… the refugee flood is, in its origins and its greatest extremes, a European phenomenon. We Westerners have been refugees much more than we have been refugee’d upon…

Today we face the Syrian crisis. It is neither the largest nor the most unmanageable refugee flood of the postwar era, but it has arrived at a bad moment: first, because we have by now forgotten our own history as refugees; second, because an ugly politics of intolerance is influencing many Western governments; and third, because there is an unfortunate public belief that refugee tides are larger and more permanent than they really are.

The world is not awash in refugees: Open the gates – The Globe and Mail