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Migration: Here, There, Everywhere

~ kasia1965 ~ 1 Comment

The April 4, 1949 edition of the Boston Daily Globe printed a small article on page seven: “D.P. Ship Here Tomorrow Morning.” My father, Mieczyslaw Bielawa, a survivor of inhumane Nazi forced labor camps, was on board. He was taken from his family by the Germans when he was sixteen, liberated by Americans at twenty, and arrived in Boston at twenty-four following a stint working for the American military in postwar occupied Germany. 

Dad made the two-week, transatlantic crossing from Bremerhaven, Germany, aboard the Marine Flasher. The ship carried 543 war survivors, mostly from Eastern Europe, who awaited a new and uncertain future in the West after their homelands fell to communism. Some Americans welcomed and helped the refugees find their footing. Others opposed the influx. Worse yet, some turned DP (Displaced Person) into a slur. My father was called this on more than one occasion when he settled in Peabody, Massachusetts. He was told to “Go home” even though shifted borders meant “home” no longer existed.

I carry this story in my heart as I read about Europe’s migrant crisis. The sheer volume of migrants seeking refuge — from political instability, war, and the ravages of climate change — presses up against the borders of the European Union with increasing intensity. We read about the tragedies at sea of overloaded, unsteady boats trying to reach Europe from Africa. Desperate migrants attempt to swim from “The Jungle” in Calais, France — a former landfill turned into a migrant encampment — across the English Channel.

And what are we seeing? England proposed an ill-fated plan to relocate migrants to Rwanda amid a surge in right-wing, anti-immigrant rancor. Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni launched an effort to divert migrants to Albania and was overruled by the Italian judiciary. Ireland’s Ross Lake House Hostel in Rosscahill, County Galway, was torched by arsonists in December 2023 as it was being renovated to house seventy asylum seekers. Denmark is, literally, DEMOLISHING affordable housing estates to dismantle so-called “parallel societies”—ethnic enclaves where immigrants are not learning Danish and are not engaging in Danish society.  France’s recently re-elected government, in a nod to a burgeoning far-right, agreed to target illegal immigration. Germany reintroduced document checks at all land crossings with Poland in October 2023. Disaffected youth from migrant communities are readily accessible targets for  those seeking to radicalize them. What matters if you think you have nothing to lose?

Russia and Belarus are pariahs in the neighborhood that is Europe. They conspire to destabilize the EU via espionage, economics, social media and, sadly, exploitation of the global migrant crisis. Finland’s and Poland’s national borders with Russia and Belarus carry the added responsibility of being EU access points. Russia and Belarus are exploiting migrants in an attempt to undermine border security with human beings.

Finland, an EU member since 1995 and a NATO member since 2023, shares an 830-mile border with Russia. Finland accused Russia of weaponizing migration by luring migrants, largely from the Middle East and Africa, to Russia and then transporting them to the Finnish border to attempt illegal crossings. Russia drives them towards the border and provides bicycles for the last leg. Finland’s Parliament took an extraordinary and questionable step: They passed a law on July 12, 2024, closing all border crossings with Russia and temporarily suspending asylum requests. Human rights activists sounded the alarm. The border remains closed.

Poland, an EU member since 2004 and a NATO member since 1999, shares a 258-mile border with Belarus. Poland accused Belarus of engaging in hybrid warfare at the expense of desperate migrants. Belarus’ Belavia Airlines partnered with Turkish Airlines to increase flights from Istanbul to Minsk from where migrants were bussed to the Polish border. The Turkish government originally denied complicity; they have since begun cooperating with Poland to limit such flights. Poland’s centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk, recently announced that Poland—taking a page from Finland’s playbook—intends to temporarily suspend asylum requests with a plan to create integration centers across the country and further fortify the border to discourage those who would seek illegal entry. Poland currently hosts approximately 1,000,000 Ukrainian war refugees and can apply lessons learned from integration efforts.

