Refugees Can’t Find Homes Just Anywhere
Excuse my ignorance, but I only just realised today how few nations there are that regularly allow refugees to come to live within their borders. The topic came up in my ESL classroom somehow - quite randomly, as many topics do - and eventually one Korean girl boldly asked me, quite incredulously, “Why does Australia accept refugees?”
From her perspective, there was no particularly good reason to allow someone without any money (and perhaps in some trouble either medically, politically or otherwise) to come to live in our country, and support them. Taking in refugees is something I’d just grown up with and never thought twice about - it’s just what wealthier nations do to help people who’ve really got nowhere else to go, although of course we never taken everybody who wants to settle here and certainly have our problems with the whole issue, too - I’m not saying Australia’s perfect.
In any case, using the ever-useful resources of Wikipedia, I discovered that there are less than 20 countries who regularly accept refugees from refugee camps (meaning they are usually from Africa, the Middle East, and for a while there, former Yugoslavia). These countries include what I’d call the usual suspects like Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, and a few more surprising inclusions like Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso and Mexico.
When one of my Korean students reported the news that the rate of increase of Koreans becoming millionaires was just announced to be the fourth highest in the world, I suggested that Korea might be ready to take in a few refugees. I didn’t get any takers but I guess that just like my (opposite) thinking on the subject, they need some time to think about it. I’m constantly surprised by the assumptions I make about what’s normal in the world and I have to keep reminding myself that nothing’s really normal, anywhere!
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