Refugee migrant crisis grips European continent

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has reported that 2,500 people have died this summer alone attempting to make a perilous journey from the Mediterranean to Europe. That number is growing daily.
In the eyes of the more than 350,000 refugees who have fled their home countries, the threat of death as they traverse the sea is dwarfed in comparison to the threat of death if they stay. In Syria, civil unrest began in 2011 when a series of anti-government protests, now known as the “Arab Spring,” rocked the Arab world. Although some dictators, such as Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, were overthrown, when the Arab Spring reached Syria, President Bashar al-Assad refused to accept the same fate and instituted a ruthless regime that targeted civilians using chemical weapons and barrel bombs.
Groups such as ISIS and the Jabhat al-Nusra regime subjected Syrians to murder, torture, and a number of other atrocities. While many of refugees fleeing to Europe arrive from Syria, older conflicts have also displaced a significant number of Afghanistani, Eritrean, Somalian, and Nigerian refugees. From various parts of the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, the fear of war, persecution, and oppression has uprooted countless numbers of citizens.
While the sheer number of refugees is one layer of the crisis, the more prominent issue is the anti-refugee politics in Western countries and the European Union. The UK Foreign Office minister, Lady Anelay, announced a funding cut last year for search-and-rescue operations that had saved an estimated 150,000 people in the previous year. Hungary has erected a razor-wire fence along its border to prevent refugees entering Europe. In Austria, border checks have been introduced to check for refugees being smuggled into the country.
Most EU member states have refused to take a share of the refugees and legislation is on their side.  Due to an EU policy called the Dublin Regulation, refugees are trapped in the first European country they arrive in until their asylum claims have been processed. This policy is one that many EU countries exploit in order to push the burden of refugees onto Italy and Greece – the two countries that are the easiest to reach by boat. Meanwhile, the situation in these two countries has grown dire for refugees. Vangelis Orfanoudakis, a member of Doctors Without Borders, is all too familiar with the low standards.
“They need to have access to health care, food, water, basic sanitation … together with protection for their legal rights, something which is not happening at all here in Kos,” explained Orfanoudakis in an interview with the Associated Press.
Germany has made the novel decision to suspend application of the Dublin Regulation for Syrian refugees. Unfortunately, the rest of Europe has failed to follow suit. Just this past Saturday, Sept. 12, over 13,000 migrants arrived in Munich, forcing Germany to introduce temporary controls on its border with Austria in order to cope. Political scientist Deborah Schildkraut believes that the anti-immigrant perspective boils down to fear of demographic change. Accepting the throngs of desperate refugees means accepting that their towns, communities, and cultures will change along with it and this is the real problem.
Perhaps there will be much to learn from German chancellor Angela Merkel who, after her visit to a refugee shelter, affirmed in a public speech on Aug. 20, 2015:
“There is no tolerance of those who are not ready to help, where, for legal and humanitarian reasons, help is due.”