http://www.nationalreview.com/node/423848/print Putting an End to the ‘Refugee Crisis’
By Jonah Goldberg — September 11, 2015
Most of the Syrians we see on the nightly news and on newspaper front pages are not fleeing war-torn Syria. The three-year-old Aylan Kurdi (his real name is Alan Shenu) whose heartrending death was broadcast around the world was not fleeing Syria. He’d lived his whole short life in Turkey, where his parents had been living in safety.
The Shenu family, like so many of these refugees, left Turkey on a smugglers’ boat, ultimately trying to reach Canada in pursuit of better economic prospects and a better life.
This distinction is often lost in the coverage of the European “refugee crisis” that is in many respects a migrant crisis. According to the law, never mind morality, we treat refugees differently. Refugees flee for their lives. Migrants make choices.
Many of these Syrians fleeing for safety found safety — in Turkey. What they didn’t find was a pleasant place to live or to raise kids, at least not for the middle-class Syrians finally abandoning Bashar Assad’s crumbling regime. So they voted with their feet to live in — ideally — Germany or Sweden, where the standard of living is much higher and the people much more accommodating.
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