Nowhere...Part II

Nowhere...Part II

   Here are some numbers for you...60 million, 800, 20k, 1800, $70,000.  Those are all numbers from 2014 to now, and all are numbers relating to refugees.  To make sense of it all, here's a tiny bit of perspective.  The first number is close to the estimated total by the United Nations, that is, the estimated total of refugees in the world today as of 2014...sixty million (half of them are children). That's a lot of people seeking escape from whatever, to wherever and whenever, but escape.  Get away!  Leave!  A drive to give up whatever home they have (or had) and go blindly into the unknown...an unknown country with unknown people and unknown languages and unknown prospects.  And likely little or no money, or at least money that can be used in this new country.

   Already, nearly 2000 have perished in risking the journey to Europe by sea.  And the number 800 is the number of sea rescues made by cargo and other non-passenger ships such as tankers last year (just imagine stopping a huge container ship, one which takes miles to even make a turnaround, one bound by maritime law to indeed stop, no matter the time delay or the cost,  an unplanned rescue for which you have no food and no doctor and no real accommodations, and a rescue which averages between $50,000 and $80,000 to make).

  This wasn't enough for one couple, Chris and Regina Catrambone, themselves multi, multi-millionaires made from his insurance claims investigation company.  While on a chartered yacht vacation, they spotted a floating life vest and heard the captain nonchalantly say that it likely belonged to one of the refugees who drowned trying to reach Europe.  They decided to start their own rescue boat, an operation that now costs them over $250,000 monthly.  Says Regina in the article about a recent rescue, "The sea was rough, and it was raining.  Even though we had blankets for everyone, we couldn't fit them all inside...you understand that when you have 334 persons on board a 40-meter ship, plus us in the crew--we were 351 on board.  We were waiting 36 hours on that boat sharing the space with the migrants...these are difficult emotions to explain.  Always I thought that it's important to help.  It's our duty to help each other, but living the experience like this...Sometimes I don't think they realize the danger they are in because they're so stuck on top of each other, like a puzzle.  We break this puzzle and give them identity again."  So far, the Catrambone have rescued nearly 1500 people.

   But again the question comes up, rescued them to where?  Some countries in the EU have taken to implementing the Dublin II law from 2003, one which let's a country forcibly return asylum seekers "to the first EU country they entered."  Over the next 2 years, EU countries have agreed to accept 20,000 refugees for resettlement, this in addition to the 38,000 already resettled and not still waiting in holding camps (England, Ireland and Denmark, by their EU agreement, can opt out of the resettlement efforts).  What will happen to the rest of the people (this year, an estimated 500,000 to a million more are waiting to leave Libya alone) remains unanswered.

   As one can see, such situations tear at the human fabric.  And emotions are running high on all ends, some saying that history is coming back to haunt Europe's "colonial past," that being the comment from one paper in Poland.  Others are saying that people around the world simply don't want to face the growing problem, that we are indeed becoming a world of indifference, to paraphrase Pope Francis.  To those simply fighting for survival, anything, any option, even years in an internment camp, must seem better than what would have happened to them had they stayed.  To the rescuing people, and boats, and countries, it must seem that the tidal wave of refugees has no end.  To the peoples paying the bills, the medical and the food and the shelter and the support, it must seem both rewarding and futile, a temporary solution  to a much larger problem.  And to the governments having to answer to those peoples, from those fleeing to those receiving, it must seem that there is no one answer.  But with so many of us so comfortable, not even rich, but indeed comfortable, there must be an answer; and if not, then maybe we need to start asking for one; and if asking does no good, then perhaps we need to start demanding.  We are hopefully still too human, too humane, to become indifferent...