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Introduction
Debates on immigration issues have been ongoing for decades. However, no concrete legal framework has been developed to solve immigration issues. Almost every country faces immigration issues. In particular, developed countries face a lot of criticism over their handling of migrants from third world countries. For instance, Syrian refugees experience many difficulties in their quest for refugee status in European countries. Nonetheless, some third world countries have also discriminated against migrants. For instance, Uganda mistreated its Asian migrants.
Of great concern are the poor immigration policies that complicate entry of migrants (Webber 2012). Additionally, poor legal structures have left refugees unprotected in host countries. This paper will compare and contrast two cases on mistreatment of immigrants. Firstly, the paper will explore the historical case of Asian refugees in Uganda during Idi Amin’s tenure. Secondly, the paper will examine the contemporary case of Syrian refugees in Europe. Consequently, the paper will investigate legal dimensions concerning mistreatment of migrants in foreign countries.
Migrants face numerous upheavals in host nations. In fact, most migrants feel unwanted in the regions that they visit. Interestingly, this is quite the opposite when they the same regions as investors or tourists. Most migrants are vilified and mistreated by immigration policies that seek to deport them at the slightest opportunity (McDonald 2015). Immigration laws have vindicated asylum seekers to an extent that they live in fear of law enforcement organs. Legal experts like Frances Webber have experienced such vilifications in the hands of host countries (Webber 2012).
At some stage, it is necessary to asks if immigration policies serve the interest of migrants. Based on Webber’s experience, it can only be argued that most immigration policies serve the interest of host countries rather than immigrants. According to Webber, migrants are given marginal justice in foreign countries. Webber’s book describes poor legal framework, which is discriminative towards refugees and migrants. In fact, the writer describes migrant laws as racial and inhuman because of their legal struggles. In essence, migrants’ right is still abused in foreign countries. Surprisingly, borders have ceased from being arrival points.
Instead, borders have become points concerned with marriage registers, banks and workplace issues, among others. Ominously, immigration status has put migrants as immediate suspects in case of vices in foreign countries. Most migrants are worried whenever they see law enforcement officers because they are often embarrassed in broad daylight. For instance, Syrian refugees are now living in fear of being named as potential suspects in shootings across Europe (Park 2015). Essentially, politically motivated immigration laws that are self-seeking have redefined border point activities.
Mistreatment of Asian refugees in Uganda
During the British Empire in 1890s, most Asian and African states were under the British. Specifically, Indian and Uganda were under the British Empire. During this period, India was known as British India. In this regard, British Empire brought Indians to Uganda to build the Ugandan railway in the late 19th century. Additionally, some Asians were brought to do clerical work for the British in Uganda. At the time, most of the Asians had British citizenship. However, their passports were later revoked by the United Kingdom in 1968 when a law was passed to nullify passports issued overseas. Essentially, Asians became displaced persons after this nullification. Moreover, their situation was worsened by Ugandan government’s decision to revoke their passports (Smith 2015).
In fact, Asian refugees were told to leave Uganda on Amin’s orders. Asian minorities were given just 90 days to vacate the country in a stunning order that the president claimed to have received from his maker. The reasons put forward for Asian expulsion were quite surprising. For instance, Amin alleged that Asian migrants were stockpiling commodities thereby sabotaging Uganda’s economy. This created an environment of Indophobia.
Most Asians came to sub Saharan Africa in the 1890’s as labourers. British Empire engulfed the whole of India during the late 19th century (Benton 2005). In fact, the Asians came to do imperial service. Most of the Asians came from British India where various skilled and unskilled personnel were taken. About 32 000 labourers came from British India. They were brought mainly to work on the Ugandan Railway. Eventually, a number of Asians opted to stay behind following the conclusion of railway construction (Turnbull 2015).
According to the BBC, around 6724 Indians made the choice to stay behind. However, majority of those who survived the difficulties in construction and farming returned to India. Most of the remaining Indians joined banking and sartorial work. The British employed them in those sectors because of their skills. Eventually, their population in such occupations increased thereby causing stereotyping. In fact, their influence on the Ugandan economy was quite significant.
For instance, Asians received about a fifth of Uganda’s national income despite their small representation. At the time, Asians represented just 1 % of Uganda’s population. In this regard, they were seen to be controlling the economy of Uganda. Moreover, the country’s tax arrangement favoured Indian traders. To make matters worse, the minority group served elite groups. These developments created an Indophobic environment even before Amin came to power. In fact, Africanisation of Ugandan economy, which occurred in 1968, created proposals that were Indophobic (Geddes 2010).
