Education on Refugees

Since my last blog was a little depressing speaking on the topic of mental illness in refugee camps, I thought I would make this blog a little more about how education about refugees, specifically from my family, was lacking.  I wanted to discuss how people’s education on what a refugee is keeps them from wanting to help refugees into this country.  So while I was busy trying to plan my sister’s gender reveal for her baby, I thought I was ask my family, what most would call the average American white family, what they knew about refugees. To keep all of my family members private they will go by Member 1, 2, and 3.

My first question was how many refugees are there in the world right now? Member number one said only around 6 million. Member number 2 said around 25 million. Member number 3 said only around 15 million. So the first thing I thought was “Wow these numbers are ridiculously low compared to the actual amount of refugees there are in the world today, and these aren’t even including the Palestinian refugees that are in a category of themselves.” This was the very first question and I knew this was going to be a very interesting situation.

My next question was what country do you think hosts the most refugees? Member one’s first guess was Australia (which after class not too long ago this made me giggle). Member number 2 guessed the United States, which also made me giggle a little bit. The last member guessed France and when I asked why its because they heard about France taking in a lot of refugees on the news and how terrorists attacks had happened because they took them in. This was the first question where I learned just how the news may effect peoples opinions on refugees and how part of the world may view them.

The third question was how many years on average does a refugee spend in a camp? Member one said 6 years, member 2 said 10 years (only because I had spoken to them about it before) and then third member said 5. This was not something I thought they would know but just wanted to ask out of curiosity in case the news, which I refuse to watch most of the time, had actually mentioned how long refugees may have spent in camps waiting for future help.

The questions went on and on like “How many refugees actually perform terrorist attacks in the countries they were placed in?” or “How long does the vetting process take for a refugee to be admitted to the United States?”

As I thought, one common issue seen in the U.S.  is the lack of education on refugees. Now I didn’t expect my family, who have little education outside of the business world, to know much about refugees. However with how much my family watches Fox News and all of the talk of refugees they have I was curious as to how much they have learned. Clearly it was little so I spent the rest of the time educating them on the simple facts they needed to know to hopefully change their mind on what the media has told them. Oddly enough, Member 2, whom I expected to never change their mind, admitted that the news had taught them nothing and they were very thankful to me for teaching them even the smallest bit of knowledge I have learned in this class so far. It just proves how “fake news” are destroying our nation and their want to help those in need.