Recently RefugeeHighway.com raised our attention to the French government’s plan to arrest 5000 people in 2009, who offer help to illegal migrants and refugees. Apparently this will be an additional effort alongside the already existing expulsions of refugees aimed at curbing the flow of unofficial people entering into the country. This is clearly a bold and drastic measure that appears not only to assert the State’s national sovereignty but absurdly to redefine the limits of Christian love, compassion and obligation.
If the French follow through fully with their policy as they have already begun, then at best the Christian foundations for such agreements like the Geneva Convention will be significantly eroded, and at worst, I might be doing my work behind bars. Countries across the wealthy world are building a new wall on the foundation of national pride and xenophobia, that does nothing more than to polarize the issues even further into the north and south, the rich and poor, the good and bad.
Just today, I listened to an ORF radio report on the public schools in Austria. Because many of the schools in Vienna have over 80% immigrant children, there are efforts by some to establish schools that are open only to Austrian children. We don’t need to look far in our well-off societies to see the extent and proportion of the illegal immigrant problem, and neither do we need to look far to see the inadequate understanding and response.
The current French plan is only one small step away from seeing destitute people like refugees -ones without a family, home and country- as unworthy of the respect, compassion and care that fellow humans might choose to show them or have the capacity to give, and thus in some way as less than human. In the name of national security, prosperity and culture this approach in one divine sweep, criminalizes acts of kindness and compassion, and calls what is good, evil.
In the name of French Law the plan forbids God’s Law, and in so doing reveals its own poverty and loss of life.