Migrant depression

Just finished reading a very depressing article in the September 26th number of the NYRB about the way Australia deals with boat people, that is to say people attempting to enter Australia by boat from Indonesia. With Australia being a country of around 25m and the number of people arriving by boat over the last 20 years looking (from reference 1) to have been of the order of 60,000, one fifth of one percent. While (from reference 2) we have it that, Turkey, a much poorer country at around 80m, has getting on for 4m refugees in residence, mainly in camps in border regions, getting on for five percent. Australia's treatment of these boat people has been pretty brutal - with part of their argument being that if you treat them decently, you just suck a whole lot more in.

In round numbers the rich west contains around 1 billion people. Around half of this is the European Union and well over half of the remainder is the United States.

Again in round numbers, there are around 70m displaced people in the world, of whom 40m are displaced internally, leaving around 30m who are refugees or asylum seekers. Around three percent of the population of the rich west. But a lot of them have the wrong language, the wrong colour or the wrong religion. And most of them have come from countries that have failed for one reason or another - perhaps politics, poverty, climate change or catastrophe. None of this makes for an easy start in a new country.

And with the rich west not doing all that much about it, with some honourable exceptions. And with the boom in right-wing populism, things look to get worse rather than better.

Which leads to two other thoughts. First, we are making a large number of angry young men with nothing much to lose. Second, how on earth will we cope when climate change really starts to kick in?

PS: I learned yesterday that our Houses of Parliament here in the UK contain a much higher proportion of people of faith than the rest of the population. Faith which does not seem to be propelling them in the right direction.

Reference 1: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1314/QG/BoatArrivals.

Reference 2: https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html.

Reference 3: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Population_and_population_change_statistics.