“Pushbacks”—harmful, deadly and inhumane—occur at the Russian-Finnish and Belarus-Polish Borders. Russian and Belarusian border guards literally “push” migrants toward the Finnish and Polish borders. Finnish and Polish border guards literally “push” migrants back. This back and forth is demoralizing and dangerous. Some humanitarian aid reaches migrants via volunteers as in the case of Poland’s Grupa Granica  (https://www.facebook.com/grupagranica/?locale=pl_PL). Agnieszka Holland’s film Green Border (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/green_border) is a difficult but important film. It pains me to think of humans treated in this way. I am reminded of my own country’s legacy of slavery of inhumane treatment of Native Americans and Black people. 

My mind returns to that refugee ship that arrived in Boston in 1949. Massachusetts prides itself on a perceived history of liberal values. The state enacted our nation’s first “right to shelter” law in 1983, guaranteeing shelter for all homeless families and pregnant women. 

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, embracing a variation on Russian and Belarusian tactics, flew approximately 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in May 2022 depositing them, unannounced, at the airport. The community rallied around the group. 

More immigrants began arriving in Massachusetts, with one-way travel paid for by the states of Texas and Florida. Public sentiment has since shifted. The international arrivals hall at Boston’s Logan Airport became an impromptu shelter for migrants until it was disbanded in July 2024. Massachusetts’ Democratic Governor Maura Healey dispatched representatives to the U.S.-Mexico Border to convey the message that the states’ emergency shelter system is at capacity. The Boston Globe reported on the impact on public schools as more ESL teachers and supports are needed. 

Anti-immigrant rhetoric in the U.S. is fueled by increasing economic disparity. Tensions are rising as some in Massachusetts raise the nativist flag asking why new arrivals are housed while so many locals remain homeless. Donald Trump and JD Vance disperse the embers of this vitriol to fuel raging fires along the campaign trail across the country.

As the child of refugees, my knee-jerk reaction has always been to support immigrants. As a thinking person, I realize the unsustainability of current responses. Humans with hopes, dreams and aspirations like you and me are suffering. This prompted me to research possible, evidence-based solutions to tackle poverty on a country-by-country level.

The United Nations 17 Sustainability Goals offer a blueprint with opportunities to advance this initiative:

End PovertyClean and Affordable EnergyClimate Action
End HungerDecent Work and Economic GrowthLife Below Water
HealthcareIndustry, Innovation and InfrastructureLife on Land
EducationReduced InequalityPeace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Gender EqualitySustainable CommunitiesPartnerships
Clean WaterResponsible Consumption and Production

You can read the full report here: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

The question remains: Do we have the COLLECTIVE WILL to make the necessary sacrifices and investments to achieve these goals? I certainly hope so.

Sources and to learn more:

https://freshfrompoland.com/project/gapinski-kubiak-jungle

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33584706

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/massachusetts-governor-halts-decades-old-right-to-shelter-for-homeless-families/

https://apnews.com/article/france-migrants-government-barnier-macron-far-right-3242a5dbf366bb7fbc7ba050700c9571

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/12/finland-passes-law-to-block-asylum-seekers-crossing-from-russia

https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/eu-migrants-transported-from-istanbul-to-minsk-in-cooperation-with-turkish-airlines-56153

https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-donald-tusk-asylum-right-border-migration-belarus-russia-hybrid-war-eu/

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/09/us/boston-logan-airport-migrants-cec/index.html

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/10/24/metro/massachusetts-west-springfield-school-migrants-immigration/?p1=BGSearch_Advanced_Results

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/08/15/metro/saugus-migrant-students-warning/?p1=BGSearch_Advanced_Results
Image:  https://sousamendesfoundation.org/ships/marine-flasher

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Raging Waters — Finding Hope

~ kasia1965 ~ 2 Comments

“Now I know what it feels like to be a refugee,” my sister Jane said. She’s been forced from her home in Weaverville, North Carolina. Her house, which she thoughtfully designed and moved into in 2022, was spared Hurricane Helene’s flood waters, but the storm knocked out electricity, water and cell service for an indeterminate period of time. Residents were advised to evacuate. My sister drove a winding and mottled path, around washed out, hilly roads as segments of the highway were impassible. She found refuge at the home of a friend who offered a place to stay with warm showers and functioning toilets.

