more than 20 years working alongside government defense and security experts, I know that the majority of Syrian refugees fleeing war are not using the opportunity of refugee status to embed themselves as terrorists in the West. The majority are trying to escape barrel bombs, chemical attacks, and barbaric violence, caught between the violence of a dictatorial regime and that carried out by terrorists. They are, for the most part, much less likely to have been involved in terrorism than to have been the victims of it. In fact, refugees who become terrorists are extremely rare. There are only a small number of cases of refugees admitted into the U.S. who have been arrested on terrorism charges—the actual data shows that this is a rare phenomenon. Refugees from Syria will be carefully vetted, and those with terrorist ties refused. Security concerns should not be a reason to turn away desperate doctors, teachers, nurses, engineers and salt-of-the-earth laborers who simply want to escape a horrific humanitarian crisis alongside their innocent children.

Refugees are fleeing violence, not trying to cement it


Moreover, the families fleeing Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and other countries — totaling perhaps 20 million people — are unlikely to pose a security risk. They’re trying to escape extremism and violence, not foment it. They couldn’t be further from the stereotypical villains of the global war on terror.

No significant increased risk, terrorists won’t try to mask as Syrian refugees


Moreover, we can't close our border to tens of thousands of desperate people for fear that one or two of them might be dangerous. If we've learned anything since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, it's that the terrorist threat can come from any direction, and the only truly effective defense is constant vigilance. That wouldn't change because a few thousand for more Syrians are admitted to the country. And smart terrorists probably wouldn't pose as Syrian


http://www.unhcr.org.uk/about-us/key-facts-and-figures.html



http://docs.house.gov/meetings/HM/HM05/20150624/103655/HHRG-114-HM05-Wstate-JonesS-20150624.pdf

http://time.com/4024473/taking-in-refugees-is-not-a-risk-to-national-security/


refugees anyway, since they would know in advance they would be subject to more intense scrutiny simply because of where they claimed to be from.


A2: Military Action Better

We’d have to invade Syria


Short of a massive ground invasion to topple the Assad regime and push ISIS back, there's no obvious U.S. military option to resolve the Syrian conflict. Even a stepped-up U.S. effort to arm and train the so-called "moderate" Syrian opposition could easily backfire and leave the country worse off than it is now. At the very least, our efforts so far in that direction have proved wholly ineffective. Difficult as it may prove to work with Russia and Iran on the issue, at this point, a negotiated cease-fire may be the only practical way to stop the fighting and end Syria's agony.



A2: Benefits Cause People to Flee

People want to stay at home. They only flee because they have to

New Scientist, September 9, 2015, Why Welcoming More Refugees Makes Economic Sense for Europe, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730383-800-why-welcoming-more-refugees-makes-economic-sense-for-europe/ DOA: 9-22-15

Apart from that, the EU has never used its emergency plan, says Garlick, because “member states fear this will be a pull factor for other people from the same country”. Observers say this is why the UK refuses migrants who have already entered Europe – it would encourage more to come. “No existing sound research substantiates the political claim that giving people asylum in Europe stimulates more flow,” says Alexander Betts, head of the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. “Nearly all refugees want to go home. They don’t sit in refugee camps calculating where they can get the best benefits.”

“There is no evidence of a pull factor,” agrees Ian Goldin, head of the Oxford Martin School on global challenges. “If you halved the risk of death, would that make more come? Desperate people don’t make that calculation.”

Any pull is insignificant compared to push – such as the ever-increasing hardship in Middle-Eastern refugee camps, Goldin says.

http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/about/director

http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/people/alexander-betts




A2: Refugee Camps Solve

Refugees leaving camps, it’s hopeless

Maria Gallucci, International Business Times, Syrian Refugee Crisis 2015, http://www.ibtimes.com/syrian-refugee-crisis-2015-record-levels-humanitarian-aid-still-not-enough-support-2105083 DOA: 9-22-15

As the influx of Syrian refugees into Europe grows, the number of people staying in regional refugee camps is declining. The population at the Zaatari camp in Jordan has dropped to 79,000 people, down by 2,000, since the beginning of August, Hovig Etyemezian, the U.N. director of the camp, told the AP.

Refugees are growing weary after years of staying in the camps with little expectation their lives will improve, he said. The international community "hasn't woken up yet to the need to assist Jordan, the state institutions and the humanitarian agencies, so we can continue serving the refugees here," he told the news organization.

Inadequate assistance is being provided for those in refugee camps

Nicholas Kristof, 9-4-15, New York Times, Refugees Who Could Be Us, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-refugees-who-could-be-us.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0 DOA: 9-6-15

As millions of Syrian refugees swamped surrounding countries, the world shrugged. United Nations aid requests for Syrian refugees are only 41 percent funded, and the World Food Program was recently forced to slash its food allocation for refugees in Lebanon to just $13.50 per person a month. Half of Syrian refugee children are unable to go to school. So of course loving parents strike out for Europe.

Providing financial assistance to house refugees is not a long-term solution

Shelly Kerebell, September 22, 2015, Forbes, Refugee Crisis: Why Are Europe’s Leaders Failing? http://www.forbes.com/sites/shelliekarabell/2015/09/22/refugee-crisis-why-are-europes-leaders-failing/2/ DOA: 9-22-15

One suggestion to mitigate the present emergency was suggested by French President Francois Hollande – assist Turkey financially and otherwise – in sheltering asylum seekers. The suggestion was not doubt influenced by the fact that France is already home to the largest Moslem population in Europe, but there is also a recent precedent: this was essentially what Germany did in the early 1990s – paying Poland to reopen former East German military barracks to house and process refugees from the former Yugoslavia. Helping non-European countries provide even temporary shelter could substantially diffuse the crisis but it is not a long-term solution.

Inadequate foreign assistance for refugees

Anne Speckhard is adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University in the School of Medicine and of security studies in the School of Foreign Service. She served with her husband, U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Daniel Speckhard from 2007-2010 during which time a large influx of refugees made their way from Turkey to Greece. She is author of Talking to Terrorists, coauthor of Undercover Jihadi, and her newly released book is Bride of ISIS, September 9, 2015, Taking Refugees is not a risk to



http://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/wfp-forced-make-deeper-cuts-food-assistance-syrian-refugees-due-lack-funding



http://www.ibtimes.com/syrian-refugee-crisis-2015-record-levels-humanitarian-aid-still-not-enough-support-2105083



National Security, http://time.com/4024473/taking-in-refugees-is-not-a-risk-to-national-security/ DOA: 9-22-15

The world is experiencing the largest refugee population since World War II. Yet the portion of the U.S. budget going to help refugees has remained flat-lined. The entire U.S. foreign assistance budget makes up less than 1% of the federal budget and is stretched thin across a range of life-changing programs addressing issues including maternal and child health, water and sanitation development, vaccines, medicines and disease prevention, farming assistance, and children’s education. Only about an estimated 12% of the foreign assistance budget goes to humanitarian support for refugees caught in the crosshairs of war. The U.S. can do better.

Refugee camps have inadequate resources

Malala Yousafzai is a student, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and co-founder of the Malala Fund, a nonprofit organization that empowers girls globally through education to achieve their potential and be agents of change in their community, September 9, 2015, Time, Malala: The World’s Response to Refugees Has been Pitiful, http://time.com/4027099/malala-refugee-crisis-angela-merkel/ DOA: 9-22-15

The world’s response has been pitiful — only 37% of the U.N.’s response plan for this year has been funded and more than 63% of funding needs are unmet. Food rations for refugees are being cut because nations will not contribute their fair share to help. Entire refugee camps have only one or two schools for children. If we say we care, we must not just use words, but take action.

http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php

http://time.com/4027099/malala-refugee-crisis-angela-merkel/

http://time.com/4027099/malala-refugee-crisis-angela-merkel/

http://www.cgdev.org/page/foreign-assistance-and-us-budget

http://www.cgdev.org/page/foreign-assistance-and-us-budget

http://time.com/4024473/taking-in-refugees-is-not-a-risk-to-national-security/


A2: Racist Backlash

Neo-Nazis in Germany are only a small percentage of the population


I was in Berlin in August, watching the storm of controversy surrounding Reschke’s cri de coeur and wondering why she had struck a deeper nerve in German society than the actual attacks she described. Moral responsibility for creating a culture of decency, she implied, lay not with right-wing extremists — but with regular Germans. Neo-Nazis are indeed a small minority; an official estimate in 2012 counted 22,150 right-wing extremists in a population of some 80 million.

http://www.netz-gegen-nazis.de/artikel/rechtsextremismus-zahlen-7552




A2: Aid Solves

Not enough aid

Maria Gallucci, International Business Times, Syrian Refugee Crisis 2015, http://www.ibtimes.com/syrian-refugee-crisis-2015-record-levels-humanitarian-aid-still-not-enough-support-2105083 DOA: 9-22-15

Humanitarian groups have raised only 40 percent of the funds they say they need to support Syrian refugees and internally displaced persons, the United Nations refugee agency said Saturday. While the international community has sent "record amounts" of aid dollars for refugee camps and support programs, aid workers say it's still not enough to match the scale of the rising humanitarian crisis, the Associated Press reported.

Aid agencies requested about $7.4 billion for 2015 to assist Syrians fleeing their country's 4 1/2-year-old civil war. Yet so far, they've received just $2.8 billion, or 38 percent of the total, the U.N. refugee agency told the AP.

The funding shortfall is forcing many aid groups to curtail programs in regional refugee host countries, including Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. As conditions in the camps deteriorate and food supplies run low, growing numbers of Syrians are streaming into Europe or even heading home.

"Need has risen so much that even though we are securing record amounts of funding, record amounts of political will and support, nonetheless the [funding] gap has widened," Stephen O'Brien, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the AP during a tour Saturday of the Zaatari refugee camp, the largest camp in Jordan for Syrian refugees.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ee1a046204f344c39078e636434cd712/un-record-amount-aid-syria-crisis-still-not-enough




Should Increase Aid


Should Increase Aid

$5.5 billion in aid is needed


This summer, the European Union, United States, and Kuwait respectively pledged $1.2 billion, $507 million, and $500 million for aid to refugees. That's good, but it's still far short of the $5.5 billion in aid that the UN says is needed for these refugees, as well as another $2.9 billion for displaced Syrians within Syria. As a result, the camps are often crowded and undersupplied, which leaves the people who live in them cold, hungry, and subject to the ravages of disease.

