Refugee Roulette: Preference Over People’s Lives
Photo from Getty Images.
Originally published March 22, 2022
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February of this year sparked solidarity and support for the Ukrainian people across the international community. In the United States, President Biden described the Ukrainian people during the State of the Union address as a fearlessly strong group fighting an illegitimate aggressor. On a state-wide front, California has taken initiative in supporting both Ukraine and Ukrainian migrants directly.
Governor Gavin Newsom was quite adamant since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war of the state's solidarity with the Ukrainian people and strong condemnation of the Russian invasion. In the early months of the war, California’s National Guard facilitated the shipment of several 50-bed field medical stations, thousands of pieces of military-grade protective gear, and medical products to Ukraine. Likewise, the number of Ukrainian migrants residing in California has increased rapidly since the start of the war to around 54,000 from around 40,000 in 2013. Sacramento alone, ranks first in the nation in the share of the overall population that are Ukrainian immigrants. America’s support for Ukranians doesn’t just stop at the federal level, as citizens of the state have taken a significant step in making Ukrainians feel welcome in California, both figuratively and literally.
Lika Roiko, a 24 year old documentation officer for the Spring Of Life Church, the largest Ukrainian church in Sacramento, knows what this support has done first hand. “There is definitely a big difference in the support of Californians for Ukraine now compared to when I came to the US in 2015. Everyone was hearing about it, so a lot of Californians came to help host people for weeks and donated a lot of money to our cause. Every Saturday, we get around 300 people coming to our social events to have food and meet other refugees” Roiko explained. Over 12,000 California residents have requested to sponsor Ukrainian refugees and refugee families. Aside from those sponsoring, an overwhelming majority of California residents, roughly 70%, fully support admitting thousands of more Ukrainian refugees into the state. As an anonymous specialist from the International Rescue Committee explained, “the state doesn’t really have much control when it comes to immigration policy. However, I can say that often refugees from different backgrounds such as Afghanis, Iraqis often take longer to find employment assistance from both government services and NGOs on average than European migrants who have similar needs". While the state can’t control much of its immigration policy, it is still largely responsible for the lack of opportunities Arab and African refugees are given within California.
Outside of California, the majority of Ukrainian refugees have fled to neighboring countries in Europe such as Poland, Germany, and Hungary. With the influx of refugees to these neighboring countries, it quickly became clear that there was a drastically different treatment of Ukrainian refugees than African and Arab students and professionals from Ukraine also seeking to flee. Videos online of Polish and Romanian border guards discriminating against black and brown migrants quickly started to surface on social media. Many described that they would often be told “Ukranians first,” meaning that Ukranians would be given priority to ride buses and transportation leaving the country. In many cases, Africans would even be physically removed when having the chance to ride a bus or plane in order to be replaced by Ukranians and some were told “if you’re black, you should walk.” As the borders between Ukraine and its neighbors became swarmed with migrants and increasingly crowded, discrimination towards migrants of color worsened. Many were physically attacked and assaulted by border guards and in other instances left stranded in freezing temperatures with little to no aid or assistance.
Clearly, these are extreme examples that thankfully haven’t occurred in the US. This is largely due to the fact that the number of Ukrainian refugees the United States has let in comes nowhere close to the 7.4 million estimated to have fled Ukraine towards Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, this drastic preferential treatment of Ukrainian citizens begs the question of whether parallel treatment is given to the European Ukrainian immigrants in California over African and Middle Eastern migrants as the numbers and narrative around migration in California tell an eerily similar story. To start, in the past few months alone, over 22,000 Ukrainian nationals were granted refugee status in California, entering from Mexico. Likewise, the financial support for the Ukrainian cause has also been unprecedented. Since the start of the conflict in February, a total of $85 million have been raised by businesses in California such as Apple, Google, Facebook, and Airbnb to support humanitarian organizations helping the situation in Ukraine.
If Californians are so sympathetic to refugees, why aren’t Google and Apple promoting economics for Syrian refugees and donation boxes filled to the brim in cafes with donations for Sudanese flood victims, as we see is so commonplace now with support for Ukraine? While many argue this imbalance is due to profound racism ingrained into Westerners, the imbalance in California of refugee assistance is largely due to the media portrayal of both the Russo-Ukrainian war and Ukrainian refugees compared to media portrayal of Africans and Arabs fleeing similar conflicts.
