In general, I don't consider myself an idealist. I am in favour of left-wing social policy due to pure pragmatism: I just think that in a caring society of redistribution, life is better.
I am besides pragmatic about refugees. The moral-ethical arguments are not decisive for me, though I do not question them.
Until 2003, we could say that Poland is not liable for the effects of Western imperialism. We were not the ones who drew the lines on maps 100 years ago, creating artificial states specified as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon or Kuwait.
We've lost this line of defence together with our engagement in the invasion of Iraq. As Jacques Chirac summed up well, we wasted a large chance to keep quiet.
Before 2003, Iraq and Syria ruled by nasty regimes, but at least secular. They didn't support al-Qaeda, they killed muslim fundamentalists.
Destroying Iraq, we destabilized the region. It's our responsibility that the muslim state grew up in the ruins of Iraq. And it is our responsibility that it besides took a fragment of Syria – due to the fact that from the beginning it was known that the destabilisation of Iraq would spill across the full region.
Of course, the blame for the shame of Iraq falls primarily on Bush and Blair. But Miller and Kwasniewski hooked up to it, like a waste glued to a ship that calls “we swim!” due to them, we lost our moral right to claim we had nothing to do with it.
But as I said, it's not moral issues that decide for me. Let's decision on to cold pragmatism: what can we do?
We've been very fortunate so far. Poland is not on any major migration route.
There is no success of our politicians – although they like to say that they are guarding our borders. If abruptly there were crowds of refugees on our east border, like on the Hungarian-Serbian border a fewer years ago, we would be helpless. In fact, this is simply a substance of Putin and Lukashenko’s malicious whim.
So for now, another EU countries have a problem, not us. The EU so calls for solidarity – either we take any refugees to our homes or we pay to keep camps in another EU countries.
What does pragmatism say? The answer of our politicians, "we are not curious in your exile problems", is not pragmatic, it is shortsighted.
Sure, the countries on the main trails – Balkan and northern – have a bigger problem. But we can land on the main way at any time.
They don't should be Syrian refugees. At any time, the conflict in Ukraine may be escalated. Or decision to Belarus. In specified a situation, a crowd of desperate people will abruptly appear on the accompanying photo.
What do we say then? We will say "Union, help" – due to the fact that millions of escapeers from burning cities will, pragmatically speaking, be an instant humanitarian disaster.
A The Union will then say “and you have helped us?” And there'll be chess, lawman. For us, European solidarity is simply a question of pragmatism, not idealism.
What about the thought of “helping them on the spot”? It never worked in history, so I can't believe it's gonna work now.
Civil war causes humanitarian convoys to be incapable to scope the majority of those in need. It was the same in Europe rather late during the Balkan War – millions of refugees flooded Europe at the time, were welcomed reluctantly and tried to "help on the spot", which ended with Srebrenica.
There is no specified "on-the-spot assistance" programme to importantly reduce the migration wave. And it cannot be stopped by administrative methods.
The past of attempts to halt migration is mostly a past of failures. America is full of undocumented visitors from Mexico and Poland from Ukraine.
I myself have friends who, in the 1980s, went on a journey to Vienna or Copenhagen to ask for exile position from communist Poland. They got it, along with money for a good start (that's why I think we don't have moral law again... but I don't have morality now).
People looking for a better life can't keep a fence, a wall, a fence. They'll bribe, fake papers, swim in at night.
So if individual proposes that we choose and change that we do not want Syrians, but we will take Ukrainians, this 1 offers impossible things. We do not truly have an alternate to "take refugees or not". We can only civilize this process – and that dictates pragmatism.