Aid needs to go to Jordan and Lebanon

Dan Bilefsky, 9-7-15, New York Times, European Leaders Pledge to Take in More Migrants, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/world/europe/europe-migrant-crisis.html DOA: 9-7-15

The European Union needs to provide “massive humanitarian aid” to countries like Jordan and Lebanon that have taken in millions of Syrian refugees, Mr. Hollande said. The French leader added that the European Union needed to create so-called hot spot reception centers in countries like Greece, Hungary and Italy to identify and register migrants as they arrived in the European Union and to turn back those who do not fulfill the requirements for asylum. It was not clear how such centers would operate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/world/europe/europe-migrant-crisis.html

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/mar/31/us-eu-kuwait-pledge-more-than-2bn-aid-syrians-un



Need to Increase Aid

Inadequate assistance to the refugees now


Aylan’s death reflected a systematic failure of world leadership, from Arab capitals to European ones, from Moscow to Washington. This failure occurred at three levels:

■ The Syrian civil war has dragged on for four years now, taking almost 200,000 lives, without serious efforts to stop the bombings. Creating a safe zone would at least allow Syrians to remain in the country.

■ As millions of Syrian refugees swamped surrounding countries, the world shrugged. United Nations aid requests for Syrian refugees are only 41 percent funded, and the World Food Program was recently forced to slash its food allocation for refugees in Lebanon to just $13.50 per person a month. Half of Syrian refugee children are unable to go to school. So of course loving parents strike out for Europe.

■ Driven by xenophobia and demagogy, some Europeans have done their best to stigmatize refugees and hamper their journeys.

Need to respond with compassion and provide refugees with aid


So by all means let’s respond with compassion to the refugees (not as jerks, as Hungarian officials have). But above all, let’s address the crisis at its roots, particularly in the Middle East.

One essential step is to improve conditions for the 3.7 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. The World Food Program was just forced to cut 229,000 refugees in Jordan off food rations because it ran out of money, and if the world won’t pay for refugees to eat in Jordan, it will have to feed them in the West.



http://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/wfp-forced-make-deeper-cuts-food-assistance-syrian-refugees-due-lack-funding

http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/Middle%20East%20North%20Africa/Iraq%20Syria%20Lebanon/Syria/163-new-approach-in-southern-syria.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/world/middleeast/un-raises-estimate-of-dead-in-syrian-conflict-to-191000.html




Need Massive Resettlement


Status Quo Plan Fails

Current plan inadequate

Joshua Keating, 9-22-15, Slate, EU Refugee Plan is Too Much for Eastern Europe, but still not enough, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/09/22/eu_agrees_on_plan_to_take_in_120_000_refugees.html DOA: 9-22-15

The plan passed by majority vote with Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania voting no and Finland abstaining. Eastern European countries, with little experience in accommodating large-scale non-European immigration, have been extremely hostile toward European pressure to take in more refugees. The new plan would compel them to take people in against their will, something that is likely to further deepen tensions within the bloc and could lead to further backlash against Brussels and the reimposition of border controls within the union.

Even so, the plan doesn’t come near to addressing the scale of the crisis, which has seen nearly 500,000 people entering the EU so far this year to escape war and poverty in the Middle East and North Africa. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the 120,000 people addressed under the new system would account for about 20 days worth of arrivals. So it seems likely that the crowds gathered in the Balkans and Turkey outside the increasingly fortified gates of Europe will continue to grow.

Current plan only addresses a small fraction

Bloomberg View, September 25, 2015, Europe Again Fails to solve its Refugee Crisis, http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-25/europe-again-fails-to-solve-its-refugee-crisis DOA: 9-25-15

On Tuesday, European interior ministers voted through a plan calling for 120,000 refugees to be resettled among the member countries. That's a tiny fraction of the asylum seekers who've already turned up, to say nothing of those expected to arrive in the coming months. A conservative estimate is 1 million refugees this year, and the flow might continue at the same rate for the foreseeable future.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-25/europe-again-fails-to-solve-its-refugee-crisis

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-25/europe-again-fails-to-solve-its-refugee-crisis

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/22/us-europe-migrants-eu-idUSKCN0RM10A20150922

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/08/26/europe_s_open_borders_are_in_serious_danger.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/08/26/europe_s_open_borders_are_in_serious_danger.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/09/14/here_s_why_eastern_europe_is_so_much_more_antagonistic_to_syria_s_refugees.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/09/22/eu_agrees_on_plan_to_take_in_120_000_refugees.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/09/22/eu_agrees_on_plan_to_take_in_120_000_refugees.html


A2: Too Many People to Absorb

Relative to Europe’s entire population, it is an insignificant number of people

Martin Wolf, September 22, 2015, Financial Times, A refugee crisis that Europe cannot escape, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3967804c-604b-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#axzz3mTKajB48 DOA : 9-22-15

The number of accepted asylum seekers this year would still amount to only 0.1 per cent of the EU’s population, hardly an unmanageable figure. The numbers reaching the EU are also small relative to the total number of refugees. The number of forcibly displaced people in the world at the end of last year was 59.5m. Moreover, nearly two-thirds of the displaced remain within the borders of their own countries, while 86 per cent of all refugees are in developing countries. Turkey hosts at least 1.7m, Lebanon 1.3m and Jordan 1m. Given the size and prosperity of the EU, the task it faces is relatively trivial,

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3967804c-604b-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#axzz3mTKajB48


Need a Comprehensive Resettlement Plan

A comprehensive refugee settlement program is needed – need to included employment, education, and general assistance.

David Milband, 9-22-15, How the US Can Welcome Refugees, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/opinion/how-the-us-can-welcome-refugees.html DOA: 9-22-15

The mismatch between need and response is all the more striking since the United States has given a home to some three million refugees since 1975. In 2013, they came from 64 different countries.

The experience of the United States Refugee Admissions Program, which is a consortium of federal agencies and nonprofit organizations, offers a number of valuable lessons. The first is that successful resettlement needs more than big-hearted citizens. It needs an effective combination of resources provided by both the public and the private spheres.

Government needs to set the legislative framework, oversee security checks and provide funding for initial housing, case management and language training. Once these needs are met, resettlement agencies in the United States work within their communities to develop volunteer programs and raise funds to augment the public provision. The success of the refugee admissions program lies in this partnership between the public and the private sectors.

Second, refugees need to be seen for their potential contribution to society. The language of “burden” is mistaken. Rather, economic self-sufficiency is the central pillar in successful refugee resettlement.

Resettlement agencies work to help refugees gain employment as soon as possible after their arrival. According to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement’s annual report to Congress for 2013 (the most recent year for which figures are available), the rate of refugees’ self-sufficiency at 180 days was 69 percent. A recent survey by the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute found that refugees were, in fact, more likely to be employed than the American-born population.

Third, education for the children of refugees is crucial for effective integration. Many refugee children arrive with little formal education and limited to no English skills. Yet resettlement experience in the United States shows that, with proper support, refugee children are able to thrive at school in a short time.

The final lesson is that refugees prosper most when they become citizens. Refugees need support to achieve it as soon as they become eligible. Studies show that naturalization as a United States citizen correlates with higher levels of employment and earnings.

The United Nations has called for the resettlement of 400,000 Syrian refugees over the next several years — which amounts to about 10 percent of those who have been displaced to neighboring countries like Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Historically, the United States has taken 50 percent of the world’s refugees who are eligible for resettlement; that is why the I.R.C. is appealing to America to take 100,000 Syrians next year.

That will require political will and the funding to back it up — both of which most of Europe has conspicuously lacked. European Union leaders meeting this week must put that right.

http://www.unhcr.org/548737926.html

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/integration-outcomes-us-refugees-successes-and-challenges

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/orr/resource/office-of-refugee-resettlement-annual-report-to-congress-2013

http://www.state.gov/j/prm/ra/

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/28/where-refugees-to-the-u-s-come-from/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/opinion/how-the-us-can-welcome-refugees.html


With more people fleeing conflict and disaster than at any time since World War II, renewed leadership is required. No country is better placed than the United States to offer it.


Resettling Large Numbers Practically Possible

US resettled 800,000 Vietnamese after the war


Even if the U.S. took in 30,000 Syrians over the next two years — an unlikely outcome, given that only 1,500 have been admitted since the start of the war — that number would pale in comparison to the hundreds of thousands that Germany is expected to accept, or the 800,000 Vietnamese that the U.S. resettled in the years after the Vietnam war.




Con


Morality


A2: US Responsible -- US Could Have Intervened in Syria

Intervention would almost certainly have failed

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, 9-21-15, Foreign Policy, Could We Have Stopped this Tragedy?, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/21/could-we-have-stopped-this-tragedy-syria-intervention-realist/ DOA: 9-22-15

Having thought a lot about it, and having spoken with a number of knowledgeable friends who hold different views on this matter, I still believe intervening in Syria was not in the United States’ interest and was as likely to have made things worse as to have made them better. I take no pleasure in my conclusions; I base my unhappy verdict on the following arguments.

The Limits of Air Power. Proponents of “no-fly zones” typically exaggerate their impact and in so doing overstate the capacity of air power to determine political outcomes. The U.S. Air Force and U.S. naval air power can do a lot of impressive things, but air power remains a crude instrument and is not very good for controlling events on the ground. Remember that the United States operated “no-fly zones” over Iraq throughout the 1990s, and Saddam Hussein remained solidly in power until we invaded in 2003. Similarly, the United States has flown thousands of sorties in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade or so (not to mention drone strikes), and these efforts didn’t allow Washington to dictate terms to those on the ground or shape their political futures in any predictable way.

