OTM:3 Refugees or Migrants.

During this week’s show of media coverage I listened to the topic story: Refugees or Migrants. They talked about how people getting ready to run for political office and news agencies are using the two terms interchangeably, or just stating that there is a migrant problem in Europe. The reason behind this change in terminology, as the show went on with its guessed speaker telling us to question political terminology, is that countries are allowed by international law to put up fences and deny entry of migrants; however a country is not allowed to deny refugees entering.  

Physical: With the name change of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing their home countries in order to find safety, they can be turned away from help and shelter. It pretty close to dehumanizing these people who are in need.

Temporal: There are still thousands of people coming into countries every day by any means possible, either by land, sea, or air that are dying trying to find safety. So instead of deciding what we should call them we need to focus more at the problem at hand and aid them to prevent further loss of life.    

Cultural: What can be said about a culture or society that places high values on helping others but turns away people in need when the burden becomes too big? Our county, yes the USA has only taking in 1500 Syrian refugees but we have committed to accepting 10.000 more over the course of a year. Is this figure comparable to those counts that european countries have taking in?  Germany has taking in 100,000 so far along with Sweden taking in 50,000 plus. We could be somewhat accountable for these people since we indirectly helped them win a civil war to kill their dictator but who remembers stuff like that since it happened a couple years ago.

Psychological: What happens when you dehumanize people? That's when you stop thinking a person is a living human being and instead see them as an animal or less. For starters it could spark a mass genocide. The Nazi's didn’t murder six million Jews over night. It was a slow process that started out with them changing the definition of a political term. The Psychological aspect of these refugees is extremely important so that we a people all living on earth don’t make the same mistakes that we did in the past.

Number figures found at this website article.   

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/16/us-syria-crisis-usa-idUSKCN0RG2O320150916