Due to the crisis happening all around the world there is an increase in number of people seeking asylum in the European Union (EU). Most citizens in member countries are advocating against welcoming these asylum seekers since most are not highly-skilled and have difficulty being integrated in the labor market. Asylum seekers also displace their low-skilled locals. Locals think of asylum seekers as just an added burden on their countries' social programs and have no economic benefit.

If I could draw a cartoon, I would draw the EU as a goods appraiser looking at the beaten and raped political refugees and assessing their value under a magnifying glass. "Hmm, how much economic benefit can political asylum seekers give host countries? Not a doctor? Not an engineer? Return goods to origin at once!"

There are reports that asylum seekers when they go to Greece, Malta and Britain are treated like animals and suffer from lack of medical care and even torture. The abuse of the already abused is something that happens not in Iraq, Africa or China but in the civilized countries of Europe.

"Joanna, a 23-year-old Rwandan who was in Yarl's Wood last year, told me she had been taken to the airport and put on to a plane, even though her removal date had not been set. Just before it departed, she was taken off and driven back to the centre. During those moments on the plane, she said, she saw her life flash before her eyes; she had left Rwanda because she had been abducted and gang-raped by rebel soldiers, and her father, mother and baby daughter had been killed. Even after her experiences in Rwanda, she had no hesitation in describing what she experienced at Yarl's Wood as "torture". "You come to Britain because you are desperate for help," she said. "But once you are here, they bully and humiliate you, and treat you like an animal." (O'Keeffe, 2007)

In EU, Economic Development does not produce a social conscience. A female British journalist commented after visiting one of Britain's refugee centers, "I use to think I lived in a decent and fair society, but not anymore."

It will be decades from now before we have global citizens who think of people just as people and not by their economic value. Throughout history people's lives have been monetized,devalued, and treated as worthless. When will the global stock price of humans go up? Should we use profit or earnings ratio when we make decisions about people's lives?

Reference:

O'Keeffe, Alice. "How We Treat the Desperate: Some of the World's Most Vulnerable and Abused Women End Up in the Yarl's Wood Detention Centre Awaiting Deportation. Alice O'Keeffe Reports on the Inhuman Treatment They Receive at Our Hands." New Statesman 23 July 2007: 24+.