To be sure, a no-fly zone would have limited some of the Assad regime’s worst excesses — such as its use of barrel bombs — and would probably have saved some lives. But grounding the Syrian air force would not have prevented Assad & Co. from using other means to a greater extent. And it would not have driven Assad from power quickly. As skeptics warned at the time, a “no-fly zone” was the first step onto a potentially slippery slope: If air power had failed to dislodge Assad, demands to do more would surely have increased, thereby putting the United States and others on course for a more costly and consequential involvement.

Assad’s “Gamble for Resurrection.” From the very start, a key problem in Syria was the lack of an attractive exit option for the entire Assad regime. As the titular leader of the Alawite minority that has dominated Syria since 1970, Assad and his followers saw relinquishing power as a mortal threat. (Needless to say, Muammar al-Qaddafi’s brutal murder at the hands of Libya’s rebels likely did little to reassure the Syrian president.) And it wasn’t just Assad and his immediate entourage that were in danger: Losing power could open the door to violent retribution against the entire Alawite minority. Thus, the Assad regime had little choice but to “gamble for resurrection” — to fight on no matter how bleak things appeared and to use any and all methods to ensure they were still standing at the end of the day or at least were in a position to bargain for survival.

Given these incentives, U.S. demands that “Assad must go” fell on deaf ears, and outside intervention (air power, no-fly zones, arms for rebels, etc.) weren’t likely to alter Assad’s calculations very much. The only possibility for ending the war quickly had to include leaving Assad in a defensible position, but the United States had ruled that (admittedly unappealing) option out from the start. Add to this the widespread tendency to assume early on that the Syrian government was on its last legs, and you can see why many believed a little nudge from the outside would have been enough to topple him completely and that serious and flexible diplomacy wasn’t necessary.

https://mideastwire.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/nicholas-noe-in-huffpost-when-ngos-call-for-military-intervention-in-syria-the-case-of-the-international-crisis-group/

https://mideastwire.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/nicholas-noe-in-huffpost-when-ngos-call-for-military-intervention-in-syria-the-case-of-the-international-crisis-group/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_for_resurrection

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/21/could-we-have-stopped-this-tragedy-syria-intervention-realist/

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/21/could-we-have-stopped-this-tragedy-syria-intervention-realist/


What About the Jihadis? Intervening to push Assad out faced another obvious objection: It might open the door for al Qaeda or other violent extremists. This concern also complicated proposals to arm anti-Assad forces like the Free Syrian Army. How could Washington ensure U.S. weapons didn’t end up in the wrong hands? To make matters worse, the most effective anti-Assad forces were precisely those groups the United States most feared. That’s the real lesson of Benghazi: Early U.S. intervention might have reproduced the Libyan disaster, reminding us that that only thing worse than a truly awful government is no government at all.

Why Can’t Uncle Sam Teach Anyone to Fight? In theory, early U.S. intervention might have been accompanied by a sustained effort to build up pro-Western or at least moderate Syrian forces, thereby creating the kernel of a new and more benign Syrian regime. And in theory, I have a chance to win a gold medal in the 2016 Olympics. The problem here is two-fold. It was impossible to find very many Syrians who fit this job description, and the Pentagon doesn’t seem to be very good at training foreign forces anymore.

Something seems to have gone badly wrong with U.S. military training efforts over the last 15 years. The Pentagon has poured tens of billions of dollars into training Afghans, Iraqis, and, more recently, a few friendly Syrians, but all we seem to get for it are foreign forces that lose battles, desert at a whim, and remain dependent on U.S. logistics, command advice, and other kinds of support. The groups our various proxies are fighting against — the Taliban, Hezbollah, al-Nusra Front, for example — don’t get any American training or advice, yet they consistently out-perform the recipients of American largesse. What gives? In any case, our recent track record at building reliable and competent foreign security forces cautions against believing that quicker and more vigorous U.S. involvement would have produced a successful outcome.

Face It: The United States Is Toxic. The ineffectiveness of U.S. training efforts and other forms of advice may be partly due to the negative opinion most people in the Middle East have of U.S. policy. America may be admired for its democracy, its achievements in science and technology, and the friendliness of its people, but U.S. Middle East policy is widely reviled. The United States was once regarded in positive terms — in particular, it wasn’t seen as a duplicitous imperial power like France or Britain — but that was 70 years ago. I won’t delve into the diverse sources of local anti-Americanism (some of them justified, others bogus), but there’s no sense in denying it at this point. Overt U.S. intervention can easily backfire by reinforcing prevailing narratives about “Western” interference and encouraging more people to conclude Osama bin Laden was right. In short, even if the United States and its allies had gone into Syria with the noblest of intentions, plenty of people in the region would have been suspicious, if not actively hostile. When mistakes occurred and civilians died — as they inevitably would, for such is the nature of war — Washington would have been blamed and fresh conspiracy theories would have proliferated.

Whose Interests Are Truly Engaged? There is a clear humanitarian interest in ending the Syrian civil war. But neither great nor minor powers typically run big risks or bear large costs for strictly humanitarian reasons. For most leaders, convincing their fellow citizens to make significant sacrifices usually requires a strategic justification as well. As noted above, for the United States, the strategic issues were complicated and do not point directly or unambiguously toward deeper involvement. After all, neither Democratic nor Republican administrations ever cared very much that a thuggish minority was running Syria before 2010, and the United States did business with Assad — père et fils — when it seemed useful. In this sense, U.S. strategic interests in Syria are limited (and all the more so now that Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal is gone).

By contrast, the interests of other states, including the Europeans, are much more deeply engaged. The problem, however, is that hardly anyone else has the capacity to exert a decisive impact on the war. Even

http://b.3cdn.net/aai/04651e9aa1b5dcc741_3wm6brd3d.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/world/asia/afghans-see-american-general-as-crucial-to-countrys-defense.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/world/middleeast/isis-isil-syrians-senate-armed-services-committee.html?ref=world&_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/world/middleeast/isis-isil-syrians-senate-armed-services-committee.html?ref=world&_r=0


Russian goals seem limited to preserving Assad for as long as possible and giving him an escape route if he needs one in extremis . Even as Russia increases its support for the Syrian regime, Moscow still hasn’t sent nearly enough arms or Russian forces to tip the balance in Assad’s favor. Perhaps the refugee crisis will convince the EU that it can no longer sit disarmed in its post-modern Garden of Eden and that it needs to rebuild a more serious military capability, but that task will take years and I wouldn’t bet on it happening anyway.

So as I wrestle with a counterfactual history and turn these problems over in my head, where do I come down? Should the United States have intervened to try to end Syria’s civil war or not? I conclude — with some genuine reluctance — that my non-interventionist instincts were correct in this case. Given what we’ve witnessed, I wish I could think up a clever strategy that would allow the United States and its allies to fix this problem, but I’ve drawn a blank. Nor has anyone else come up with a compelling solution, either.

It follows that the least bad option at this point would be a re-energized effort to end the fighting. The United States should stop insisting Assad must go, and listen carefully to the other powers with a stake in the outcome, including Russia. The good news is that the Obama administration is taking some tentative steps in that direction, but we don’t know yet if they will pay off or not. If ending the fighting and stopping the refugee exodus requires preserving a visible role for Assad, so be it. That outcome wouldn’t make me happy, but neither does a seemingly endless war. I don’t know if it will be possible to reconstitute a unified Syrian state; if not, then an organized and internationally supervised partition plan will have to be negotiated and implemented.

Politics, it is often said, is the art of the possible. This maxim is especially true in foreign policy and especially when dealing with the chaos of civil war. There are some problems for which there are no good solutions, only lesser evils. Back in 2011, I thought the most important tasks in Syria were caring for refugees and finding some way to end the bloodshed. I think I was right back then, and I think that’s the right course now. But am I 100 percent certain? No, and you shouldn’t be either.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/world/europe/us-to-begin-military-talks-with-russia-on-syria.html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/world/europe/us-to-begin-military-talks-with-russia-on-syria.html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article


A2: Responsibility to Refugees

Most of the “refugees” are just people seeking Europe’s riches, they aren’t from war zones

Scott Greer, September 24, 2015, Daily Caller, Illegal Immigrants Don’t Follow the Pope’s Golden Rule, http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/24/illegal-migrants-dont-follow-the-popes-golden-rule/ DOA: 9-25-15

Ever since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has been an outspoken advocate for illegal immigrants in both Europe and the United States. He started visiting the migrant camps that now dot the coastlines of France and Italy, demanding European Union states take in these migrants almost immediately upon his coronation. These camps house thousands of African migrants, the majority of whom came to Europe not to flee war or oppression, but to find employment or simply enjoy the benefits of the welfare state. (RELATED: Bleeding Hearts Will Only Make Europe’s Migrant Crisis Worse)The same is also probably true with many of the so-called refugees who flooded Europe this summer from the Middle East — another group Francis believes deserves the unquestioning support of Europe. Of course, a sizable number are fleeing war-torn Syria, bringing their families to the continent in hopes they’ll be granted asylum. But the overwhelming number of “refugees” are young men leaving the safety of Turkey, Jordan and other states in the hopes they’ll enjoy the wonders of Europe.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/24/illegal-migrants-dont-follow-the-popes-golden-rule/


A2: Infinite Ethical Responsibility to the Other

Infinite responsibility fails – a responsibility we can never fulfill does not drive us to calculate in favor of the other, but rather to surrender to self-interest

Dr John Fitzsimmons and Dr Wally Woods, Faculty of Arts, Health and Sciences at Central Queensland University, “Chapter 3 - Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and "Benito Cerino," 2000, http://www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/humanities/litstud/52283/schedule/chap3/p5.htm, accessed 11/8/02

Anderson believes that the lawyer’s charity seems to go beyond what most would have given. This raises a question, he believes, which underpins the story: is it possible to perform acts of altruism without, finally, having regard to self–interest? What this suggests is that Christ’s commandments reflect an ideal, one that the rest of us find impossible to live up to because, at a certain point, we all turn back to self–preservation (that is, unlike Christ who went "all the way" and gave up his life) (386). The contrast between capitalism (Wall Street being one of its dominant symbols) with its self–interest, and the Christ–like Bartleby could not, Anderson argues, be stronger. He concludes that the "divine–logos," which Bartleby represents, shows itself as an impossible practice within the confines of "institutionalised self–interest" (386). Or to put it another way, if we are our brother’s keeper, Bartleby, in demanding to be kept without offering anything in return, is so exasperating that even the apparently charitable lawyer gives in and moves out when Bartleby refuses to quit his offices (387).

