Refugees have been a major part of our world, as many people have to leave the harshness of their countries to another country that will give them freedom and the opportunity to pursue their dreams for the better of themselves and their families. Many of these refugees have aspirations to go to areas like the US and Europe to live their dreams. However, sometimes these refugees don’t have the facilities, or even luck, to go to first-world countries. Sometimes, to escape immediate persecution, the refugees have no choice but to go to third-world countries. Sometimes that sudden threat gives the refugees no choice but to go to a country that will not persecute them for who they are, at least not the government. One such country is India, where aside from the threat of violence or being killed, all sorts of persecution may still occur.

Personally, I have witnessed people persecuting some of the refugees in India due to many reasons. For example, the refugees of Rohingya have come to India due to persecution for being Muslims in Myanmar. In India, many jobs and standard education are not given to these refugees. People isolate the refugees in slums and give them little to no economic opportunity to grow. In India, there are also no strong legislative acts that protect the rights of refugees. There are no strong legislative acts that permit the refugees from getting immigration documents and becoming working citizens of the country. Even refugees who were initially Indian also have faced persecution from the government and people. For example, the Sri Lankan refugees in the 1980s were technically from a part of India. These refugees faced persecution from the Sri Lankan government. However, India aided Sri Lanka in persecuting these refugees, which showed the refugees that they were not necessarily wanted even though they were able to become refugees of India.

Not only India, but many other non-Western countries have had similar experiences with the refugees. For example, some areas in the Middle East that take up refugees seeking economic opportunity trick the refugees. Some areas trap them into working for certain groups for a certain amount of time while taking rent, where they won’t end up having enough money to pay the rent and in the end keep on working for them. Some of the refugees are even tricked into forced labor, making conditions worse than what it was from the original country they were in. However, when certain emergency situations occur, such as the Afghanistan crisis that occurred recently, the people fleeing do not see the horrors of other countries as they want to escape the most immediate ones.

There is also another side to this argument, as some people say that the refugees may also not be completely innocent in their workings. For example, the definition of a refugee shows that one can be classified as a refugee when they have a threat to life, but not necessarily economic opportunity. Some people, who still have a threat to their lives, don’t necessarily face the same danger in economic situations. To be more specific, they have the opportunity of moving to another safer country but have the risk of going through too much documentation and spending a lot of money for their safety. Rather, the people classifying as refugees may come to a country in the name of refugee protection but still have the same economic status and opportunity to grow. To certain Western countries, this is not a great concern as the economic status of these Western countries are well above average. To third World countries however, their economic status is not the greatest. They may or may not have facilities to help their own citizens, so to see refugees come with a greater economic status than the citizens itself can demotivate the government especially when the refugees aren’t contributing to the economic status of the country. At the same time, many of the refugees come to the countries illegally without documentation, which is a huge problem even in the Western countries. Some people that I have talked to even stated that in the case of India, many of the refugees such as the Rohingya have not received jobs or education due to them being illegal and not having the proper documentation they need as a refugee. 

Therefore, the idea of refugees must be considered on the international level because the threat to safety is not something that should occur. We should work towards an international goal to provide countries with the correct facilities to help the people leave danger.

References:

https://www.ilo.org/beirut/media-centre/news/WCMS_211162/lang–en/index.htm

https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-editorials/refugee-crisis-in-india