“What would Jesus do?” That’s the question many people ask when trying to figure out the right way to act. But for now, forget that. With the inundation of immigrants still putting Europe into panic, let’s make it more personal: “What would you do?”
But I’m not asking what you would do if you were a citizen of Europe, let alone a leader. No, what I’m asking is, what would you do if you were one of those poor souls from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or any of the dozen other nations where war and terrorism have made life not just unbearable, but untenable? Would you flee with your family, or would you just wait where you are and take your punishment?
For many who are running from the horrors that invaded their world (for which, by the way, we bear some blame either because of what we’ve done or, with Syria in particular, because of what we haven’t done), those are the only choices they have.
And yet one of my friends, responding to my last column about these refugees, wrote to me, “Immigration without assimilation is invasion.”
How very charitable.
But I’m sure he speaks for many. My response is, these people had to make a choice: death at the hands of one invasion, or life as a part of another. Perhaps said more simply, they chose to let their children live, not die.
Put in their shoes, I’d do exactly the same thing: get away, get anywhere that gives my family and me a chance not just at a decent life, but a chance at life, period. We can quibble about how oppressive life would have to be before we’d abandon everything we know, and own, to strike out for a strange land that’s not likely to greet us with a smile. But that’s just a matter of degrees.
Of course it’s the scale of this migration that makes it all so difficult. If there was just a handful of families fleeing, they would be charitably absorbed and we’d never hear a peep about it. But the scale shouldn’t matter. Either helping people who have fled for their lives is the right thing to do, or it’s not.
People escaping death are the most desperate souls on earth. The only reason we’re not in their shoes is that we’re luckier than they are, by virtue of our birth. So if you think these migrants are “invading” Europe, try to think about it that way and see if it changes anything. If it doesn’t, then all I can say is, I hope this kind of thing never happens to you.
Greg Dobbs of Evergreen was a correspondent for ABC News for 23 years, then for HDNet television’s “World Report.”
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