The Pro obliterates the infinite. Providing concrete examples of responsibility creates artificial connections that hide the face of the infinite otherKarim Benammar, Faculty of Cross-cultural Studies at Kobe University, “The Project of Community,” Acta Institutionis Philosophiae et Aestheticae, Vol 14, 1996http://ccs.cla.kobe-u.ac.jp/Kihan/karim/project.html

The other in Levinasian ethics is thus certainly not faceless, because it is precisely the face of the other, the individual face of this other, which puts me under an ethical imperative not to kill and not to harm. This is an imperative to always consider the other as a fellow-human, as someone whose humanity, right to live and right to respect are sacred and inviolable. And yet, although this other is an individual, with an expressive, individual face, with brown or green eyes, with features deep-set or hard to fathom, the other must be a stranger. The other who commands me, who puts me under an ethical obligation to refrain from harm, is not my father or sister-in-law, is neither my boss nor my neighbor, cannot be my business partner or high-school friend. The force of the ethical obligation I am put under comes from the fact that the other is a stranger to whom I owe nothing and who owes me nothing. The other we encounter in Levinas is thus an other with a face, a unique and individual other, who is nevertheless not primarily related to me or engaged in any constructive endeavor or relation with me. The other in contemporary French philosophy fait irruption, emerges to dislodge the symmetrical and determined relations between individuals, comes from the outside, unknown, to break up the status quo. The relational context, which was so neatly defined in Watsuji's ethics, is never enclosed, finished, exhaustively described, or even at rest. This is, after all, partly what we mean by "other": someone who is not the same as us, who cannot be reduced to or tamed by the I, who cannot be exhaustively described in terms of categories that apply to the I. The other is the unknown who destroys the possibility of reciprocity and balance, the chance at a self-enclosed relationship between equals. The other is always something of an alien.


Levinas’s ethics create Nazi-like ideological blindness – they can’t account for the nuance of post-ethics decisions

Didier Pollefeyt, Professor of Moral Theology, Katholieke Universiteit, 1999, Ethics After the Holocaust, p. 37

Second, in an important way Levinas's thought leads towards a reduction of the Jewish religion to an ethical religion. Religion is threatened in that its concerns can become exclusively a matter of ethics, that is, doing what is good. But what if the person fails, if courage falls short, and one falls into sin? An ethical God can only judge. Here the danger and terror of ethics arises. The paradox is that Nazism could also be interpreted along these lines, as becomes clear in the thought of Peter Haas. Nazism seems to be founded on a definite, ruthless (indeed perverted) "ethical" code. Nazism was in all possible respects merciless. Whoever did not comply with its "ethical" demands inevitably "deserved" to be eliminated. Of course, Levinas's ethics and Nazi ethics are fundamentally different (see my contribution to this volume), precisely because Levinas's ethics is centered on openness and Nazi ethics on closedness. But at the same time, Levinas's ethics should also be questioned as to its possibility of becoming fanatic in confrontation with evildoers. We must therefore also put forth the question: "What comes after ethics?" The Judaeo-Christian tradition is also a tradition of mercy. Ethics can hereby be saved from its mercilessness. A persons existence can never be completely reduced to one moment. One is always more than what one has done. For ethics after Auschwitz, however, one of the most pressing questions is whether there are situations where humanity has done such great violence that we find ourselves in the ethical impossibility of forgiveness. In the case of genocide one can without the least doubt speak of him pardonable." If not, a forgiveness that is too easily granted leads once again to a trivialization of ethics. The philosophy of Levinas, in other words, should be an occasion that initiates reflection on the relationship between ethics and forgiveness.

They claim responsibility outweighs everything else. Levinas only concludes responsibility is inherent in all action. Treatment of it as an absolute undermines decidability and true responsibility which is grounded in recognition of consequences

David Campbell, professor of international politics at the University of Newcastle, Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, ed. by Campbell and Shapiro, 1999, p. 43-44

"Undecidability" is one of the Derridean concepts that most attracts criticism. Often (mis)understood as licensing an anarchical irresponsibility, it is taken to be the very negation of politics, understood in terms of the decision, and a concomitant denial of responsibility. However, as Derrida makes clear, he has never "proposed a kind of 'all or nothing' choice between pure realization of self-presence and complete freeplay or undecidability.” Indeed, the very notion of undecidability is the condition of possibility for a decision. If the realm of thought was preordained such that there were no options, no competing alternatives, and no difficult choices to make, there would be no need for a decision. Instead, the very existence of a decision is itself a manifestation of undecidability, so that we can comprehend undecidability "as an opening of the field of decision and decidability." As Derrida argues, "even if a decision seems to take only a second and not to be preceded by any deliberation, it is structured by this experience and experiment of the undecidable.” It is for this reason that Derrida has talked in terms of undecidability rather than indeterminacy: the former signifies the context of the decision, a context in which there is "always a determinate oscillation between possibilities," whereas the latter suggests a relativism or indeterminism absent from deconstruction.” Moreover, just as deconstruction is necessary for politics, undecidability is a prerequisite for responsibility. Were there no decisions to be made, were all choices eradicated by the preordination of one and only one path, responsibility— the ability to respond to differing criteria and concerns — would be absent. Rather than being its


abnegation, the possibility of decision ensured by undecidability is the necessary precondition for the existence and exercise of responsibility. Which leads Derrida to state: "There can be no moral or political responsibility without this trial and this passage by way of the undecidable.

The call for infinite responsibility degrades into revulsion for the incurable other.

Ted Billy, Department of English at SUNY Binghamton, “Eros and Thanatos in ‘Bartleby,’” Arizona Quarterly, 31, 1975, http://www.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/billy.htm, accessed 11/8/02

Just as Bartleby embodies thanatos, separation, the death instinct, Melville's narrator represents eros, the impulse toward unification, the life instinct in the author's psyche. The "life instinct also demands a union with others and with the world around us based not on anxiety and aggression"7 but on love, freedom, and the release of nervous tensions. "The principle of unification or interdependence sustains the immortal life of the species and the mortal life of the individual; the principle of separation or independence gives the individual his individuality and ensures his death."8 In this regard, the narrator acts as the agent of the life impulse to react against the death drive of Bartleby in Melville's literary dialectic. Eros operates through the narrator's personality chiefly in the guise of Christian compassion. The theoretical Christian concern for the community of souls is diametrically opposed to Bartleby's heightened individuality and the diseased consciousness it engenders. The greatest example of love for Melville, as it is for St. Paul, is the act of charity. Surely charity is the predominant virtue in the narrator's character. Time after time he offers substantial financial help to the morose scrivener with the promise of further aid. The narrator visits him in prison and sees to it that Bartleby will receive good treatment, should he "prefer" to accept it. The narrator exhibits generosity and selflessness in reaction to Bartleby's eccentricities. "... when this old Adam of resentment rose in me and tempted me concerning Bartleby, I grappled him and threw him .... simply by recalling the divine injunction: 'A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another.'... charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle--a great safeguard to its possessor .... no man, that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity's sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should ... prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy" (p. 52). There is only one thing wrong with the narrator's charitable behavior toward Bartleby--it doesn't work. No amount of well-meaning humanitarianism can unravel the knot of tension built into the conflict of eros and thanatos in human nature. The narrator is most vulnerable to appeals to the bond of "fellow-feeling." He finds it difficult to divorce himself from Bartleby's plight. "The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam" (p. 40). Bartleby's corrosive individuality would not permit him to share this sentiment. His self is severed from its natural relation to life. The narrator's original feeling of pity turns to repulsion when Bartleby's pervasive despair infects him with the hopelessness of ever relieving the scrivener's anguish. "Disarmed" and "unmanned" by Bartleby's fatalistic resignation, the narrator feels "sundry twinges of impotent rebellion" (p. 38) in the antagonism. Despite the constant sympathy he expresses for the scrivener, the narrator is overburdened by the afflictive "millstone" of Bartleby on his conscience. The cross is too heavy for this Christian to bear. "The scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach" (p. 42).

Being for the Other grounds discussion of impacts, it doesn’t trump them. Even if they win their framework, if they make things worse, they lose


D. G. Myers, Associate professor of English and religious studies at Texas A & M, “Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Interpretation,” Comparative Literature, 51, Fall, 1999, p. 266-288, http://www-english.tamu.edu/pers/fac/myers/responsible.html

Nevertheless, I must expect to betray them more often than I am adequate to the challenge of their need. Holocaust literature is a summons to responsibility for the victims of genocide, but this merely describes what is possible, not what is real. Historicity is a reminder that some things are past changing. The reality of six million deaths is something I can neither alter nor deny; the suffering on six million faces is something to which I can never adequately respond. But if I can do nothing about the past I may yet affect the future. It is often said that the purpose of studying the Holocaust is to prevent it from ever happening again. As the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says: Much more is involved in [studying the Holocaust] than the tribute to the memory of murdered millions, settling the account with the murderers and healing the still-festering moral wounds of the passive and silent witnesses. Obviously, the study itself, even a most diligent study, is not a sufficient guarantee against the return of mass murdere[r]s and numb bystanders. Yet without such a study, we would not even know how likely or improbable such a return may be. (88) What this indicates is that the Holocaust does not belong only to history but also to possibility. If we cannot affect its outcome we can still do something about its meaning. Events mean nothing in themselves; they must be interpreted. But what this also indicates is that meaning arises from our responsibility. The counterfactual possibility of doing something appropriate about the Holocaust is what creates our responsibility to it, and if what we want is to discover its meaning—that is, to interpret the Holocaust—then our interpretation must be shaped and guided by our responsibility.


Not Just Europe’s Responsibility

It’s a global problem, not just the European problem


THOSE of us outside Europe are watching the unbelievable images of the Keleti train station in Budapest, the corpse of a toddler washed up on a Turkish beach, the desperate Syrian families chancing their lives on the night trip to the Greek islands — and we keep being told this is a European problem.

