War and Refuge

I am currently reading Voyage of the Damned, a book about how German Jews tried to escape Nazi Germany before the war broke out.  I am not yet done with the book so I do not know how it turns out.  However, the book gave me a new insight about political asylum seekers in present-day Finland.

There has been an ongoing, never-ending debate about whether Finland should limit its number of asylum seekers.  I am leaning more and more towards the liberal side as I read more about current stories of war.

Reading about past wars strengthens my conviction about being kind to citizens from war-torn countries.

Having experienced some difficult moments in my life, I am often pissed off when people give me unsolicited advice about "staying positive" in times of stress.   I have dealt with a lot of crap and I know how I deal with my own stress.  Sometimes it involves panicking and to an outsider, it seems showing signs of weakness.  However, to me it is just "going through the process of solution-finding."

Having said that, I am actually getting appalled by how society just label asylum seekers as lazy seekers government benefits. Have we lived in war-torn and extremely poor countries? Probably not. So we also have very little idea of how it is and what the mind and soul go through when living in those circumstances.  We also do not know how long the wounds heal and how they process the pain.

So, instead of labeling them and handing them solutions that are thought off by theory-filled minds, maybe we should take time to understand their process (of healing and integrating).  We can capitalize on that process so they can mesh better.