Legend’s VIEW
Refugees must be viewed as humans
People often have a difficult time realizing that others are “people” too. When strangers are ahead of us in line at Chipotle, we think of them as a nuisance, a human hurdle on the way to our burrito.If someone cuts us off in traffic, they are immediately a jerk with no other redeeming qualities. But what happens when the world fails to recognize the humanity of an entire country and its struggles?. The countries of the European Union have met the refugees from Syria with incredible resistance. Neighboring Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have accepted a shared total of zero Syrian refugees. Although it has pledged to allow 30,000 refugees into the country, the United States has only accepted 1,000. The negligent response from these major world powers ultimately culminates in the inability to empathize with the Syrian refugees.
It is all too easy to dehumanize a group as large as the 11 million displaced Syrians. We are seeing a mob of Islamic terrorists, economic burdens or “someone else’s problem”. But they are people, just like us. They have hopes and dreams of a better life as they flee their war-torn home. And they are in desperate need of our help. On Sept. 2, 2015, the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a beach in Turkey. The life jackets given to them by aboard a smuggling boat proved fake and when it capsized, Aylan, his five-year-old brother Galib, and their mother, Rehana drowned at sea. Their father, Abdullah, later returned to Syria to bury his wife and sons. The tragedy of the Kurdi family is a direct result of the Western world’s and the major Arab nation’s inability to recognize the humanity of the Syrian refugees. Let us not allow our lack of empathy to be a death sentence. The Syrian refugees want what we want: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
