‘R’ as in Refugee and Respect
New York — In recent years, xenophobia, or the fear of the other, and the “threat” some people believe they represent to their national identity has spiked. The traces of xenophobia can be found anywhere — whether immigrants facing assaults or asylum seekers being separated from their children.
It seems is fair to say that we live in a period of undeniably heightened economic and cultural anxiety. It would be misguided to assume this trend is only accelerating in the United States. In recent years, incidents of xenophobia have risen worldwide. Refugees are one group of vulnerable people affected by this development, too often perceived as people who want to take advantage of developed host countries. This perception has jeopardized the willingness of some countries to comply with international agreements, effectively establishing refugee quotas to reduce the number admitted.
In a recent trip to Amman, Jordan I had the pleasure of meeting several Syrian refugees and hear their stories. I learned to understand the importance of their individual perspective, and how distorted some attitudes are when it comes to the current refugee crisis.
One day a group of volunteers drove for about an hour and fifteen minutes from West Amman, where we were staying, to Zaatari Refugee Camp in the Governorate of Mafraq. Zaatari is the largest Syrian refugee camp in the world, sitting on 5.2 square km of land, and one of the largest refugee camps in the world. It hosts almost 80,000 Syrians and has an average of 80 births per week. This accounts for only 18.8% of the Syrian refugees who have found a second-home in Jordan. The rest live in integrated urban communities throughout the area.
At the camp, amongst many other things, I saw one of the biggest smiles I have ever had the pleasure of encountering. Our day started with a gymnastics presentation hosted in hangar-turned-gym and put on by some refugee boys. Alongside their coach, a young adult who practiced gymnastics back in Syria, these refugees put on a great show. Gymnastics is one of the sports activities children and teenagers do to release stress and cope with trauma. Later, while strolling through one of the neighborhoods, we ran into a boy we saw at the presentation. His mother swiftly came out of their caravan to see whom her son was talking to.
We introduced ourselves and told her that her son impressed us at that morning’s exhibition. We had not been talking to her for more than five minutes when she offered, and then insisted, on serving us coffee. Truth be told, being aware of her dire condition made us have no desire to take any food from them. However, in the limited Arabic we had, it was impossible to convey that message without it first sounding like we were turning down their hospitality. So finally, we accepted the invitation. In the span of approximately two minutes she had her son brought out plastic chairs and a small table. She then came out with a silver tray holding small silver cups containing Arabic coffee (or qahwah) and chocolate treats. This was an act of unconditional sharing.
These people have gone through, arguably, one of the toughest experiences in the modern world. Despite this hardship they still find a place within their hearts, and their homes, to want to honor hospitality traditions quintessential to their rich Syrian culture, such as offering coffee to guests.
Now, you might be wondering what does this woman’s coffee have to do with immigrants in the US? What connects Syrian refugees in Jordan and immigrants living in America is that both have a humanity the world cannot afford to forget. However, in the American discourse they have both fallen to the same forsaken category of “less than a citizen.” The legal definition of a refugee precludes them from having the same rights as citizens, unless deemed otherwise by their host country, while also providing these displaced people with some legal standing. However, the public debate these days in nations like the United States is less about a refugee’s legal status and more about whether, as human beings, if they are entitled to respect.
Many people in the media do not argue the difficulty of their journey, but some do choose to focus on isolated cases of people faking to be refugees in order to gain entry into a country and then commit a crime. It is true that this has happened. No policy is perfect, just like no nation is perfect. However, making such fraudulent cases as emblematic of the refugee category (especially after they have been admitted into a country, which sometimes means going through a security clearance process of up to two years) is not only faulty logic, but should not result in their lives being diminished in value. Within American discourse these stories are no longer heartwarming and therefore often forgotten.
Refugees today often become mere numbers. Some people might donate to a campaign that ensures “every dollar you give goes to helping refugees”. Knowing such acts of philanthropy occur, often clears peoples conscious and allows them to move on with their day. Yet, we soon forget the reality of refugees in camps who might spend more than a decade within its confines. This observation is not to suggest that everyone should quit their jobs and go overseas to “help refugees,” which is a dubious claim on its own. We often forget there are many other ways to help refugees, like allowing ourselves to be more understanding of their plight or helping to share their stories with people who might not know a lot about the subject.
One of the things that impressed me the most from the people I met outside the camps in Amman was how Jordanians spoke about those more than 660,000 Syrian refugees their country had taken in. They were honest in discussing the amount of jobs available to Jordanians and how this number had diminished due to the rise of the refugee population, which remains an issue that needs to be addressed. However, overall, Jordanians were empathic about the difficulties countries such as Syria, and its people, are experiencing. These Jordanians understood that if these refugees made it to Jordan it was not in the hopes of depleting their country, but rather in the hopes of remaining alive; proving refugees are not exceptional on their own account, but rather exceptional by circumstance.
Madelaine Diaz, Fordham University, Class of 2020
