Refugee: A
person who is outside their home country because they have well-founded grounds
for fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, etc. and
is unable to obtain sanctuary from their home country
Don’t we
see this happening everywhere in the world? In Syria, Palestine, Sudan, Somalia,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, everywhere people fear others persecuting them
because of who they are. They want safety, to go somewhere where people aren’t
going to harm for what they believe in.
On 20th
August 2015, 500 refugees who were travelling on 2 boats drowned in the
Mediterranean, in the pursuance of simply seeking asylum and safety. Approximately
300,000 other refugees have almost died trying to cross the Mediterranean this
year.
Despite
this the government took no notice of the situation and simply mentioned it in
passing. However, when the photo of innocent three year old Aylan Kurdi was
published, it triggered anger everywhere. The boy lay lifeless, face down in
the sand, his tiny palms upturned. Due to the outcry that followed, the UK has
planned to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years from UN
camps. However, Labour has said that government plans to re-settle 4,000 Syrian
refugees in Britain every year until 2020 is "not enough". And I completely agree. Germany has already
let in 75,000 refugees. Sure, Germany is a big country, but it's only twice the
size of the UK. If Germany can let in 75,000 refugees, why can we not let in
half of that?
It
is our responsibility to ensure that we allow as many migrants to have the
right to live somewhere safely, especially when their rights are being violated.
If
we only let in 4,000 migrants, there will still be millions fighting to have a
place to live, and the riots and smuggling that Britain is trying to prevent
will continue, which ultimately solves nothing. We should not be selfish citizens and only pay
attention to ourselves and our rights. We should also fight for everyone-else
to have this right fulfilled, as the only way we can fight this humanitarian
crisis is together, as a united nation.
This is a moral imperative. There is only one earth on which we all live The UK is big enough and rich enough to take more than we do. If we took in as many as Lebanon per head of population, we would have 16 million more.