The following year, work permits and licences were launched to control Asian influence on the Ugandan economy. Moreover, Indians’ professional activities were controlled using these permits. This amounted to segregation of the minority group in the country. In fact, majority of Ugandan population discriminated against Indians once this kind of environment was created. In essence, Idi Amin exploited the already existing Indophobic climate in the country. Indians became the scapegoat for every economic failure of Ugandan leaders. Indians were stereotyped in every cause of life.
Moreover, they were considered conniving and greedy. This resulted in increased hatred for the Indian community. The resulting event was ethnic cleansing of Indians throughout the country. Previously, it is worth noting that Kenyans had also been ejecting from the country. Essentially, this was not the first time Uganda was expelling migrants from the country. Nonetheless, Indian expulsion was of a larger scale than that of Kenyans (Muhammedi 2015).
Indians were accused of plotting to undermine Uganda. In fact, Idi Amin utilised this propaganda to radicalise locals against Indians. Previous governments, especially Milton Obote’s government, had created a climate of racial discrimination towards Indians. When Indophobic behaviour reached its climax, Asians were told to leave the country in 90 days. In his defence, President Amin claimed to return economic control of the country to Ugandans. Events that followed were shameful and derisory. It was reported that Ugandan soldiers committed various atrocities against Indians. In fact, it has been documented that some of the soldiers raped Indian women during the event of forced expulsion.
Moreover, they also engaged in physical violence as well as theft. Surprisingly, Indian government took no action apart from severing diplomatic ties with Uganda despite warning Amin against impunity. Interestingly, most of the Indians expelled had UK citizenship. Others also had citizenship of colonies of the UK. The UK is said to have taken 27 200 refugees while Canada took 6000 refugees. On the other hand, India took about 4500 while the other 2500 ended up in the neighboring countries such as Kenya and Malawi, among others. It is worth noting that around 20000 Indians were unaccounted for during the expulsion. This was a very unfortunate event in the lives Asian immigrants. Moreover, little or no legal protection for immigrants was witnessed (Brent 2015).
Syrian refugees/immigrants in Europe
According to UNHCR, more than 13 million Syrians have deserted their country since 2011 (UNHCR 2015). According to UNHCR estimations, more than 750 000 applied for asylum status in 2014 with a rejection rate of more than 60 % (De Bel-Air 2013). Yet the few that have asylum are also facing an uphill task of integrating with a hostile host. Syrian refugee crisis has caused unprecedented changes in the European Union. While some countries like Germany, among others, have committed to taking in refugees, other countries have refused. Moreover, refugees in towns are out of cash, which is increasing the cost of migration.
International support is inadequate. Furthermore, a good number of European member states have refused to provide adequate protection for the refugees. Moreover, European States are not cooperating since they have differing rates of refugee status recognition. This has led to mistreatment of refugees across Europe with growing nationalist movements that are racist and discriminative (BBC 2015). Evidence of escalating violence has been witnessed in Europe as migrants face opposition from nationalist movements. Moreover, calls for forced deportations, refusal of entry and construction of boundaries have been rife in European States as opposed to acceptance of Syrian refugees.
Syrian refugee crisis has been compared to migration of European Jews in the1930s. Furthermore, allocation for migrants in the U.S. has been toughened because of the recent Paris attacks. Comparison is drawn because in the 1936 only 5532 Jews were accepted in the United States out of the legal quota of 25000 (Walter 2015). This number rose to 11356 refugees, which was way behind the country’s allocation. This brings to question the commitment of countries to refugees. Syrian refugees face upheavals daily in European countries.
Elements of Xenophobia and racism have been witnessed in most European countries, especially Germany and Romania. Some European countries are refusing to take in their quota of refugees as allocated. In fact, other countries have sealed their borders to stop migrants. It has been noted that there is lack of coordinated action among European countries on Syrian refugees. Moreover, human rights issues have been encountered in most European countries during the Syrian refugee crisis.
Key among issues affecting Syrian refugee crisis is the return of racist movements and nationalists who threaten EU’s efforts to resolve this crisis. Syrian crisis has exposed numerous faults in EU refugee protection policy. Moreover, treatment of Syrians who seek asylum has created divisions between officials in the European Union States. Frontier zones have increased to such a level that processing of asylum claims has become expensive. Moreover, the Dublin system has been found to be wanting since it controls entry of migrants. Furthermore, moderate voices are still low to combat xenophobic and racist behaviours effectively. Moreover, human rights repercussions due to the current immigration policy are yet to be well understood in Europe.
Similarities
Clearly, there are more similarities between the historical case and the contemporary case. For instance, in both cases the international community took a relatively dormant state to watch the ineffective handling of refugees in Europe and Uganda respectively. It is documented that around 20000 Asian refugees are still unaccounted for despite others getting asylum in different countries. Similarly, although to a bigger scale, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees are still unaccounted for in their quest for refugee status in Europe. This brings to question the migrant policies in existence during the occurrence of both cases. Many similar occurrences can be observed in both cases. For instance, nationalist movements were common in both cases. In fact, the only difference is that in Uganda’s case, the government fuelled nationalist movements while in Europe’s case citizens fuelled the movements.
