Today, Explained - (Ukrainian) refugees welcome!

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

As Poland welcomes almost 2 million Ukrainians in, it’s spending $4 million on a wall to keep Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans out. Vox’s Sigal Samuel explains the myth of the “deserving” refugee. This episode was produced by Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Among the first images we saw after Russian troops invaded Ukraine were of jammed highways as Ukrainians fled their homes. Almost immediately after the war, people got in their cars and on trains and sat in days-long traffic jams to cross the border. Europe is now seeing one of the worst refugee crises since World War II. But unlike just about any recent refugee crisis that comes to mind, these Ukrainian refugees are mostly being greeted

with open arms. We want to say the new life and the safe life is possible. Maybe somewhere. I mean Poland and other countries in Europe or other countries in the world. On the show today, we're going to talk about the myth of the deserving refugee.

Why the world loves a Ukrainian refugee but wants to wall off so many of the other ones. You know, the brown ones. It's Today Explained. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started.

Today Explained, Sean Ramos from the Ukrainian refugees are going in every which direction. They're going to Russia, believe it or not. They're going wherever they can. That being said, the vast majority of those people are headed west. They're headed into countries that were once roughly as poor as Ukraine is, that were once under Moscow's orbit during the Cold War, but have now joined the European Union or members of NATO are much, much more prosperous. And a good example of that is Poland. It's a member of the European Union, and it is for Ukrainians a lot of what they wanted to achieve for their own country.

Drew Henshaw is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal based in Warsaw, Poland. Poland is receiving the vast majority of the Ukrainians leaving. At one point, Andrew Henshaw is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal based in Warsaw, Poland. Poland is receiving the vast majority of the Ukrainians leaving. At one point, we were talking about two Ukrainians entering Poland every three seconds. Wow. As I'm speaking to you now, it's more than two million people who've fled from Ukraine into Poland. The government was expecting maybe one million people over the course of an entire war. And they've blown right past that estimate and are suddenly thinking about how many millions of people are going to leave Ukraine and come to Poland.

Ukrainians feel very comfortable, generally speaking, in Poland. The languages are actually quite similar. Culturally, they're very similar. They have shared history. The Polish labor market has been very tight the past few years. One of the most successful economies of the past 30 years after the end of the Cold War. And after 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, Ukrainians found a kind of home here. Nearly 2 million Ukrainians moved here and became an omnipresent part of Polish society. And a lot of their relatives in Ukraine are looking west and saying, you know, my cousin

or husband or friend has a pretty good life in Poland, and that's a natural starting place to go to. But amid the fear and exhaustion, we also found signs of kindness. Volunteers with warm food and drinks, boxes and boxes of supplies. Everywhere you look you see Poles wearing Ukrainian flags on their coats, wearing blue and yellow ribbons. Ukrainian flags fly from buses. Pictures of Zelensky are all over town. There are billboards saying in Polish, we are with you, with the Ukrainian flag. There are everywhere, Polish people are donating.

When you go to the grocery store, there are boxes, you know, any food you want to give Ukrainians, leave them here. Thousands of Poles have signed up to host a Ukrainian in their home. I mean, a way to put this would be that two million people have come to Poland, and there's really hardly anything like a refugee camp here. These two families were complete strangers until two weeks ago. They don't even speak the same language. Ola, her mother and two daughters ended up in Warsaw and found comfort in the home of Barbara, a 75-year-old Polish woman. And you gave up your bedroom upstairs to sleep on the living room couch.

She can sleep here because she's just one and there are four. So they can take like a bigger space. No problem. That's interesting. So they're almost all finding housing, apartments, hotels, moving in with other Polish people. That was definitely true in the first wave of people. They were staying with relatives, friends, even strangers and volunteers that offered. I think we're now starting to enter a phase where people are coming over without any clue of, you know, not knowing anybody here,

not knowing where to go. If you're at the train station here in central Warsaw, where I am, you see quite a lot of people sleeping on a blanket. Most of them are sleeping on a blanket to catch a train maybe tomorrow to figure it out. You don't really see people kind of sleeping long term at places like that. But I think we're getting to a point where what Poland can accommodate on the back of Samaritans has reached a limit. You know, I think I'm seeing it the same as every citizen of the city. It's a major challenge. Public housing for refugees is near capacity.

The mayor says his city needs more government funds to keep helping people. I mean, comparatively speaking, like, how significant a shock is this to Poland's population? Poland's population has been pretty much steady at 38 million people since 1987. It's a country that lost a lot of people to emigration after the Iron Curtain fell. And all of a sudden, you have within the span of a few weeks,

2 million people entering Poland. To give you a statistic here, the capital of Warsaw has more than 300,000 Ukrainians have showed up here. If those people stay, as the government expects most to do, one out of every six residents of the capital will be a Ukrainian who recently arrived. Incredible. And generally people feel good about this. Absolutely. I think Poles have a long history of knowing what it's like. You know, this country's been invaded by Germany, by Russia. My generation and older, they remember very well

how in Second World War, Ukrainians and the Poles fight together. But this situation, I am sure, opened the door for a new future between our nations. They have a kind of sympathy for Ukraine that that could be us. If we weren't members of NATO, Russia would be doing this to us. If we weren't members of the European Union, Russia would be doing this to us. How does this compare to the last time Europe saw a massive influx of refugees?