From the start, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine fully captivated Western audiences and quickly took over the American media cycle. Across all mainstream media channels, the 24-hour news cycle became dominated by hour to hour updates on the war in Ukraine. President Biden’s State of The Union address focused heavily on supporting Ukraine with billions of dollars in weapons and humanitarian support and emphasizing the strength and bravery of the Ukrainian people against an unjust, evil aggressor. With a nationally televised address from the President and the national news cycle being largely fixated on one topic and one narrative, Californians, and Americans at large, quickly felt a sense of strong sympathy towards the Ukrainian cause and graciously worked to raise money and support the Ukrainian people in any way they could.
Ultimately, the media proved to play a critical role in refugee policy. In contrast, the vast majority of conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East are not nearly as well known or widely covered as the Russo-Ukrainian war. Since conflicts such as unrest in Sudan, Iraq, or ethnic conflict in Ethiopia get little to no air time on American news media, the average American is unlikely to know that such conflicts are even happening, which hinders support for such groups, including the charitable funding available to them.
Similarly, as Assistant Professor in the African American and African Studies Department at UC Davis, Dr. Shingirai Taodzera explained to me, “Various aspects of life in Sub-Saharan Africa and other non-western societies have often been subject to negative stereotypical images and narratives, as expressed in the US and elsewhere in the past and present.” Africa as a whole, explained Dr. Taodzera, suffers greatly from a dangerous narrative of orientalism, described by renowned Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, as a narrative that emphasizes, exaggerates, and distorts differences between Western culture and the Eastern world. Orientalism is what makes Westerners think of famine, corruption, and tribalism when thinking of Africa, which degrades Africans. This degradation can clearly be seen in the media as well. Nations such as Ethiopia, Iraq, and others are rarely ever put on front page news and when they are, both Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East are only shown to Californians as impoverished, war torn, terrorism-ridden places. As a result, Californians subconsciously disregard such conflicts as they are led to believe that in these regions, war and humanitarian tragedies are the default. If this is what Californians believe, they would logically disregard refugees coming from such regions.
“Americans at large, not just in California, aren’t concerned with what goes on in Africa. They don’t care about what we go through” said a source who wished to be referred to as Mike. Mike, a former political prisoner in an East African nation was granted refugee status in Oakland years later, described the struggles of African refugees in espacing similar conflicts. “I spent five years in prison for merely organizing economic opportunities in my community and I was charged with trying to overthrow the government and two of my colleagues died from torture. When I was released, I escaped to Nairobi where I became a UN refugee and stayed in a Kenyan refugee camp for three years. Only after countless interviews with the State Department, CIA, Homeland Security, and many other federal agencies did the US become interested in taking me on along with my case being one of higher profile. Many other great African refugees in Kenya with me fleeing civil war and genocide were denied refugee status.” In contrast, Ukrainian refugees coming straight from Ukraine are almost never interviewed by federal agencies or departments and are thus almost never vetted when entering the country. “How could they be vetting them? These refugees are in the middle of war, they have nowhere to go. This is why a lot of the green card visa lottery acceptances are only from some countries, especially Ukraine” said Lika Roiko when explaining the situation of Ukrainian refugees coming directly to the US. While she is completely right that these refugees have nowhere to go, African and Arab refugees fleeing political and ethnic conflict also normally have nowhere to go, but must resort to living in refugee camps for years and being constantly interrogated before even having a chance to come to the US.
This is not to say that Ukrainian refugees in California do not struggle despite being in the public eye. Many Ukrainians have been waiting for work authorization permits for months and with donations decreasing, many struggle to make ends meet. However, it would be sheer ignorance to disregard the unfair preferential treatment they are given compared to African and Arab counterparts in the golden state. Similarly, it is beyond unfair for the media to portray African and Arab migrants as lazy nuisances who might be threats to national security while equally portraying Ukrainian migrants as brave men and women whom we should support under any circumstances. It is a true shame that in a nation that prides itself on being made up of immigrants, many like Mike often defer to tell their stories, “as people here oftentimes don’t want to deal with me when I tell them I was a refugee and an ex-convict. In most circumstances, it is just best to stay quiet about it”.