REFUGEE QUOTES II
quotations about refugees
Refugee road! Refugee road!
Where do I go from here?
Walking down refugee road.
Must I beg? Must I steal?
Must I lie? Must I kneel?
Or driven like dumb war-weary sheep,
Must we wander the high road and weep?
Or will the world listen to my appeal?
LANGSTON HUGHES
"Song of the Refugee Road", Collected Poems
Integrating refugees into our society and labour market will be, as it has been in the past, challenging. But we have done it before -- with enormous benefits, both economic and social, to the UK -- and there is absolutely no reason we cannot do it again.
JONATHAN PORTES
The Independent, January 31, 2016
Refugees are drenched in human values. As an idea they are in the realm of philosophy and theology. Refugees force us to be witnesses to the indignities and deprivations they have suffered at the hands of persecutors. They signify the cruelty and degradation that tyrants can visit upon their people. Their humiliation and loss is manifest.
ARTHUR C. HELTON
The Price of Indifference: Refugees and Humanitarian Action in the New Century
The refugee crisis is here to stay and the world needs to find new ways to deal with it.
DAVID MILIBAND
"Global refugee crisis is here to stay, says humanitarian chief David Miliband", Reuters, January 19, 2016
For all our flaws, we Americans have been, for hundreds of years, the people in the world who said welcome.... We have another chance with all these refugees. People come here penniless but not cultureless. They bring us gifts. We can synthesize the best of our traditions with the best of theirs. We can teach and learn from each other to produce a better America.
MARY PIPHER
The Middle of Everywhere
In Europe, one flood is running into another. The tide of refugees pouring across the Mediterranean in search of a new life is meeting a counter-flow of antagonism from countries increasingly unprepared to grant them their wish. Dishearteningly, staunch resistance is now coming from some of the wealthiest countries. A Dutch proposal would have Syrians landing in Greece put on a boat straight back to Turkey. Denmark has passed a law allowing it to collect valuables from refugee claimants to pay their costs. Sweden's Interior Minister said this week some 80,000 asylum-seekers -- about half the total -- could be deported if Stockholm can find enough planes for them. Not to be outdone, Finland revealed it expects to reject 65% of asylum applicants. Each display of impatience validates the next.
KELLY MCPARLAND
"The refugee crisis is shredding the cords that bind Europe", National Post, January 29, 2016
The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.
TONY BEHN
attributed, "Living Like a Refugee: New York Must Do More to Help Its Homeless", The Observer, September 9, 2015
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under your feet
hot blood in your belly
it's not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear you wouldn't be going back
WARSAN SHIRE
"Home"
No Madonna and Child could touch
Her tenderness for a son
She soon would have to forget....
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps
Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there
Had long ceased to care, but not this one:
She held a ghost-smile between her teeth,
And in her eyes the memory
Of a mother's pride...
CHINUA ACHEBE
"A Mother in a Refugee Camp", Collected Poems
You may doubt I found comfort in England
But, there, 'tis a refuge from dangers!
Where a Cromwell dictated to Milton,
Republicans ne'er can be strangers!
VICTOR HUGO
"The Refugee's Haven", Poems
Refugees are people, they're not numbers on a score card.
MICHELLE REMPEL
"Liberals on par to miss refugee target. Again.", Toronto Sun, February 12, 2016
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
WARSAN SHIRE
"Home"
People floating like pollen in search of more fertile soil.
ANDREW CROFTS
Secrets of the Italian Gardener
An a park bench in the evening, where the heat dissipates
and a breeze blows from the sea opposite,
sit lonely women and lonely men--
between this world and the other world, this world and the other.
Between this world and the other world--women and men.
An old man said: "The hope is getting smaller,
and the greater the problems--the fewer the visas.
Have you lived a life--and where is it, where is it?"
MORRIS FAIERSTEIN
"Visa to the Abyss: A Refugee Poem from the Island of Cuba", Poems of the Holocaust and Poems of Faith
Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.
Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
W. H. AUDEN
"Refugee Blues", Selected Poems
It's clear that some refugees will never be able to repay the cost of hosting and helping them, and will never become productive enough to improve their host country's economy. Some have been so traumatized or otherwise injured that they will never really get on their feet again, even once they're safe and their rights are secure. These individuals are entitled to refuge, even if they can never repay the costs they impose on host nations.
PATTI TAMARA LENARD
"Who should pay for the refugees? Here are five possible answers.", Washington Post, February 8, 2016
Refugees are not all equal. The mushrooming hordes of refugees from the Mideast are -- contrary to all of America's prior experience -- the most ill-behaved thugs, bullies, bigots and murderers ever to be welcomed by so many hoodwinked and good-hearted Americans. Do you know about Cologne, Germany, where right around New Year's, mobs of Mideast refugee males raped or molested every German woman in sight, in full view of the helpless police? That's what started the movement against Angela Merkel, whose "Y'all come!" attitude toward the refugees triggered the crisis. Sweden is the next do-gooder nation to have its good converted into evil and thrust back into its face. The liberal parliament was ordered by the fed-up population to reduce Sweden's aid to the refugees back to what the law allowed and not continue to shower the newcomers with the far larger amount of aid dictated by the legislators' more liberal hearts. At the press conference where the government reluctantly agreed to scale back its largesse, the foreign minister began to cry. When the press asked her why, she replied, "How can I live in a country that turns its back on needy people?"
BARRY FARBER
"All Refugees Are Not Equal", WND, February 9, 2016
Refugees are perhaps the ultimate transitional figures. They are leaving and have lost a permanent home. Refugees inspire us by reason of their loss as well as their ability to rise above that loss and to re-establish their lives. Some are wasted in their exile, and others triumph. There is something noble and enduring about the ability of people to reconstitute themselves and begin again after suffering such a deprivation. Refugees thus can be a source of hope and a flesh-and-blood reflection of a tenacious life force.
ARTHUR C. HELTON
The Price of Indifference: Refugees and Humanitarian Action in the New Century
There are more brutal stories. Stories of torture, of rape, of murder. But if the world measures a refugee according to the worst story, we will always excuse human suffering, saying it is not yet as bad as someone else's. There is only one true measure, and that is to hold a person's life against our deepest ideals of human dignity and freedom from persecution.
VICTORIA ARMOUR-HILEMAN
Singing to the Dead: A Missioner's Life Among Refugees from Burma
Somewhere, somehow somebody
Must have kicked you around some
Tell me why you want to lay there
And revel in your abandon
Honey, it don't make no difference to me baby
Everybody's had to fight to be free
You see you don't have to live like a refugee
(don't have to live like a refugee)
Now baby you don't have to live like a refugee
(don't have to live like a refugee)
TOM PETTY
"Refugee"