The Syrian civil war has created more than four million refugees. The United States has taken in about 1,500 of them. The United States and its allies are at war with the Islamic State in Syria — fine, everyone agrees they are a threat — but don’t we have some responsibility toward the refugees fleeing the combat? If we’ve been arming Syrian rebels, shouldn’t we also be helping the people trying to get out of their way? If we’ve failed to broker peace in Syria, can’t we help the people who can’t wait for peace any longer?

It’s not just the United States that keeps pretending the refugee catastrophe is a European problem. Look at countries that pride themselves on being havens for the homeless. Canada, where I come from? As few as 1,074 Syrians, as of August. Australia? No more than 2,200. Brazil? Fewer than 2,000, as of May.

The worst are the petro states. As of last count by Amnesty International, how many Syrian refugees have the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia taken in? Zero. Many of them have been funneling arms into Syria for years, and what have they done to give new homes to the four million people trying to flee? Nothing.

The brunt of the crisis has fallen on the Turks, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Iraqis and the Lebanese. Funding appeals by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have failed to meet their targets. The squalor in the refugee camps has become unendurable. Now the refugees have decided, en masse, that if the international community won’t help them, if neither Russia nor the United States is going to force the war to an end, they won’t wait any longer. They are coming our way. And we are surprised?





Forced Resettlement Bad


Redistributing Refugees Across Europe Fails

Free movement within the EU makes resettlement quotas useless


In September 2015, EU ministers agreed to resettle 120,000 migrants—a small fraction of those seeking asylum in Europe—from Greece and Italy across twenty-three member states. (Greece and Italy will not be required to resettle more migrants, and Denmark, Ireland, and the UK are exempt from EU asylum policies under provisions laid out in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty.) This plan was approved despite the vocal objections of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. This agreement builds upon a previous voluntary quota system that called on member states to resettle forty thousand migrants from Greece and Italy over a two-year period. Critics of this approach argue that free movement inside the Schengen zone effectively nullifies national resettlement quotas.

Redistributing refugees doesn’t solve the underlying problem


Quota plans and naval operations may help EU member states better manage this crisis, but experts caution that these proposals alone will not stem the tide of migrants. For that, European leaders must address the root causes of migration: helping to broker an end to Syria's civil war, restoring stability to Libya, and upping aid to sub-Saharan Africa. Barring a political solution to these regional crises, Europe will continue to struggle with migrant inflows.




Can’t Force Resettlement

Resettlement can’t be enforced

Jen Kirby, September 22, 2015, New York Magazine, With Some Opposition, European Leaders Establish Refugee Quotas, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/european-leaders-come-up-with-refugee-quotas.html DOA: 9-23-15

However, the Eastern European countries that protested are included in the proposal, and it's not entirely clear how those that don't want any part of this agreement will be forced to comply. The BBC reports that countries will face a fine of 0.002 percent of GDP, but some, such as Slovakia , have basically said they will reject any and all attempts by the European Union to force them to accept refugees. Hungary — which, despite its opposition, will actually benefit from the plan, as it will eventually relocate more than 54,000 people within its borders — questioned how the EU could enforce such quotas when refugees themselves only want to go to Germany or other, more economically stable member states.

Forced redistribution irrelevant. Once people are settled they can move where they want

Martin Wolf, September 22, 2015, Financial Times, A refugee crisis that Europe cannot escape, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3967804c-604b-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#axzz3mTKajB48 DOA : 9-22-15

In the short run, incomers need to be processed. Germany has stated that it expects to receive 800,000 asylum-seekers, or 1 per cent of the population, this year — the largest number ever recorded in a member of the OECD. But its decision to do so is causing huge stresses inside the EU. Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission president, has proposed that refugees be shared out among the member states. EU ministers did vote on Tuesday to relocate 120,00 people across the continent over the next two years. But members differ greatly in their true willingness to take refugees. In any case, once inside the border-free Schengen area, people cannot be tied down. They will move wherever they expect the best lives. The EU needs a common policy, at least for the Schengen area. The UK and US also need to take more refugees.

Immigration policy in Europe is about individual countries, there is no “European” immigration policy

Ian Tranor, 9-5-15, The Guardian, Refugee Crisis: East and West Split as leaders resent Germany for waiving rules, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/05/migration-crisis-europe-leaders-blame-brussels-hungary-germany DOA: 9-6-15

There is no “European” immigration policy or regime. There is a mish-mash of national policies, a patchwork of systems and criteria which are contradictory, incoherent, fragmented. Italy is very far way from Finland, not only geographically, but when it comes to immigration and asylum. France and Germany have quite different historical approaches to integrating newcomers. Sweden and Denmark are neighbours with a close shared history, but their immigration policies are chalk and cheese. National governments guard these prerogatives jealously. “Europe” in the form of the EU authorities in Brussels has minimal say over policymaking. Almost all power here lies with heads of national governments and interior ministries. Yet, in this crisis, Brussels-bashing has become routine, the cheap and easy option for shameless national leaders acting unilaterally, blocking every suggestion that comes out of Brussels and then blaming it for the

http://www.theguardian.com/world/germany

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/05/migration-crisis-europe-leaders-blame-brussels-hungary-germany

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/05/migration-crisis-europe-leaders-blame-brussels-hungary-germany

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3967804c-604b-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#axzz3mTKajB48

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/eu-governments-divisive-quotas-deal-share-120000-refugees

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/eu-attempt-resolve-refugee-quota-dispute-150922044717786.html


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/european-leaders-come-up-with-refugee-quotas.html

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/european-leaders-come-up-with-refugee-quotas.html


ensuing chaos. Orbán proved the point in Brussels last week. “Europe” had failed, its leaders had irresponsibly created this mess, their response was “madness”. He has put up a razor-wire fence on the border with Serbia and announced he was fasttracking legislation to establish a zero-immigration regime within 10 days, with the army deployed on the border. Brussels cannot stop him because these powers are national. If need be, he said, he would put up another fence on the border with Croatia, a barrier between two EU countries. On Friday Brussels shrugged and said it did not like this, but couldn’t do anything about it. The all-powerful busybodies of Brussels are relatively impotent when it comes to immigration. For months the Italians, French, Austrians and Germans have been quietly re-establishing controls on the internal national borders of the open Schengen travel zone, which are supposed to be proscribed. Brussels cannot stop them. A commission spokeswoman said Italian police controls on the border with Austria were not border controls… For more than a year the Germans have been complaining bitterly that people entering Italy and Greece were deliberately not being registered by the national authorities, but simply encouraged to board trains and buses for Germany. Then they shifted and declared unilaterally that Syrians could come anyway. The commission can propose a panoply of measures aimed at creating more joined-up policies. It did so in May and will extend the effort this week. But they are instantly shot down by national police ministries. As its vice-president, Frans Timmermans, said on Friday, “asylum policies in Europe are not aligned”. The European parliament, as ever, has plenty to say about immigration, but absolutely nothing to do because it has no remit over policymaking, which remains overwhelmingly national. The countries of Europe prefer it that way, while blaming Brussels for the ever-worsening state of the union.

Quote

Jay Bookman, September 14, 2015, Atlanta Journal Constitution, ‘Give me your tired, your poor…but not your Muslim refugees,” http://jaybookman.blog.ajc.com/2015/09/14/give-me-your-tired-your-poor-but-not-your-muslim-refugees/ DOA: 9-22-15

It’s easy to think of ourselves as the “exceptional nation,” the “most charitable” nation, the nation where a person’s race or religion doesn’t matter. It is so much harder to actually act that way, particularly at times of crisis or when it involves taking a risk of some sort. But the truth is, that’s the only time it really matters.

Responsible – US and Europe destabilized the region, triggering the refugees

Mehran Arbab, September 9, 2015, Post Gazette, We have a responsibility to admit refugees, http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/letters/2015/09/09/We-have-a-responsibility-to-admit-refugees/stories/201509090093 DOA: 9-22-15

Pictures of refugees coming onshore in Europe tell a horrifying tale of a people until recent years having normal lives in now war-torn lands.

http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/letters/2015/09/09/We-have-a-responsibility-to-admit-refugees/stories/201509090093

http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/letters/2015/09/09/We-have-a-responsibility-to-admit-refugees/stories/201509090093

http://jaybookman.blog.ajc.com/2015/09/14/give-me-your-tired-your-poor-but-not-your-muslim-refugees/

http://jaybookman.blog.ajc.com/2015/09/14/give-me-your-tired-your-poor-but-not-your-muslim-refugees/

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/17/hungary-closes-border-serbia-starts-building-fence-bar-migrants


These mothers, fathers and children were not born to be refugees. To protect and to give their children an opportunity for a dignified life, they are crossing dangerous borders on land and sea.

We must respect them for that. They are risking their lives for a slim chance, and that is more than most of us will ever have to do.

It is easy to avoid the fact that in a large part we caused this mass immigration. For ideological and geopolitical reasons we — the United States and Europe — destabilized Iraq, Libya and Syria and allowed the Islamic State group and the like to wreak havoc in a large part of the Middle East and North Africa. In spite of their dictatorial nature, the ruling regimes of these countries had maintained a state of stability.

Through conspiracy and war we prematurely removed that stability, and we now must act responsibly and admit these refugees into our own communities.

