Jesus was a refugee. The verses in Matthew's gospel which tell us that Mary and Joseph and the young Jesus fled Herod's wrath and ended up in Egypt are often cited to encourage a sympathetic outlook toward refugees.
Canada has a reputation for relatively lax or generous refugee laws depending on your outlook, although there is regular criticism from advocacy groups, including coalitions of churches, which suggest that our laws are unevenly applied. Canada is a country many would love to make their home, despite our winter weather, mosquitoes, and our professional sports teams.
What if millions of people were aggressively trying to gain access to Canada because of environmental catastrophes? The creation of millions of environmental refugees because of what we call natural disasters is already happening. People, usually the poor, are being displaced in huge numbers and while they usually end up in a neighbouring country all that could change. We probably imagine that we are protected by oceans, but desparate circumstances result in displaced peoples taking great risks. It isn't just weather disasters that create refugees. Land degradation and overpopulation push people out of their traditional homelands.
I wonder how we will respond to these environmental refugees? Should churches develop strategies for refugee response, or is that the work of governments? We already consider claims on the basis of religious or political persecution. What about environmental causes?
1 comment:
This is a tricky issue, not least from the muddy perspective of church v. state responsibility.
To paraphrase Jacob Marley from Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," mankind should be our business, and yet how do developed nations like our own respond fairly to various groups seeking safety and citizenship behind our own borders? How do we reconcile an open door policy with our own population; with pockets of Canadians that aren't so enamored with a fluid border? How do we reconcile our immigration policies with the threat of terrorism and our proximity to the United States?
Tough questions, all.
Post a Comment