One thing that's different is already in the course of a month, we've seen twice the number of people come to the European Union as came to the EU in the whole of 2015. Another difference is that that 2015 wave headed primarily to Germany, maybe France, kind of the wealthiest countries on the continent. Right now, this wave is headed into, you know, the countries that are a little bit less wealthy, Central European countries like Slovakia, Poland. An irony here is these are the countries that in 2015 resisted any efforts to kind of spread Syrians around evenly throughout the European Union. And now they're asking for help, you know, saying we've got 2 million people in Poland, can anybody help us host these refugees? So they weren't that receptive to Syrian refugees back in 2015. In this demonstration in the city of Wrocław last week, they chanted, raped, beaten, murdered by the Islamic horde. Don't let this happen to you. Poland must stay Catholic. No, they are pretty much all these countries, Poland, let this happen to you, Poland must stay Catholic.

No, pretty much all these countries, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, were opposed to the idea of being told by the European Union who should stay in their country. Prime Minister Viktor Orban framed the issue as a showdown between Muslim invaders and Christian Europe. This is about the future of Hungary, probably the most important issue of the years ahead, the future of our children and grandchildren, who we live with, what will happen to our culture, what will happen to the lifestyle we have had up until now. It became an issue of sovereignty mixed up with a lot of kind of, you know, nationalistic ideas about immigration.

Is that to say that Poland's a little more receptive to, like, white neighbors than a little more distant brown neighbors? The government here will clearly say that, yes, we like Ukrainians. They're culturally similar to us. They speak a language that's similar to us. They assimilate quite easily. What I find curious is that the government here, it's a nationalistic government, their rhetoric against what they consider multicultural immigration is quite harsh. The sentiments here on the streets of Warsaw are very much against immigration.

They are Muslims with completely different habits, different political culture, which has nothing to do with our Polish culture. State news is full of kind of alarmist stories about, you know, crimes committed by Muslims in Sweden or France. Je suis idiot, they shouted about France here, which is hardly sympathetic. The European Union is, broadly speaking, supportive of the idea of fencing off borders like Belarus, Turkey, having a harder policy towards people trying to cross the Mediterranean. For years, really, since 2015, Europe has been trying to, they would use the word, control migration. But what that really means is fencing off borders, you know, having border guards everywhere trying to, they would use the word control migration, but what that really means is fencing off borders, you know, having border guards everywhere, trying to discourage people

from crossing the Mediterranean, regardless of how valid or invalid their case for asylum status is. Now, all of a sudden you have Ukraine. And I think, you know, all across Europe, there is a feeling of, okay, these guys are fleeing a active conflict. We can't say no to these guys. Come on in. And is Poland one of these countries that's also building walls at the same time? Yeah, Poland, as we speak, Poland is building a wall on their border with Belarus. Once complete in the summer, Poland's wall will be 186 kilometers long, almost half the length of the borderline with Belarus. They consider anybody coming from Belarus as being weaponized by the government of Lukashenko.

Most of the migrants come from the Middle East. People fleeing war or poverty, now used as pawns in a geopolitical standoff that's already proving deadly. They consider, you know, refugees coming from Belarus are used as pawns in a Russian and Belarusian tactic to destabilize Europe. But anyone coming from Ukraine, they say, OK, well, that's an act of war. There are literally bombs falling on these cities. We will accept people coming from Ukraine. Why doors are open to some and shut to others in a minute on Today Explained. Thank you. designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket.

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say, Syrians. It's not just a Poland thing, right? This is like the West at large. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a pretty widespread issue we're seeing. I think across a widespread of both governments and individual citizens, we sort of see some preferential treatment. I think we've been seeing discrimination play a role here and worm its way into our discussion of refugees. When we're talking about Ukrainian refugees who are widely perceived as white and Christian and European, there's one set of attitudes.

And, you know, when we're thinking about refugees from, let's say, the Middle East, there is a different set of attitudes. I'm sorry, it's very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed, children being killed every day with Putin's missiles. And you've seen this worm its way into the media coverage. You had a senior correspondent, Charlie Dagata, at CBS, who said about Kiev.

