A warning from the Dalai Lama that the EU is taking in too many refugees surfaced earlier today , with International Business Times conveying that Agence France-Presse reported His Holiness as saying:
“When we look at the face of each refugee, but especially those of the children and women, we feel their suffering, and a human being who has a better situation in life has the responsibility to help them. But on the other hand, there are too many at the moment. Europe, Germany in particular, cannot become an Arab country, Germany is Germany.”
This warning from the Dalai Lama is not his first one on the subject, as His Holiness has been spreading the word that there are too many migrants in Europe since at least as far back as September 2015, reported the Daily Mail .
“It’s impossible for everyone to come to Europe. Ultimately we have to think about how to reduce the killing in their countries.”
Most of the refugees the Dalai Lama warning is referring to are coming from Syria and Iraq, and this notion that we’re going to somehow reduce the killing in these countries, when there are so many factions and interests at play — including those that believe 100 percent that atrocities committed in the name of their God and religion are completely justified — is somewhat wishful thinking.
Seeing as the warning comes from the Dalai Lama, who is often looked on as not only a Buddhist, but also a bit of a philosophical figure, we must take into account both what is moral and right in terms of what the people of the EU should have to handle, as well as what is right in terms of helping out our fellow human beings, who may be in a drastically worse situation than we are.
We need friendship, which depends on trust. And that depends on concern for others, defending their rights, and not doing them harm.
— Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama) March 25, 2016
Germany has taken in just over a million refugees to date, which is more than any other European country, according to the Washington Post .
The warning from the Dalai Lama that Germany shouldn’t allow itself to become an Arab country is interesting from both a moral and economic standpoint. On one hand you have the refugees who are fleeing from some of the worst fighting the world has seen in recent times, and on the other you have the people of Germany who have an established culture that many throughout the world would like to keep.
Germany has an aging population, and the country literally doesn’t have enough people inside of it to do all of the jobs that need to be done. This is why Germany has been able to accept far more refugees than other countries in the EU. If Germany doesn’t continue to accept these people and assimilate them into their culture, then the country could actually end up with a stagnating economy.
This is the nationalist fear, that there really won’t be any choice in the matter of letting these migrants stay, and that when they do stay, the German culture will be somewhat permeated and weakened by those that aren’t acclimated to it, and already have their own sets of social mores and norms.
Most of the other countries in Europe have seen a deterioration in their GDP, and if we’re looking at the migrant crisis from an economic standpoint, then other countries in the EU might want to heed this warning from the Dalai Lama, considering countries like Spain have unemployment rates of 21 percent— youth unemployment is above 45 percent — according to Trading Economics, and cannot take care of their own populations at the moment, much less anyone else who might be coming into the country.
The warning from the Dalai Lama brings forth the question of what will happen in the near future to both the EU and these migrants. According to The Guardian , certain countries, such as Sweden and Denmark , have severely slowed the amount of migrants they’re allowing into the country, and many other countries — Slovenia being one of them — have completely closed their borders at times.
It’s not at all clear as to what’s going to happen in the migrant crisis, as it is so severely complicated that even the world’s smartest people have been hard pressed to find an answer that makes everyone happy. However, this warning from the Dalai Lama continues to bring more and more attention to a problem that is in desperate need of even the most minuscule of answers, and for a beloved public figure to bring attention to a subject many may already be tired of hearing about will hopefully bring about a better and/or fresh perspective.
[Photo by Keith Tsuji/Getty Images]