Why is Europe suddenly so interested in helping refugees? | Hacker News Reader

Why is Europe suddenly so interested in helping refugees?

aljazeera.com

16 pointsShivShankaran17 comments

Europe has taken in a lot of refugees from Syria, especially for a conflict much much further away than Ukraine. This conflict is also in Europe's backyard stemming from a power they have been diametrically opposed to since WW2. Of course European's are going to care about that more than a civil war in the Middle East. What do they expect?

What makes this even more infuriating is that this is published by a Gulf publication whose countries have done 0 to help Syrian refugees during the civil war. We and Lebanon have taken the most refugees throughout the conflict while we are poor and, in the case of Lebanon, financially and politically unstable. At least the Europeans are helping each other, we got none of that from the despotic and corrupt rulers in the region.

I assume you're from Turkey? I keep wondering how much the welcome for Syrian refugees was just due to the proximity, or more due to the geopolitics that Erdogan continues to play with them. Basically he holds the "I will release hordes of refugees" as a threat to the EU to extract billions in assistance payments and many other concessions from the EU. And it is a lot of cheap labour that can be exploited, and many women that can be married off to Turkish men.

Sorry to be so cynical but this is what it looks like from the outside.

Sorry, but I'm not from Turkey. Many of the refugees went to next door countries. I see what you are saying but I don't think he planned on using the refugees that way originally. It just became a useful tool for him when the anti-refugee sentiment started to rise.

The former Warsaw pact countries HATE HATE HATE Russia with a vengeance. If they can help someone in the fight against Russia, they'll be happy to

Short answer: because they understand that with the current mess, they could very well be next.

Excluding Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, I don't think for the rest it has _that_ much to do with Ukrainias being European and Christians.

I don't think this is a reason at all. People are mostly acting out of emotion, and it's easier to relate to culturally close people, even more so if most of the refugees are children or females.

Not sure if you experienced both crises first hand, but I did/do.

a rhetorical question, on a revealed truth that we might all be rather uncomfortable to admit: we do not apply empathy universally, but selectively and reserve our goodwill for those who are most 'like us', whilst moderating it for those who are least like us. This would be consistent from what we know of genetic altruism.

Could be related to the fact that most of the refugees are females with children.

Yes, mostly women and children as opposed to mostly young men.

And they're not from known nation terror states? Just going out on a limb here for reality check ...

Syria and most of Africa are not "known terror states", or at least they weren't before the nightmares of civil war that enveloped them and made the people flee.

But I dare to guess that you meant to say "Muslim" without saying Muslim, but even that doesn't hold as many refugees from Syria and Africa are Christians or other religions. Kurds (often Christian), jezidis, zoroastrians, ...

The only other clear differences are the proximity and skin colour of the people.

That said, Europe has always supported refugees, e.g. Vietnamese, Turkish, etc live across Western Europe. Even the Syrian civil war initially saw a warm welcome with wide open arms - it is the sheer number of people fleeing, and indeed that often mainly younger men arrived (with women less likely to flee and more like to get stuck/"married"/trafficked/killed on the way) which turned significant parts of the population to cold hearts.

Almost nobody cares about the actual skin color. It is all about the culture. Western and Arab Muslim culture is too far apart for it to ever work in most cases. Ukrainian culture is not 1:1 compatible with Western European culture either, but it is at the very least a lot closer. Most of the Ukrainians are going to their neighbor countries, mainly Poland, where they share a lot of cultural values. As I recall, more than two million Ukrainians already worked in Poland before the war. The ones not going to neighbor countries, are going to countries where they already have friends and family.

More importantly.. Ukrainians may be building societies in the areas where they live, but they are not usually based on hating the west. Ukrainians want to work for the help they've been given. Everywhere they've fled to, there is suddenly a huge popup of Ukrainians looking for work so they can support their families. They don't want to rely on government handouts.

Its also a nuclear state, if Chernobyl goes haywire things are going to get dirty really fast.

>Al Jazeera

Yeah no. Might as well start posting RT and CGTN

Also, 20 days old account https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ShivShankaran

HN is getting astroturfed more and more like reddit

This seems to me a well written and reasonable article by a respected and known Czech scholar.

It is far from propaganda channels and false news like on RT.

It seemed very well written, until he started mentioning skin color. That literally has close to no merit. Are some border guards racist? Of course. Are some people of color just plain opportunists? YES.. We literally have African students who were studying in Ukraine, who evacuated to France because of the war, who are claiming that due to racism they won't be allowed to leave France to go to the UK as a refugee.

Nobody would on normal circumstances be allowed to leave a safe European country and claim asylum in another safe European country. Regardless of the skin of your color. Ukrainians have been granted residency for upwards three years in Europe on humanitarian grounds, and they are expected to return home after the war is over.

Perhaps because refuges from Ukraine are mostly women and children while Ukrainian men stay in the country and take arms to fight Russians. Many Ukrainians even come back from imigration in Europe to fight for their country...

While refuges from Middle East make often impression of entitled young men who do not want to stay and fix their countries...

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