This isn't a place, with all due respect, you know, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. You know, this is a relatively civilized, relatively European, I have to choose those words carefully too, city where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it's going to happen. That was his careful choice of words there? Yeah, that was him being careful. So you see this double standard

or discrepancy in attitudes when it comes to people who are seen as white and Christian versus people who are seen as non-white, maybe Muslim, right, as in the case of many of the Syrian refugees who were fleeing around 2015. And of course, this plays out in fundraising efforts too, right? You write about this in your piece. According to the United Nations, the Ukrainian refugee crisis is currently 41.1% funded as a result of a flash appeal, which basically means several

UN agencies working simultaneously to raise funds during a sudden onset disaster. But in late 2021, the drought in Kenya prompted a similar flash appeal, but they only managed to raise about 10.9% of the requested funding? Yes. So, you know, all refugees need support, and generally refugee crises are underfunded across the board, but some much more so than others. But we hear about these crises a lot less than we're hearing about Ukraine. Why do you think it is, Sehgal? Is it just as simple as, you know, white versus brown, Christian versus Muslim? What is it? I think a big piece of this has to do with the identity of the people who are fleeing. Are they viewed as white and Christian or are they viewed as brown or black? Are they viewed

as Muslim? That really influences how much people tend to sympathize with the people fleeing. There's also other factors, though. There's also foreign policy. You know, it is very relevant that this is an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, an invasion of one country by another. And there is an opportunity here for surrounding countries to sort of position themselves in a big, grand geopolitical narrative. Like a clear good guy and a clear bad guy kind of thing, huh? Yeah, like it's not every day that you have a chance to position yourself in such a sort of satisfying narrative where you can be aligning with the hero against the clear bad guy. And if you are a country that's going to be opening its borders wide to welcome the Ukrainian refugees, it's a way of signaling, hey, we're on the side of democracy. We're standing against the clear bad guy. So it's a way of

telegraphing your geopolitical interests. I think the double standard we're seeing in how some refugees are treated versus others is really clear when you look at how, let's say, Poland, for example, is welcoming Ukrainians with open arms. But at the same time, on Poland's other border with Belarus, it is actively, forcibly keeping refugees out. These are refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, who are trying to come in. So that's a clear double standard that I think is not part of the dominant narrative that we're seeing in the media, but it should be. You write in your piece about this idea of a deserving refugee. What does that mean? This is kind of like in a different example, when we talk about poverty, sometimes there's the myth of the deserving poor versus the undeserving poor, which is really used to

sort of give an excuse to avoid helping some people in poverty. There's a similar myth when talking about refugees. We have this myth of the deserving refugee. That's a refugee who's like fleeing persecution and they really, really deserve help and we ought to be compassionate towards them. And that's often contrasted with migrants who are cast as undeserving. Migrants mean people who are fleeing maybe for economic reasons, right? They're fleeing by choice. They have a choice about it, but maybe they're going to a new country because they want

to be able to make more money, let's say. Whereas refugees, we understand to mean people who have no choice but to flee. What about the Afghan evacuees that we covered on our show just a few weeks ago? Operation Allies Welcome, which was the legislation that airlifted Afghans out of Kabul, had bipartisan support. I mean, they were largely Muslim, not white, and yet there was international attention and resounding support for them. Are they sort of an exception to this rule? Yes and no. I mean, first of all, there was resounding support, but still many, many Afghans in need remain in Afghanistan in dire straits. So it's not like all of the Afghans who arguably should be brought out of there to the U.S. have been given that accommodation.

But yeah, I mean, I think we did see Afghans get a lot of support, there's a really, really clear reason why. It's because the humanitarian catastrophe that a lot of people are facing now in Afghanistan is a direct product of America's ill-conceived and severely botched attempts at nation building in Afghanistan over the past 20 years. So I think it was pretty clear America now has some moral responsibility to help the people of this nation that in a lot of ways it kind of screwed over. I'm glad you brought up morals because I kind of wonder how we appeal to our morals in situations like these and not just to our instinctual tribalism. It just feels like an age-old question and we haven't made that much progress. Yeah, I think there's a notion in moral philosophy that I really like that's called the circle of moral concern, the moral circle. When we think

about who deserves our compassion or our moral concern, who are we including in the circle of who's deserving and who are we excluding? Who's beyond the circle? And I think, like we talked about before, there's a tendency for a lot of us to, you know, the people closest into our circle, the people who maybe look like us, seem similar to us, we're quickest to be willing to extend empathy to them. That's sort of easy empathy. But there's a harder kind of empathy that we can practice and arguably should practice, which is like trying to expand out our circle of moral concern and include more and more people, right? Recognizing that like every, they're all human and everyone like deserves our concern. For me, this moment is a powerful one where there's this

horrifying war happening in Ukraine. It has totally justifiably strengthened a lot of people's desire to reduce the suffering of refugees. And that's fantastic. And if you have been feeling that strength and desire, then it's maybe a good moment to try to expand that circle of compassion outward to also include refugees beyond just Ukraine and try to help them too. Sagaal Samuel, she writes for Vox's Future Perfect. It's a section of Vox.com dedicated to understanding how it can make the world better for everyone. If you're looking for ways to support Ukrainian refugees or Afghan evacuees or the Sudanese or any other refugee or migrant, check out her work. Her most recent entry is conveniently titled How You Can Help All Refugees from Ukraine and Beyond.

Our program today was produced by Halima Shah, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Afim Shapiro, and edited by Matthew Collette and me. Thank you. Our VP of audio is Liz Kelly Nelson. My co-host is Noel King. We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld. And the show is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. You can find us on Twitter. We are at today underscore explained. Today explained without the underscore was taken. Person didn't want to give it up. Thank you.