In both cases, there were elements of racism and discrimination. In Uganda, Asians were termed as greedy. This was used to plot their expulsion. Similarly, Syrian refugees were considered surplus to requirements; therefore, they were denied asylum status in some European States (McCarthy 2015). In both cases, human rights abuses were witnessed. Specifically, violence against refugees was rampant in both cases. Additionally, religious cause must have led to profiling in both cases. For instance, Amin alluded to the fact that his Allah told him in a dream to get rid of the Asians. Similarly, most European countries are profiling Muslims as potential terrorists as the reason for their rejection (Troianovski & Walker 2015). Moreover, there was poor legal framework to deal with refugee crises in both cases (Frantziou, Staiger & Chaytor 2014).
Differences
As much as there are numerous similarities in both cases, there exist a number of differences. For instance, while the Ugandan government caused Asian refugee crisis, refugee crisis in Europe was caused by war in Syria. Additionally, expelling of refugees was an executive order while rejection of refugees in Europe was not. Despite opposition from citizens, some European countries like Germany and Sweden took some refugees. However, less effort was made to assist Indian refugees although majority of them were citizens of British Empire and its colonies. In essence, the same Empire that brought Indians to Uganda did little to help them considering the high number that was unaccounted for during and after the crisis (Mohammad 2015). It can be noted that European countries have at least tried to institute legal framework for tackling refugee crisis (EC 2015). In contrast, Uganda abandoned Asian refugees that built their economy. Besides, Uganda’s case happened in a tyrannical era while Syrian case occurred in a democratic era.
Conclusion
Refugees face mistreatments in host countries they visit. In fact, human rights abuses have been reported in most host countries. Furthermore, racial profiling has been reported in host countries where refugees seek asylum. Despite the rich culture they bring with them, refugees are seen as outsiders in host countries. Asian refugees were inadequately protected under the country’s legal system although Uganda had signed international treaties on protection of refugees. Similarly, the European Union had documented various refugee protection laws.
However, its implementation during the Syrian refugee crisis has been partial in different states within the union. Refugees’ right to life was abused in Uganda. Moreover, their right to freedom, privacy and property were abused. In essence, refugees were denied human rights in both cases. In comparing a historical case of Ugandan and European refugee crises, more similarities are observed than differences. However, it is worth noting that poor legal framework and poor migration policies have contributed to the problems faced by refugees in host countries.
List of References
BBC 2015 ‘Migrant crisis: Migration to Europe explained in graphics’ BBC News. Web.
Benton, L 2005, ‘Legal Spaces of Empire: Piracy and the Origins of Ocean regionalism’, Comparative Study of Society and history, vol.47, no.4, pp. 700-724.
Brent, L 2015, ‘The refugee crisis and when Britain led the world in compassion,’ The Guardian, 3. Web.
De Bel-Air, F 2013, A note on the Syrian Refugees in the Gulf: Attempting to assess data and policies. Web.
Frantziou, E, Staiger, U & Chaytor, S 2014, Refugee Protection, Migration and human rights in Europe. Web.
Geddes, J 2010, ‘A holy man with an eye for connections,’ Macleans. Web.
McCarthy, A 2015, ‘The Controversy over Syrian refugees misses the question we should be asking’, National Review. Web.
McDonald, A 2015, ‘EU talks tough on deportations amid flood of Syrian refugees’, Reuters. Web.
MMVIII 2015, ‘1972: Expelled Ugandans Arrive in UK,’ BBC News. Web.
Mohammad, T 2015, Syria crisis. Web.
Muhammedi, S 2015, Lessons learned from the Ugandan Asian refugees. Web.
Park, J 2015, Europe’s Migration crisis. Web.
Smith, E 2013, ‘Queue-Jumpers’ and ‘turning back’ refugees: the Ugandan Asian ‘crisis’ and parallels with the present. Web.
Troianovski, A & Walker, M 2015, ‘Paris terror attacks transform debate over Europe’s migration crisis,’ The Wall Street Journal. Web.
Turnbull, A 2015, ‘Story: Refugees,’ The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Web.
UNHCR 2015, Regional overview: Refugee crisis. Web.
Walter, B 2015, ‘1940s vs. 2015: Will Syrian Refugees compare to European Refugee Statistics?’ International Policy Digest. Web.
Webber, F 2012, Borderline Justice: The Fight for Refugees and Migrant Rights, Pluto, London.
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