Europe deadlocked and facing a backlash

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a visiting professor at Brandeis University's Heller School. His latest book is Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility., 9-6-15, Huffington Post, Refugee Blues, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/post_10092_b_8097064.html DOA: 9-7-15

The obvious solution would be to offer a legal route for Syrian refugees to settle in Europe so that they didn't have to brave leaky boats and hostile border guards. That solution would require countries to each take their fair share -- including the United States and Canada. President Roosevelt proposed something similar for German Jews. A conference was convened in 1938 at Evian-les-Bains in France to see if agreement could be reached among major nations on admission of Jewish refugees. The conference was a flop. Only the Dominican Republic offered to take serious numbers. With the EU machinery deadlocked, the practical question is whether nations that are relatively sympathetic to the refugee crisis, such as Germany and France, can join with Sweden and create a coalition of the willing, bypassing the EU. This will not be easy. Even before this latest refugee influx, Europe was experiencing a huge backlash against immigrants. Much of Europe had been compassionate in its acceptance of refugees and had also admitted citizens of its former colonies. During the boom years, Europe had welcomed guest workers. By 2008, many countries had immigrant or second-generation immigrant populations approaching 10 percent. High unemployment in the prolonged aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis only increased local resistance. Really bad austerity policy has made an immigration crisis into a political catastrophe. Germany's stance on the refugees is relatively liberal, but its relentless pursuit of austerity has made the crisis worse. This rightwing nativist upsurge has undermined social democratic politics in Europe's most tolerant and advanced societies. Large numbers of local working class voters, frightened of unemployment, have turned to nationalist parties -- fragmenting parliamentary systems and making it impossible for social democrat or labor parties to lead stable majority governments. Rightwing populist parties have been surging in the most progressive nations of Europe. In Denmark, Norway and Finland, where center-right coalitions now govern, the rightwing anti-immigrant parties are now the second largest.

Forcing refugee settlement fails and undermines support for the UK in the EU

Dominic Waghorn, September 23, 2015, Sky News, Refugee Crisis Threatens Support for EU in UK, http://news.sky.com/story/1557489/refugee-crisis-threatens-support-for-eu-in-uk DOA: 9-23-15

Europe has failed to agree on what to do with even a fraction of the hundreds of thousand of refugees pouring into the continent. Instead, a majority of countries have voted against the will of four smaller nations on a quota system distributing just over a hundred thousand migrants. That has set-up today's refugee summit in Brussels in an atmosphere of toxic acrimony. The Czechs say only the future will reveal how big a mistake the move was. The Slovaks say they won't accept it. The majority vote was an act of

http://news.sky.com/story/1557105/eu-ministers-back-quota-system-for-migrants

http://news.sky.com/story/1557105/eu-ministers-back-quota-system-for-migrants

http://news.sky.com/story/1557489/refugee-crisis-threatens-support-for-eu-in-uk

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005520



failure. Only a voluntary system sharing out refugees will work. It will be impossible to force unwilling countries to take refugees if they do not want to. It plays into the hands of the EU's enemies and opponents. Already, Eurosceptic Conservatives and UKIP have said it is proof that EU membership requires loss of control of nations' borders. Last night in Brussels, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond admitted to reporters the refugee crisis was undermining support in the UK for Europe ahead of Britain's referendum on EU membership. "A sense of chaos and disarray tends to cause public opinion to react negatively," he said.


No Support for Increased Redistribution

Czech government opposes any required distribution of refugees


But there were early signs of resistance to the plan. “I’m very surprised by this unprecedented decision,” Slovakia’s interior minister, Robert Kalinak, said after the vote. The Czech prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, said his government would “reject any attempt to introduce some permanent mechanism of redistributing refugees.”




European Action Generally Fails

Four key barriers to an effective European response


The pressures of uncontrolled migration are hardly restricted to Europe—as the U.S. presidential campaign has underscored. But the EU’s predicament is particularly acute. The sudden influx of migrants has appeared to catch European governments by surprise, and has exposed fissures among the members of the Union. There at least four reasons why Europe is struggling.

Europeans often don’t know who is crossing their borders : Are they refugees or economic migrants? Many of the people showing up are asylum seekers who claim the status of refugees—defined under a 1951 UN convention as someone who has fled his or her country because of a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” But until such claims can be definitively evaluated—which can take months—these people are stuck in limbo, suspected of being economic migrants who have chosen to move for better job prospects. Making such judgments is tough, but the decisions matter: refugees are entitled to international protection in an asylum country, whereas economic migrants can be turned away. But what about those who fall in the gray zone? Are people who flee from a country plagued by persecution, discrimination, and also a crumbling economy asylum seekers or migrants? What about those who fled their countries for refugee reasons but continue on in search of better job prospects? Answers to such questions often boil down to a judgement call with grave implications for the person in question.

EU members can’t get on the same page : Complicating matters, EU member states are quarrelling amongst themselves about how to respond. In principle, the EU’s Dublin Regulation stipulates that entry-point states are responsible for housing migrants and examining their asylum applications. But this EU law has placed a heavy strain on Mediterranean nations like Italy and particularly Greece, whose protracted financial crisis has left it ill-equipped to handle a sudden influx of refugees. In what it thought was a constructive move, Germany has suspended the Dublin Regulation and will allow Syrian refugees to apply for asylum even if they first arrived in another country. Berlin has since called for the EU to redistribute asylum seekers amongst member states. The idea of a quota system gained support from European Commission President Jean Claude-Juncker and, recently, European Council President Donald Tusk. But other EU members, including the United Kingdom and Hungary, vehemently insist that immigration policies be decided by individual governments. On Thursday, Hungarian President Viktor Orban blamed Chancellor Angela Merkel for essentially “inviting” migrants to Europe, labeling the crisis a “German Problem.” Such finger-pointing bodes ill for a unified EU front.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/09/03/us/ap-eu-europe-migrants-the-latest.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/world/europe/hungary-train-station-migrant-crisis.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/09/03/us/ap-eu-europe-migrants-the-latest.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/world/europe/european-union-asks-member-countries-to-accept-quotas-of-migrants.html

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/29/germany-quota-system-eu-migrant-distribution

http://time.com/4015934/germany-syrian-refugees-asylum/



http://www.unhcr.org/475fb0302.html

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/StatusOfRefugees.aspx



Politicians are feeling the heat from right-wing blowback : The rise of right-wing political parties in numerous EU countries (Denmark, Sweden, and France, for example) has fueled popular anti-immigrant sentiments. Violence against refugees and migrants has spiked in Germany, where asylum seekers increased by 132 percent over the same period in 2014. The pressures of populist nationalism have made it more difficult for politicians at the inter-European level to agree on a unified response.

Regulatory incoherence : In 2013, the European Parliament endorsed a Common European Asylum System, which establishes procedures to ensure uniform treatment for all asylum applications. Unfortunately, EU countries have failed to implement and enforce these provisions with any consistency. Complicating matters, there is no agreed list of countries the EU considers to be in conflict, making it hard to determine whether a person is an asylum seeker or a migrant. Nor are there any collective EU centers for asylum seekers to get processed and fed. Each EU nation has its own ways of doing things, exacerbating the sense of regulatory chaos. Europe’s migrant crisis is only the latest and most acute manifestation of a broader international problem: failure to develop and implement common standards and procedures for handling migrant flows, especially in the wake of political and economic turmoil. This is partly inherent in the complexity and sensitivity of migration, compared to other global flows. Hoping to benefit from globalization, governments in recent decades have lowered barriers dramatically for most factors of production, including capital, goods, services, and ideas—and they have negotiated multiple rules to govern the world economy. But the international regulation of migration has lagged, globally and regionally, because the cross-border movement of people is inherently sensitive politically—touching on issues of sovereignty, security, employment, and (not least) national identity. The result is a regulatory vacuum.

http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/e-library/docs/ceas-fact-sheets/ceas_factsheet_en.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/europe/germany-migrants-attacks-asylum-seekers-backlash.html



Disadvantages


Social Services Good

Refugees will overwhelm Europe’s social service infrastructure

Scott Greer, September 24, 2015, Daily Caller, Illegal Immigrants Don’t Follow the Pope’s Golden Rule, http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/24/illegal-migrants-dont-follow-the-popes-golden-rule/ DOA: 9-25-15

While many of these immigrants came to Europe for employment, the struggling economies of the continent offers few opportunities for low-skilled migrants, and the new arrivals imperil existing social infrastructures. The lion’s share of camp dwellers, if allowed to stay, would go straight on government assistance — like most asylum seekers already living in the West. Out of the refugees residing in America, 91 percent of them are on some form of government assistance.

And that’s no no meager cost for taxpayers to bear.Germany is set to take in 800,000 migrants this year. The average cost for taking in each individual migrant is estimated to be $14,500. That’s an $11.6 billion dollar bill foisted onto German taxpayers.Along with the large costs to taxpayers and lack of economic feasibility in accepting these migrants, they also bring crime and terror elements. Some of the high profile cases involving these migrants include an elderly couple brutally murdered in Sicily, a woman beheaded in a Swedish IKEA store and a seven-year-old girl raped in Germany.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/24/illegal-migrants-dont-follow-the-popes-golden-rule/


Backlash

Racist backlash against refuges in Europe

Daniel Blei, 9-4-15, historian, Foreign Policy, The Banality of History, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/04/the-banality-of-history-germany-migrants-neo-nazis/ DOA: 9-22-15

In June, a map surfaced on the Internet, displaying the address of every refugee center and asylum shelter in Germany under the title “No Refugee Center in My Backyard.” Google took down the map, but only after a spate of violence, including the torching of an empty shelter in the Bavarian town of Reichertshofen. On a Berlin commuter train 10 days ago, neo-Nazis shouted “Heil Hitler” while urinating on two children traveling with their mother. The previous weekend in Heidenau, a town of 16,000 in the hills south of Dresden, German police battled hundreds of men hurtling stones and bottles outside an asylum shelter. In the medieval city of Meissen, famous for its porcelain, neo-Nazi arsonists struck an apartment building, newly renovated by the city to house refugees. Last week, on the western outskirts of Berlin, in Nauen in Brandenburg, arsonists burned a refugee center to the ground. On Friday, in Heppenheim near Frankfurt, a refugee shelter caught fire, leaving five people injured. In Witten, a university town in North Rhine-Westphalia, a mosque was set ablaze, the latest in a series of arson attacks on mosques. On Aug. 10, Heinrich Schmitz, a columnist for the online magazine The European and a member of the initiative #HeimeOhneHass, or “Homes Without Hate,” which supports refugees and asylum-seekers, published a “Declaration of Surrender,” announcing his retirement from political writing, facing a barrage of threats against him and his family.

All of Europe is facing a refugee crisis, but only in Germany, which has one of the continent’s most hospitable policies for refugees and asylum-seekers, does right-wing violence feel like an existential threat. The spate of attacks and bubbling up of hatred have prompted national soul-searching, raising questions about the nation and national belonging that haven’t come up since the 1990s, in reunification’s wake. Some Germans are stepping up to help tens of thousands of refugees entering the country, invoking a moral obligation to act. But xenophobic violence continues, and some see in asylum-seekers a socioeconomic threat. A national debate has emerged: Are we fremdenfeindlich (xenophobic) or fremdenfreundlich (foreigner-friendly)?

