How did a proposal to help desperate people ever become so controversial for so many?
The UN’s non-legally binding Global Compact for Migration signed by 164 countries including Canada — which follows on the heels of the 2016 resolution to adopt the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants — has triggered some hyperbolic and unsubstantiated fears about opening the floodgates to massive invasions of unstoppable immigrants hell-bent on violently usurping our society.
Or something like that.
Heaven forbid the international community commits to working harder to collaboratively develop and establish a humane solution for the unfolding migrant crisis.
Because anyone who thinks it’s bad now has another think coming.
A few decades from today, if not sooner, as the number of people fleeing climate change fuelled economic and environmental collapses swells to new heights, what are we going to do — just turn our backs on them?
Who could possibly stand opposed to a commitment to collaborate internationally to facilitate safe, structured and regular migration as well as build a framework for comprehensive international cooperation on migrants and human mobility.
“We will combat the exploitation, abuse and discrimination suffered by many refugees and migrants,” reads but a snippet of the declaration.
There are even mentions of taking measures to increase efforts to tackle human trafficking.
Another point in the declaration is to “favour an approach to addressing the drivers and root causes of large movements of refugees and migrants.”
We’re not talking about selling Canada’s sovereignty on a silver plate to some ill-defined global elitist cabal. The commitment is non-legally binding.
We’re talking about standing up as members of an international community to work with our neighbours to address one of the major human crises of modern times.
Yet the fears of many are preyed upon by opportunistic politicians that shamelessly single out a scapegoat to distract from the real problem: the corruption caused by the boundless greed of unprecedentedly profitable multinational corporations that over the past few decades have without hesitation shipped millions of jobs overseas then replaced millions more through automation as wealth inequality soars.
And somehow, many people still allow themselves to be persuaded that “they” took all of our jobs. All of those Schrodinger’s immigrants, who are paradoxically both at the same time lazy leaches sponging off the welfare system and also busy stealing everyone else’s jobs.
At some point, we will have to collectively ask ourselves: how, in the age of information, are we still repeating history’s mistakes, allowing some of our so-called leaders to direct our angst and frustrations against our own fellow human beings with such contemptuous disdain, while turning a blind eye to the corruption that rots and erodes our democracy’s foundation?