Jane was drawn to the beauty of western North Carolina decades ago. Settling in Asheville provided robust entrepreneurial opportunities, quality schools for her sons, and an emergent arts and culture scene. Asheville was considered a climate haven. Today, Asheville is caked in mud. Receding floodwaters reveal a landscape ravaged by the once calm French Broad River.

“Our home has flooded and we’ve lost our apiary,” read the message on my cousin’s Go Fund Me page. His home, in a bucolic town just outside Nysa, Poland, was flooded when Storm Boris swept through Central Europe in mid-September. Photos accompanying the request for assistance show the interior of a modern, airy home, with furniture and housewares floating in brown water. My cousin is a beekeeper. His carefully tended hives are toppled and scattered in mud, devastated by the swollen Klodzka River.

Storm Boris brought record heavy rainfall to Central Europe, flooding areas in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. My Poland-based cousins are gathering funds to help our family near Nysa. I, too, made a donation even though I have not met this particular cousin. His father was my mother’s eldest brother who, as a teenager, managed to escape the Germans who snapped him up from the road in Radgoszcz — as the Germans did in WWII actions called “Lapanki” — to deport him to Germany as a Forced Laborer. (I will share the story of his brave escape another time.)

My father’s family lives in Prudnik, Poland, which lies sixteen miles west of Nysa, on the Czech Border. The New York Times showed drone film footage of flooding in tiny, quaint Prudnik. I thought, “I know this place. I’ve walked here. My family lives here.”

The scene of the cemetery where my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins are buried —  including my beloved Uncle Czeslaw, a Carpathian mountaineer, who died in February at age 94 — under water broke my heart. I’ve walked along those graves to place flowers or light a candle. My family didn’t exactly “choose” Prudnik. My father’s parents settled in Western Ukraine, near Lwow (Lviv) in the 1920s when it was part of Poland. They were forced to evacuate at the end of WWII, as borders shifted and their region was absorbed into the U.S.S.R.

Vermont experienced devastating floods in 2023 and 2024. Friends in Central Vermont lost part of their back yard when the normally calm stream on their property ballooned to a torrent, tearing away part of their lawn. Images of a mud-caked Montpelier, streets lined with dumpsters, populate my mind’s eye. Montpelier residents are still waiting for the restoration of a fully functioning post office after the North Branch River flooded downtown in July 2023. Vermont was considered a climate haven.

Here in Krakow, I walk along the Vistula River past the Wawel Palace each day. The river jumped its banks in September but, fortunately, waters did not reach the city’s medieval core.

I cannot imagine. But then, I can. History repeats.

My maternal grandparents were forced to seek refuge for themselves and their children in an unheated attic in Sutkow, a neighboring village, when German soldiers occupied their home. (It’s worth noting the cruelty of the Germans: they booby-trapped the home with grenades before leaving.) Borders shifted at Yalta, forcing my paternal grandparents to become refugees, abandoning the home my grandfather designed and built overlooking the Bieszczady Mountains. They traveled via cattle car, with their children, to find a home in the resettlement area of Silesia and landed in Prudnik. My father arrived in the U.S. in 1949 as a WWII refugee, with one suitcase and hope for a better life. My mother arrived in the U.S. in 1959 with one suitcase, leaving behind her beloved parents and a life limited by a corrupt communist system.

Where do I find HOPE amid these climate uncertainties? I think of my ancestors and their resilience. I also think of several young people I know of who are contributing their intellect and talents to unraveling climate change’s emergent challenges — in atmospheric physics, in applying space science to create computer models to anticipate climate impacts on infectious disease transmission and in promoting consumptive alternatives to how we live our lives. I also think of young people creating music, art, prose and poetry that bring joy. Learning to find joy amid uncertainty is key.

I invite you to follow my blog at https://presenttime.blog.