What Causes Migrants to Leave and What is to be Done

W. T. Whitney CounterPunch September 15, 2015

Migrants are abandoning the Middle East and Africa and flooding Europe. Others leave Central America and Mexico for the United States. Humanitarian crises are at U. S. and European doorsteps. Panic reigns in Europe at the hordes of strangers in their midst. Volunteers and the United Nations have mobilized. Some European governments provide social services, transportation, housing, and food. For migrants, deportation and detention loom as dangers. The dominant media concentrate on refugees’ immediate problems, barriers in their way, and governments’ difficulties in coping. And migrants keep on coming……….
Life at risk in the three regions is a much-told and shifting story, especially as the responsible parties are named. The tale is simple enough, however, and really needs only a few words in the telling. Artists do the trick with word nuggets. The late Portuguese Nobel-winning novelist José Saramago is a case in point.
With Africa in mind, he maintains that, ‘Displacement from south to north is inevitable. Neither barbed – wire fences, walls, nor deportations will be worth anything; they will come by the millions. Europe will be taken over by the hungry. They come looking for those who robbed them. There’ll be no return for them because they are leaving behind a famine of centuries, and they come tracking the scent of their daily rations. Distribution is getting closer and closer. Trumpets have begun to sound. Hatred is being served and we’ll need politicians who know how to rise above the circumstances.’………….
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