Massive racist backlash against immigrants and refugees in Germany


In June, a map surfaced on the Internet, displaying the address of every refugee center and asylum shelter in Germany under the title “No Refugee Center in My Backyard.” Google took down the map, but only after a spate of violence, including the torching of an empty shelter in the Bavarian town of Reichertshofen. On a Berlin commuter train 10 days ago, neo-Nazis shouted “Heil Hitler” while urinating on two children traveling with their mother. The previous weekend in Heidenau, a town of 16,000 in the hills south of Dresden, German police battled hundreds of men hurtling stones and bottles outside an asylum shelter. In the medieval city of Meissen, famous for its porcelain, neo-Nazi arsonists struck an apartment building, newly renovated by the city to house refugees. Last week, on the western outskirts of Berlin, in Nauen in

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/07/germany-refugees-asylum-seekers-arson-violence-unlwecome/





Brandenburg, arsonists burned a refugee center to the ground. On Friday, in Heppenheim near Frankfurt, a refugee shelter caught fire, leaving five people injured. In Witten, a university town in North Rhine-Westphalia, a mosque was set ablaze, the latest in a series of arson attacks on mosques. On Aug. 10, Heinrich Schmitz, a columnist for the online magazine The European and a member of the initiative #HeimeOhneHass, or “Homes Without Hate,” which supports refugees and asylum-seekers, published a “Declaration of Surrender,” announcing his retirement from political writing, facing a barrage of threats against him and his family. All of Europe is facing a refugee crisis, but only in Germany, which has one of the continent’s most hospitable policies for refugees and asylum-seekers, does right-wing violence feel like an existential threat. The spate of attacks and bubbling up of hatred have prompted national soul-searching, raising questions about the nation and national belonging that haven’t come up since the 1990s, in reunification’s wake. Some Germans are stepping up to help tens of thousands of refugees entering the country, invoking a moral obligation to act. But xenophobic violence continues, and some see in asylum-seekers a socioeconomic threat. A national debate has emerged: Are we fremdenfeindlich (xenophobic)

or fremdenfreundlich (foreigner-friendly)?

http://www.dw.com/de/quadriga-fl%C3%BCchtlingskrise-hier-hilfe-dort-hass-2015-09-03/e-18645897-9801

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/rechte-hassbuerger-und-meinungsfreiheit-eine-kapitulationserklaerung/12167486.html

http://www.derwesten.de/staedte/witten/brandanschlag-auf-fluechtlingsunterkunft-in-witten-bommerholz-id11054003.html

http://www.dw.com/en/five-injured-when-refugee-shelter-in-heppenheim-near-frankfurt-catches-fire/a-18693005


Terrorism

Refugees could be terrorists


U.S. lawmakers immediately expressed concerns about the potential influx. The Islamic State group (ISIS) and other terrorist organizations "have made it abundantly clear that they will use the refugee crisis to try to enter the United States. Now the Obama administration wants to bring in an additional 10,000 Syrians without a concrete and foolproof plan to ensure that terrorists won't be able to enter the country," said U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. "The administration has essentially given the American people a 'trust me.' That isn't good enough," according to a statement from the lawmakers, who head the congressional judiciary committees.




European Politics Links

Taking more refugees risks unseating liberal European politicians

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a visiting professor at Brandeis University's Heller School. His latest book is Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility, Co-founder and co-edittor, American Prospect, September 9, 2015, Huffington Post, Refugee Blues, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/post_10092_b_8097064.html DOA: 9-22-15

High unemployment in the prolonged aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis only increased local resistance. Really bad austerity policy has made an immigration crisis into a political catastrophe. Germany's stance on the refugees is relatively liberal, but its relentless pursuit of austerity has made the crisis worse.

This rightwing nativist upsurge has undermined social democratic politics in Europe's most tolerant and advanced societies. Large numbers of local working class voters, frightened of unemployment, have turned to nationalist parties -- fragmenting parliamentary systems and making it impossible for social democrat or labor parties to lead stable majority governments.

Rightwing populist parties have been surging in the most progressive nations of Europe. In Denmark, Norway and Finland, where center-right coalitions now govern, the rightwing anti-immigrant parties are now the second largest.

Unlike some other populist parties, the Danish variant is strongly pro-welfare state. It just thinks the welfare state should be reserved for Danes.

This puts Danish Social Democrats in a quandary. They are losing working class voters to the People's Party, and my interviews with party leaders suggest that Social Democrats are split down the middle. Some want to ostracize the populists as unacceptable toxic. Others look at the relentless parliamentary arithmetic, and conclude that their only chance of returning to power is some kind of alliance with the People's Party on issues where they agree. For now the People's Party is supporting the center-right government, which is more anti-immigrant than the Social Democrats.

Elsewhere in Europe, center-left leaders are hiding. Traditionally, as humanists, they are pro-immigrant and pro-refugee. But in practice, they are losing their working class base to racists. And there are only so many people that a small nation can admit.

This reality makes the stance of the Swedish government all the more ennobling. Sometimes, leadership is about appealing to the best in people. Without that leadership, racists succeed in appealing to the worst.

No political support in Europe for an effective solution





The growing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers fleeing turmoil in Africa and the Middle East poses complex challenges for European policymakers still grappling with weak economic growth and fractured national politics. Europe, according to a 2014 report from the International Organization for Migration, is currently the most dangerous destination for irregular migration in the world, and the Mediterranean Sea the world’s most dangerous border crossing. To date, the European Union's collective response to its growing migrant crisis has been ad hoc and, critics charge, more focused on securing the bloc's borders than on protecting the rights of migrants and refugees. With nationalist parties ascendant in many member states and concerns about Islamic terrorism looming large across the continent, it remains unclear if political headwinds will facilitate a new climate of immigration reform.

http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/free/FatalJourneys_CountingtheUncounted.pdf

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-05/eu-s-fractured-politics-is-biggest-2015-risk-eurasia-group-says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-05/eu-s-fractured-politics-is-biggest-2015-risk-eurasia-group-says


Czech Politics Links

Whatever party is more anti-immigrant will do better in the election

Martin Ehl is a journalist for Hospodářské noviny, a Czech daily, September 25, 2015, Understanding Central Europe’s Opposition to Refugees, http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=61404 DOA: 9-25-15

The official position of the Czech government is that a quota system to redistribute refugees within the EU will not work because the Czech Republic is not a country in which refugees would like to stay so they will leave for Germany. As consequence, Germany would then seal its border with the Czech Republic anyway.

There is also a supporting argument that the quota system as a permanent mechanism that would allow the European Commission to distribute refugees according to certain economic indicators, would be breach of national sovereignty.

The problem for Czech politicians is their inability to explain these arguments to their partners in Europe. To a big extent, this is caused by politicians’ lack of knowledge about how EU politics work and their poor language skills. (This has become an issue. During a meeting of EU interior ministers on September 22, Milan Chovanec, the Czech interior minister, was sitting alone when the others chatted because he is not able to speak any language but Czech.) Furthermore, the Czech government hasn’t put on the table any alternative plan for dealing with the refugees.

On this topic, there is unique unity among the relevant political parties in Prague. Nobody wants to allow foreigners in, and the issue is starting to become a kind of political game: whichever party does the most to refuse the refugees will win the country’s next parliamentary election, due in 2017.

There is also a general feeling in Czech society that citizens should fear anything connected to Islam. That sentiment is driven by populist politicians, led by President Miloš Zeman.

Attacking refugees has strengthened Orban politically

László Kontler is a professor of history and pro-rector at the Central European University in Budapest, September 25, 2015, Understanding Central Europe’s Opposition to Refugees, http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=61404 DOA: 9-25-15

There can be no denying the fact that the Hungarian government was under an obligation to deal with the influx of migrants in conformity with the relevant EU regulations. However, Budapest made very little (if any) effort to facilitate this process. It has done a great deal to turn the images of crowds of indigent and aggressive foreigners swarming the country’s public spaces—pictures already conjured up in the government’s propaganda before the real outbreak of the crisis—into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The crisis has also brought to surface another Hungary: that of civic organizations with activists and volunteers. Contrary to representations by government spokespersons and government-friendly media, these are not starry-eyed liberal idealists who are simply trying to soothe their consciences while blind to the possible risks and threats posed by the migration phenomenon. They are individuals motivated by compassion and solidarity who regularly participate in other forms of humanitarian help and who have prevented the refugee crisis from becoming a humanitarian catastrophe.

http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=61404



At the same time, the Hungarian government’s strategy has so far worked. The majority of its targets—sympathizers lost to the Far Right—seem to have been reconquered, and after a decline in the fall and winter of 2014–2015, the popularity of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his conservative Fidesz party has climbed back to where it had been before.

Anti-refugees sentiment on Slovakia politically popular

Andrea Bilá is a project manager for the fight against discrimination, racism, and xenophobia at the Open Society Foundation in Bratislava, September 25, 2015, Understanding Central Europe’s Opposition to Refugees, http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=61404 DOA: 9-25-15

The reasons for the Slovak government’s stance toward the refugee crisis are mostly political. In the context of Slovakia’s upcoming parliamentary election, due by March 2016, and of significantly radicalized Slovak public opinion, the ruling center-left Smer-SD party seems to consider any condemnation of xenophobia or Islamophobia politically risky, as it could be perceived as a de facto concession to the EU’s common migration policy.

In June 2015, 6,000 people took to the streets of Bratislava for a rally against national quotas for migrants. In a country where discontent seldom takes the form of street protest, this is of some significance. Indeed, refugees have become the most debated topic and one of the major worries for the Slovak population. And no wonder. Economically underprivileged people living in the southern and eastern regions of Slovakia, who already feel abandoned by the central government, perceive refugees as an economic and security threat.

