Helping in a crisis

This lack of engagement is even more striking given the fact that TT has a thriving Syrian-Lebanese community.

The absence of Syrian refugees in TT becomes darkly ironic when contrasted to the exit of 130 TT nationals to go to the Middle East to fight for Islamic State/ISIS.

The Syrian Civil War since its early rumblings in 2011 to present has seen four million persons flee Syria, while six million are internally displaced. The total death toll - civilians, soldiers and rebels - is estimated at 400,000 persons - of whom about half were civilians, including an estimated 11,000 Syrian children and 15,000 Syrian women.

Of those fortunate to survive the conflagration, millions have sought asylum. Turkey has taken 2.7 million, Lebanon 1.5 million, Jordan 1.2 million and Germany one million, and even hard-up Venezuela promising to take 20,000.

Many such refugees scrape by exiled in camps which are the sad reality of anyone fleeing for their life from vicious acts of beheading, rape, enslavement and forced combat service (done by both rebels and army).

It’s all a veritable hell of earth that few TT nationals can imagine.

We in the comfort of our homes have nightly watched world news reports on all aspects of the ongoing crisis. We saw a dead infant washed up on a Greek shore - a sadly iconic image that largely turned the tide of public opinion in Europe which then relented to let in refugees, for a while.

We saw the Old Year’s Night celebrations in Germany turn nasty when local women complained of sexual groping and assault by assorted immigrants. We saw a handful of ISIS terrorists pose as refugees to infiltrate the West and carry out individual terror attacks. We saw the tide of public opinion in the West turn very swiftly indeed against allowing in Syrian refugees, with anti-migrant sentiment likely very central to both the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s surprise win in the United States Presidential Elections. We saw Trump’s 90-day ban on immigrants from seven nations, prompting protestors to allege of Islamophobia and a display of banners “Refugees welcome!”.

Amid this ebb and flow of world public opinion, we ourselves have done nothing to admit refugees.

Some may argue that TT is so engulfed in its own social woes such as high crime that we could not offer much to Syrian refugees. Others might say, why Syria and why not Haiti, or Guyana or Ghana, many of whose citizens would also like to come here? To both questions the answer is simple - the Syrian conflagration is not about mere economic migration but is a holocaust, a large scale destruction, which in Greek means “a whole burning”.

Trinidad and Tobago must admit some Syrian refugees.

TT is a nation of immigrants, and promotes human rights domestically and on the world stage.

Any immigrants must be fully screened.

If refugees lack identification documents, surely their bona fides could be established by online archives of registration and/or by witness evidence.

It might be argued that TT’s infrastructure such as housing is already stretched. However, we’d say that however humble the help that is offered to persons fleeing such horrors it will surely be gratefully accepted and fully utilised, by persons simply seeking a chance to make a new life for their loved ones, and ready to work hard to do so.

Who knows, might these migrants bring us a future industrialist, academician or statesman to save TT, similar to how their influx started in the first place when back in 1908 one enterprising woman saw the potential of a productive life in TT and chose to remain here.