The migrants continue to make their way to the gates of a Europe that has closed its borders: barbed wires erected by Hungary on its border with Serbia; columns of exhausted refugees trying to reach the border with Croatia, only to face another wall, a wall of police officers seeking to channel them with batons. Germany borders are closed, too. At the same time other refugees are crossing the Mediterranean, fleeing war or poverty, fleeing death, and sometimes finding death on the way.
The National Front (FN) mayor of Béziers, Robert Ménard, got himself filmed saying rudely to families of refugees that they were “not welcome”… And a large fraction of the right followed in the steps of the FN, like Sarkozy who displayed contortionist abilities trying to send the same message while pretending to show compassion…
All that hatred against the 500,000 men, women, children that the war has thrown on the road to Europe this year as they do not want to die under the bombs or keep suffering from hunger and poverty! There aren’t two types of migrants (fleeing danger vs. fleeing bad economy): all are victims of situations primarily caused by the major powers. These great powers feed on the poverty of the majority, support dictatorships and stand behind all wars that bloody the world.
How much would refugees cost?
Some pretend that, with all the unemployed and homeless, we cannot welcome the migrants. But what are they talking about exactly?
TV channels have done the math: 12,000 refugees fully supported for one year would cost approximately €120 million… Is that a lot? France’s budget is €373 billion euros. 120 million, relative to 373 billion, that’s… 32 cents relative to €1,000. And that is why we need to harden our hearts, on the pretext that we cannot take in “all the world’s poor”? This does show, however, how Hollande’s choice to take in only 12,000 migrants per year for two years is really petty and shameful.
And what about the housing to accommodate 12,000 migrants?
Some even add: while we have so many homeless and inadequately housed?
France has 65 million inhabitants. To understand what 12,000 people represent, just imagine 10,000 people in a stadium and… 2 persons wishing to seek refuge…
Anyway, Adoma, an organization that manages migrant hostels, has documented 20,000 spaces quickly available in different placement facilities. And there are currently 77,750 vacancies in subsidized housing. And there are more than 2.5 million empty dwellings. So more than enough to accommodate not only migrants, but also the 150,000 homeless, and even the 700,000 people living in precarious conditions with family or friends. « 20 000 places were found in two weeks! Why had they not been found before? », asked a social worker. Because governments do not care about the poor. Worse, they use the poor to try and get those who have a job to accept anything! And they use “our” poor to justify their refusal to take in the migrants!?
Will the refugees compete with the unemployed?
This isn’t the right question! With all the layoffs, the bosses are the ones who cause unemployment and competition between those who work and those who don’t, and between the unemployed. Refusing to welcome the migrants will not solve the issue of unemployment, which doesn’t need migrants to worsen: the bosses are working on that.
There is no shortage of jobs to be used in hospitals, schools, post offices, public transportation, and in factory workshops where the workload is more and more unbearable. But, to make all these jobs a reality, we need to stick together, workers and unemployed, instead of being subjected to competition by the bosses. Welcome migrants with open arms, that’s already a way to get out of “every man for himself”. It’s a first step towards the fights against the employers and the governments that spread unemployment, war and misery all over the world.