There are voices that oppose the government’s line. After 71 refugees were found dead in a truck close to the Slovak-Austrian border in August, several public personalities including Slovak President Andrej Kiska launched an initiative called Plea for Humanity, urging the government to draft an action plan for the crisis.

But it now seems clear that the Slovak government is using its populist and simplistic rhetoric, which consists of labeling the refugees at times as potential terrorists, at times as economic migrants, to manipulate public opinion.

Instead of presenting the quota system as a temporary solution, which would certainly lead to growing support for nationalists and radicals, Bratislava uses the momentum created by this issue to flex its muscles in Brussels and thus build its political capital.

In the meantime, issues like corruption scandals, economic discontent, and public frustration with the political establishment, which made front-page news only weeks ago, are slowly sinking into oblivion.

http://www.vyzvakludskosti.sk/en/


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/world/europe/fissures-in-eu-deepen-from-strain-of-migrant-influx-and-greek-debt.html



Sovereignty

States’ rights to control admission of non-citizens protected by sovereignty


The movement of people between states, whether refugees or ‘migrants’, takes place in a context in which sovereignty remains important, and specifically that aspect of sovereign competence which entitles the state to exercise prima facie exclusive jurisdiction over its territory, and to decide who among non-citizens shall be allowed to enter and remain, and who shall be refused admission and required or compelled to leave. Like every sovereign power, this competence must be exercised within and according to law, and the state’s right to control the admission of non-citizens is subject to certain well-defined exceptions in favour of those in search of refuge, among others. Moreover, the state which seeks to exercise migration controls outside its territory, for example, through the physical interception, ‘interdiction’, and return of asylum seekers and forced migrants, may also be liable for actions which breach those of its international obligations which apply extra-territorially (Goodwin-Gill 2011; Moreno Lax 2011, 2012).1

No international conventions define asylum and it is up to states to apply it

Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, August 2014, Professor Guy S. Goodwin Gill was formerly Professor of Asylum Law at the University of Amsterdam, served as a Legal Adviser in the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1976-1988, and was President of the Media Appeals Board of Kosovo from 2000-2003. He is the Founding Editor of the International Journal of Refugee Law and has written extensively on refugees, migration, international organizations, elections, democratization, and child soldiers. Recent publications include The Limits of Transnational Law, (CUP 2010), with Hélène Lambert, eds., The Refugee in International Law, (OUP, 2007), 3rd edn. with Jane McAdam; Free and Fair Elections, (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2nd edn., 2006); Brownlie’s Documents on Human Rights, (OUP, 2010), 6th edn., with the late Sir Ian Brownlie, QC, eds; and introductory notes to various treaties and instruments on refugees, statelessness and asylum for the ‘Historic Archives’ section of the UN











Audio-Visual Library of International Law. He practises as a Barrister from Blackstone Chambers, London, The International Handbook of Refugee Protectionhttp://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199652433.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199652433-e-021 DOA: 9-25-15

No international instrument defines ‘asylum’. Article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights simply says that ‘Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.’ Article 1 of the 1967 UN Declaration on Territorial Asylum notes that ‘Asylum granted by a State, in the exercise of its sovereignty, to persons entitled to invoke Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...shall be respected by all other States.’ But it is for ‘the State granting asylum to evaluate the grounds for the grant of asylum’ (Goodwin-Gill 2012).

Neither instrument creates any binding obligations for states. Indeed, both texts suggest a considerable margin of appreciation with respect to who is granted asylum and what exactly this means. In practice, however, states’ freedom of action is significantly influenced by ‘external’ constraints, which follow from an internationally recognized refugee definition, the application of the principle of non-refoulement, and the overall impact of human rights law. Regional instruments and doctrine have also had an important impact on the ‘asylum question’. Again, the 1969 OAU Convention was among the first to give a measure of normative content to the discretionary competence of states to grant asylum (Article II).17 Within the EU, the 2000 Charter of Fundamental Rights declares expressly that ‘the right to asylum shall be guaranteed...’, and that no one may be removed to a state where he or she faces a serious risk of the death penalty, torture, or other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Articles 18, 19). The Qualification Directive provides in turn that member states ‘shall grant’ refugee status to those who satisfy the relevant criteria (Article 13; see also Article 8 of the Temporary Protection Directive) (Gil-Bazo 2008).

States are not obligated to left refugees resettle locally


Local integration, that is, residence and acceptance into the local community where the refugee first arrives, is the practical realization of asylum. States may be bound to the refugee definition and bound to observe the principle of non-refoulement, but they retain discretion as to whether to allow a refugee to settle locally; this point was underlined by the UNHCR Executive Committee in its 2005 Conclusion on local integration,20 although with little if any regard or reference to states’ other obligations under international law which govern the treatment of non-nationals on state territory.













States are obliged to provide assistance to refugees


States have also agreed to provide certain facilities to refugees, including administrative assistance (Article 25); identity papers (Article 27), and travel documents (Article 28); the grant of permission to transfer assets (Article 30); and the facilitation of naturalization (Article 34).

African, Latin American, and European conventions and laws all prohibit the return of refugees and call for protections


In addition to measures adopted at the universal level, the international legal protection of refugees and forced migrants benefits from regional arrangements and instruments which, in turn, may be refugee specific or oriented more generally to the protection of human rights.

In 1969, the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) adopted the Convention on the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (Sharpe 2012).10 Article I(1) incorporates the 1951












Convention definition, but paragraph (2) adds an approach more immediately reflecting the social and political realities of contemporary refugee movements. Also to be accepted as refugees are those compelled to flee owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination, or events seriously disturbing public order. In 1984, 10 Central American States adopted a similar approach in the (non-binding) Cartagena Declaration,11 recognizing in addition flight from generalized violence, internal conflicts, and massive violation of human rights. Two years later, in the extradition case of Soering v United Kingdom,12 the European Court of Human Rights laid the essential foundations for protection from removal under the European Convention. In this first judgment in what is now a long and consistent body of jurisprudence, the court ruled that it would be a breach of the Convention to remove an individual to another state in which there were substantial grounds to believe that he or she would face a real risk of treatment contrary to Article 3, which prohibits torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. Later judgments have confirmed the applicability of this principle without exception, for example, in ‘security’ or criminal cases,13 and in the context also of extra-territorial interception operations.14

This human rights jurisprudence contributed substantially to ‘legislative’ developments within the European Union. These include the adoption of the 2001 Directive on Temporary Protection,15 applicable to ‘displaced persons’ unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin, for example, because of armed conflict, endemic violence, or systematic or generalized violence, and whether or not they are Convention refugees; (p. 42) and the 2004 Qualification Directive, which besides providing for recognition of Convention refugees, now also calls for ‘subsidiary protection’ in the case of those who would face a real risk of serious harm if returned to their country of origin (McAdam 2007).16









Alternatives


Canada Alternative

Canada will not take more refugees

Associated Press, 9-5-15, In election year, Canada less welcoming to refugees, http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.674741 DOA: 9-6-1

AP - Canada has long prided itself for opening its doors wider than any nation to asylum seekers, but the number it welcomes has waned since Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper took power almost 10 years ago. Harper has rejected calls to take immediate action to resettle more Syrian refugees, despite the haunting image of a drowned 3-year-old washed up on a Turkish beach that has focused the world's attention on the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

Canada has the capability to quickly resettle refugees


In times of crisis in decades past, Canada resettled refugees quickly and in large numbers. It airlifted more than 5,000 people from Kosovo in the late 1990s and more than 5,000 from Uganda in 1972 and resettled 60,000 Vietnamese in 1979-80. More than 1.2 million refugees have arrived in Canada since World War II.

Canada could bring in more refugees


Immigration Minister Chris Alexander has said Canada will accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next three years in response to a United Nations Refugee Agency's global appeal to resettle 100,000 refugees worldwide. But leaders of the two main opposition parties challenging Harper in the October election say Canada should do more. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau said Canada should take in 25,000 Syrian refugees immediately. “We have it done in the past, and we can do that again," Trudeau told a campaign event Friday. "It is something that has made Canada the country that we are." Tom Mulcair, leader of the New Democrats, said military action would not have saved the little boy on the beach. "Canadians that I meet with across this country want Canada to do its share," Mulcair said. "If we're elected, there will be 10,000 people brought to Canada before the end of this year." The New Democrats advocate an accelerated plan to bring more than 46,000 refugees to Canada by 2019.

Canada could bring in 50,000 more this year and 100,000 more next year


Catherine Dauvergne, an immigration expert and the dean of law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said that with countries like Turkey taking in 1.59 million Syrians, Canada should take in 50,000 this year and 100,000 next year, considering the scope of the crisis. Conservative cabinet minister and former immigration minister Jason Kenney disputed criticism that Canada needs to be more welcoming, tweeting that since 2006 Canada has welcomed 1.6 million new citizens and 240,000 refugees.

If countries agree to take more refugees that will encourage more to flee

http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.674741





Alison Smale, 9-6-15, New York Times, Pope Calls on All of Europe’s Catholics to House Refugees, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/world/europe/pope-calls-on-europeans-to-house-refugees.html DOA: 9-6-15

The British do not want to add any further incentive, or “pull factor,” that will encourage more refugees to risk the passage to Europe, nor to favor those migrants who could afford to pay people smugglers over those who are in the regional camps. With euroskeptics inside and outside Mr. Cameron’s ruling Conservative Party critical of Brussels, Britain will continue to reject the idea of mandatory quotas to distribute migrants and asylum seekers already in Europe



Multilateral Action

A robust, multilateral immigration mechanism needs to be developed


Finally, Europe’s current predicament carries a larger lesson. The nations of the world need a more robust multilateral mechanism to develop and promote common global standards for the processing and treatment of migrants and refugees. The building blocks of such a system already exists, including in the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). But the IOM is mainly an assistance body rather than a forum for negotiation, and UNHCR is stretched thin by multiple humanitarian crises. However, rather than seeking to create an entirely new international organization, UN member states should look to strengthen these existing ones so that they can do more to assist countries and regions coping with unexpected spikes in refugees and migrants. Ban Ki-moon’s upcoming emergency summit on migration (planned for September 30) is a welcome step in this direction.

http://www.un.org/sg/statements/index.asp?nid=8938
