

The
most common part of the refugee experience is crowds. Overcrowding, a
shortage of medicine, crowded boats, trains, cars, long flights, long
lines, long waits. These things are all part of daily life for refugees.
Social distancing is not possible when you are being warehoused in a
camp or a jail.
Predictably,
media coverage of the COVID-19 coronavirus emergency has focused on the
disruption and danger to the lives of wealthy Americans, Asians and
Europeans. A few have noted the dangers for poorer countries in the
Americas and sub-Saharan Africa. I even saw a smattering of articles on
the homeless.
But
the poorest country of them all, the vast, unrecognized state inhabited
by over 60 million people in limbo, who have next to no health care, no
right of movement and who spend most of their days packed into tents,
small rooms, crowded boats and trains, these people are going to be most
at risk of infection and least able to see a doctor. Yet their fate, so
often discussed in the media when it was politically expedient, is now
totally invisible.
The
coronavirus will flatten all lies. It has already destroyed the lie
that borders will make us safe. It has already destroyed the lie that
immigrants are the biggest threat. It will now rip a giant hole right
through the lie that refugee camps are good public policy, or, indeed,
that they are anything other than a monstrous crime.
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