Every day, the images that reach us by television are snapshots of children crying, mothers with blank stares and men with despair on their faces. Meanwhile,those who are on the other side of the screen have our lunch or dinner quietly, and between mouthfuls, we let a blank reproach slip: Poor people, what's happening to them is not fair!
They are refugees; exiles from a country at war, or other, unjustly persecuted by the misery they are fleeing from to rich Europe thinking that they find it a better and more united world. Some of those in charge and even a well-known cardinal warn that there are dangerous Islamists camouflaged amongst them, willing to put an end to the society in which we live comfortably. No matter the name that you want to give them. Everyone, absolutely everyone, is part of what at the time international communism called the wretched of the earth. The former have been forced to leave their countries, Syria, and also Libya to a
lesser extent, due to conflicts that they, of course, have not started, but which no-one remedies, and with every passing day, their solution becomes more difficult, if not impossible.
While this is happening, the winter has appeared in the Balkans and most refugees / exiles / migrants are crowded together in the rain and mud in really desperate and deadly conditions that can have a deadly effect on children, the sick and elderly. Faced with
this tragedy, the EU institutions, the European Parliament and the European Commission move at a snail's pace, and are unable to make firm decisions to fix the problem. They talk and talk without resolving anything and now, these talking heads have gotten themselves bogged down in the diatribe of quotas. That is, in the maze of not deciding how many refugees each member country should have. If it were not thus, because behind those numbers is hidden the suffering of the poorest people on the planet, the arguments would not be any more important than the inane discussions of Brussels bureaucrats have always been.
Yet what is happening to Europe at the moment is something transcendental, because the entry of thousands of refugees shakes the strongest foundations of our civilization based on rights, freedoms and tolerance. If we do not let them come in and help
them rebuild their lives, we will be doing the opposite of what the old Europeans have preached as a role model. Close our ommunity borders could mean the death of the Europe in which we have always believed to be living in.
