Jacob Prall
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Years of civil war have yielded millions of refugees from Syria, desperately searching for food, water, shelter, and a better life. The rise of ISIS has seen a rise of Iraqi refugees as well, fleeing the organization’s brutality and their own country’s inadequacies. What has developed is one of the largest migrations of the modern era.
More than 4 million Syrians and 3 million Iraqis have fled their countries. Many survive in horrible living conditions in massive “camps.” The European Union is finally opening its borders and beginning refugee programs aimed to both bring in refugees and minimize the numbers who die on their way to Europe. The West’s prolonged support and continued tolerance of the Assad regime is enough to cement a sense of responsibility. Unfortunately, the sensibility largely exists in Europe and has yet to find its way across the Atlantic.
Germany and Sweden are at the forefront of the refugee effort, urging EU countries to start setting generous quotas to ease the tensions growing in the Middle East from so many displaced people. Italy and Hungary are also offering asylum to a relatively high number of refugees. Countries such as France and the UK offer asylum to 14,000 refugees between them, compared with Germany and Sweden’s nearly 200,000 between them. The numbers are pitiful but are far better than in one of the largest, and arguably most responsible nations in the world — the United States.
The United States is set to give asylum to 1,600 refugees as of 2015, an abysmal number when compared to the 2 million in Turkey and half million in Libya and Egypt. With the EU’s growing compassion, the pressure is on to accept more refugees, and the U.S. State Department has announced plans to take in “meaningfully increased numbers” of refugees in 2016.
Perhaps the greatest international compassion has been displayed by a tiny island nation in the North Atlantic. Iceland has had a remarkable response to the call for resettling refugees. Iceland’s government announced it would take in just 50 refugees. For a country with a population a tenth the size of Iowa, 50 certainly isn’t nothing. But the Icelandic citizens believed the number was far too small. Icelandic children’s book author Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir created a Facebook page as an open letter to the Icelandic government, requesting she be allowed to accept a small family, offering to pay their airfare, find them shelter, and get them food and water. The page caught on quickly, and thousands of Icelandic people have come to the Facebook page offering their money, their homes, and their skills to refugees. The overwhelming support for refugees has led the Icelandic government to rethink its position, and it’s reconstructing the laws around admitting asylum seekers as a result.
The outpouring of compassion and support is both admirable and inspiring, and the trend might be contagious. The United States, with a population more than 1,000 times that of Iceland, has the means and resources to do far more than we do now, and President Obama on Thursday directed the State Department to take in 10,000 refugees in 2016. As the president reaches the twilight hours of his presidency, it’s good to see him fighting for something that is just until the very end.
