Refugees — They’re All the Same. Really.

At around 1941, an Italian Jewish family flees from Mussolini’s fascists to the mountains to sit out the holocaust with the help of several villagers. In 1945, a German family flees from east to West to escape the approaching Russian tanks, gets separated and two teenage boys make it on their own across a war-torn Germany being shot at by Russians, Americans, and Brits as they make their way to their aunt. In 1947 in India, a Muslim family hides in their Hindu neighbors’ home and wait to flee to newly founded Pakistan. 

Europeans and South Asians who were Jewish, Christian, and Muslim and lived in three different countries on two continents and ended up living in three more countries some 80 years ago. They have much more in common than you’d think. First of all, … me. One of the teens running away from allied fire was my father. Meanwhile, one of my best friends’ father was hiding in an Italian mountain village. And a member of the sub-continental family hoping to make it across the remnants of British India in 1947 was to become my father-in-law. 
 
Refugees Leave Hoping to Return Home
There is much more that these stories share. No one wanted to leave their homes. They all hoped and prayed they’d be back soon. For example, my uncle (Europe 1945) and one of wife’s uncles (South Asia 1947) many years later literally verbatim told me: “We thought we’d return soon.” They even cleaned their homes before they left and locked the doors, not imagining how strangers would just bust in and take possession of their belongings.
 
My friends’ family, my in-laws and my own father’s family weighed their chances of survival and found they had two options: stay put and hope for the best or run. The decision to run was driven by a will to survive. They were white, brown, Christian, Jews, Muslims from two continents and three very distinct cultures. They shared a will to survive which put all else second place: their home, culture, comfort zones, their entire way of life. They risked their lives to live. Everything they had known and had been destroyed and they had to start from scratch with nothing but their shirts on their backs. 
 
People Complaining about any Lack of Integration Have No Idea 
They also shared an unwelcoming environment on arrival. If not immediately then as emerging hostility. That includes so-called domestic migrants who were not always welcomed after WWII because they were also viewed as a drain on scarce (and I mean really scarce) resources. And what does domestic migrant even mean? I doubt the trauma was much different for my father or my father-in-law. Besides, even small countries like Germany are home to numerous distinct cultures, dialects, customs, traditions and don’t even get me started on religious differences within the Christian faith. 
 
My father had to make a new place his home where people had a different dialect — I grew up in the city my father ended up and have only a passing grasp of the local dialect. So, my dad talked funny. The traditional dress is a mix of Dutch clogs and somewhat northern German shirts and hats — nope, no lederhosen where I grew up. My dad did not have anything resembling the local garb. My dad’s family is Catholic and decades later even I was still strongly encouraged to get our bishop’s official dispense to marry my Protestant wife. 
 
Access to resources was hard at the end of WWII in Europe and in newly founded Pakistan. I’ll never forget my father’s answer to one of his school friends who had not been displaced by the war about what was worse: Feeling hungry or being cold. The answer: “I don’t know what’s worse. But I can tell you both at the same time really stinks.”
 
What Are New Arrivals Really Taking Away?
Over the course of their lives, my father’s family, my in-laws and my friend’s dad mainly contributed: finding jobs (initially often well below their initial pay grade), studying, pumping money into the local economy by virtue of being consumers, paying taxes, you name it. Some taught at university thus investing into the upcoming local generation. Others built businesses. 
 
New Arrivals Have Already Paid A Heavy Price
As an immigrant myself, I have also become acutely aware of what you lose. Although I believe I mainly gained in experience, skills, friends, outlook, personality there is also a price you pay. Being confronted with differences all the time makes you question a lot about your own thoughts, customs, and opinions. You also leave things behind every time you move to a new country. You leave friends. You leave your own personality because after decades away from home you really don’t fit 100% anywhere anymore.
 
Sticking New Labels on New Arrivals Won’t Help Prejudiced Societies
To me it makes no differences how you call people who leave their home: refugees, migrants, asylum seekers, immigrants or – my personal favorite BS “economic migrants”. These are just labels for people who come from somewhere else because they want opportunities. The definition of opportunity is different: some like my father, my father-in-law, and my friend’s father sought the opportunity to survive. Others look for opportunities in education, making money, building a business, or maybe just being able to say and think what you want ….. because they don’t have these at home. It makes them so desperate they leave. Are there freeloaders among them? Sure. Are there freeloaders among their host nations? Certainly. Still, it is easier to blame the new lot — whoever that is over the years.
 
For example, in my country of birth, between post WWII and today the “new lot” were first Italians, followed by the Turks, Portuguese, then people of German ancestry who wanted to leave the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries, a couple of different people in between all the way to the Syrians and now the Ukrainians. Some, like the Italians and Turks arrived as part of government policies of the day. Others came because they saw no alternatives in their home country. In the United States it’s the same. I vividly remember in the mid-1980s, a white exchange student explained to us German high schoolers, she really had nothing against blacks but the Mexicans were a real problem. Now it’s Muslims.
 
The point is, the latest arrival always take the brunt — even domestic migrants who are supposedly your own lot. The truth is, “migration” is human nature — otherwise we’d still be stuck in the area of that first cave we left.
 
Embrace the Chance to Change or Become Irrelevant
It is also true that migration means change for everyone and that’s what people don’t want and that’s what politicians fails to explain in the proper context. Keep in mind, most migrants did not want to leave their homes. Migrants have a purpose, from survival to making money. The host nations can find purpose in intentionally integrating new arrivals to their own advantage. But it is easier to shout slogans from a soap box (“kick them out”) than explaining more complex solutions.
 
So, next time you wonder whether that person from wherever is a drain on your resources ask yourself what is it you do prevent that? What is it that keeps you from seeking out the same opportunities they find in your home country. What is your excuse?