Prince Zeid Hussein (of the Hashemite dynasty), who currently serves as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, called on Monday for the European Union (EU) to absorb one million refugees from the wars in the Middle East.
Hussein explained: “It is well within the EU’s means to give refuge, over a number of years, to one million refugees displaced by the conflicts in Syria and elsewhere.”
“This would represent barely 0.2 percent of the EU’s population,” he added. Providing an example of proven success, he described Lebanon’s abrupt 26 percent population increase due to absorbing refugees as a success story, AFP reports.
“When people are unable to use regular channels to escape oppression, violence and economic despair, they may attempt, in desperation, to find irregular ones,” the Jordanian Prince added.
The UN has become more assertive in European refugee policy after aspiring migrants continue to risk their lives attempting to come to the continent. In 2015 alone, 1,800 people have died attempting to come to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea. AFP reports that some 100,000 have attempted the journey just this year.
Hussein recommended that the EU stop attempting to deter migrants from infiltrating the continent, and instead use those resources to invest “in maximizing the benefit of the regular migration channels.”
He then accused those who disagree with him of being bigots and racists. Hussein demanded that Europe must resist the “growing bigotry about migrants, which is often suffused with racism and religious hatred stirruped up for political gain.”
“Every European knows that racial and religious prejudice is combustible,” the UN commissioner said, continuing to advance his conclusion that those opposed to open borders are closet racists. “Sealing borders does not work,” he added.
Yet thanks in part to U.S. funding, Jordan unveiled a muscular new border security system earlier in June, complete with surveillance towers and radar to detect what they call “infiltrators” trying to sneak from Syria into the kingdom.
Jordan is groaning under the strain of supporting over 680,000 Syrian refugees alone, not counting Iraqis who also fled from ISIS.
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