Ukrainians fleeing war are receiving a hearty welcome in Poland, Hungary and other neighboring counties. The different treatment is stark compared to that of Middle Eastern and African migrants and refugees, particularly Syrians who came in 2015.
Mohammad fled his hometown of Daraa in 2018. He now lives in Spain, and with other Syrian refugees founded the first bilingual magazine in Arabic and Spanish. He said he wasn’t surprised by the remarks from Petkov and others.
When over a million people crossed into Europe in 2015, support for refugees fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan was much greater. Of course, there were also moments of hostility — such as when awas filmed kicking and possibly tripping migrants along the country’s border with Serbia. But the warm welcome soon ended after EU nations disagreed over how to share responsibility, with the main pushback coming from Central and Eastern European countries like Hungary and Poland. One by one, governments across Europe toughened migration and asylum policies, doubling down on border surveillance, earning the nickname of “Fortress Europe.
Jeff Crisp, a former head of policy, development and evaluation at UNHCR, agreed that race and religion influenced treatment of refugees. Like many, he was struck by the double standard. But none of these arguments has been applied to their Ukrainian neighbors, with whom they share historical and cultural ties. Parts of Ukraine today were once also parts of Poland and Hungary. Over 1 million Ukrainians live and work in Poland and hundreds of thousands more are scattered across Europe. Some 150,000 ethnic Hungarians also live in Western Ukraine, many of whom have Hungarian passports.
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