Why the West is increasingly abandoning its responsibility toward refugees

For example, of the 28,526 migrants who tried to enter Britain via small boats in 2021, 30% of them came from Iran, 21% from Iraq and 9% from Syria.

London has played a significant role in the condition of all three states with its recent policies: levying sanctions on Iran, invading Iraq and heavily backing one side in Syria's civil war.

Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of these policies, some of their fallout is people fleeing. But British politicians rarely make this connection or admission. And this lack of responsibility is shared by fellow Western leaders.

So, what has changed? Why are Western leaders less willing to accept the responsibility for refugees they once did?

Past responsibility

Western governments have been far from saintly in their attitude to refugees over the 20th century. As the acclaimed documentary by Ken Burns, The US and the Holocaust, recently highlighted, Washington and its Western allies were slow to aid Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution during the Second World War, and many were denied safe haven.

However, in the following years, Western states proved more welcoming and led global efforts to house those fleeing high-profile crises.

When Ugandan president Idi Amin expelled almost 60,000 Ugandan Asians, who had been settled there originally by British imperialists, London agreed to receive 27,000 in Britain. A further 6,000 went to Canada, 4,500 to India and 2,500 to Kenya.

A few years later, a far larger refugee crisis in Indochina developed. Communist takeovers in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and Vietnam's wars with its neighbours, prompted millions to flee.

By 1979, neighbouring Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia were housing them in squalid camps. In the first six months of 1979 alone 209,000 refugees had arrived, many on ramshackle boats, which led to high death tolls.

Malaysia and Thailand, overwhelmed, declared they would take no more, prompting the UN Secretary-General to assemble 65 countries together. At a conference, Western states agreed to accept 260,000 refugees a year. In the space of 18 months, more than 450,000 were resettled to new homes in the West — mainly in the US, Canada, France, and Australia.

Like Britain accepting a degree of implied responsibility for the Ugandan Asians' plight, Western states accepted their role in the suffering of the Indochinese.

The US, which had a military presence in Vietnam for decades and bombed Cambodia and Laos, eventually took over 1 million Indochinese from 1979-97. Another combatant, Australia, took 185,000, while the former colonial master, France, took over 100,000.

Reluctance on Syria

Fast forward to more recent crises, and the West's record has been more mixed. Alongside the war in Ukraine, which will be explored later, the Syria conflict produced one of the largest refugee crises in the modern era.

But Western attitudes differed sharply from the comparable Indochinese exodus of the late 1970s. At the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis, 2015, over 4 million Syrians had registered with the UNHCR, though the true number was believed to be far higher.

As occurred in 1979, neighbouring states to the conflict, in this case, Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, had taken in most refugees and struggled to cope.

Again, echoing 1979, the UN, in this case UNHCR, hosted a conference to ask wealthy, predominantly Western nations, to help ease the load on Syria's neighbours by resettling refugees in their own states.

Despite the number of Syrian refugees being far larger than the number of Indochinese refugees, at its conference in late 2014 the UNHCR only asked western states to accept 130,000 Syrians – half the number asked for (and met) in 1979. By August 2015 fewer than 74,000 places had been offered.

Of these offers, certain Western states shouldered the burden. Germany led the way with 35,000 places, followed by Canada with 10,000 and Norway with 9,000. Yet these were states that had played little role in the Syrian conflict at that time.

In contrast, the three Western states that were most involved and partly responsible for the chaos that produced the refugee crisis, the US, France, and Britain, pledged very few places.

The US offered a separate 'open-ended resettlement' for 16,286. France offered only 1,000 places and Britain only 197 in its Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme. This pattern was repeated throughout the Syrian refugee crisis.

The western states that accepted the most refugees were Germany, with 560,000, according to UNHCR, and Sweden, with over 115,000.

Read more: How has Merkel's warm welcome of Syrian refugees panned out?

In contrast, France registered just over 25,000 first-time asylum seekers from Syria between 2014-20, and Britain now has 28,000 Syrian nationals living within its borders, compared to 12,000 in 2014.

These low numbers are made starker by the fact they include many wealthier Syrians that travelled to France and the UK independently and then claimed asylum. The number of refugees Paris and London accepted to resettle is far lower. The US similarly accepted under 28,000 refugees from Syria between 2011-22.

Britain, France, and the US attempted to compensate by leading the funding for refugee provision in Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan. However, their unwillingness to resettle their fair share of the Syrian victims of the war showed a remarkable lack of responsibility compared to similar episodes in the past.

Contrast with Ukraine

The reluctance to take Syrian refugees was put into sharp contrast when the Ukraine war broke out in 2022, and Western states were quick to accept those fleeing the conflict. The war has, so far, caused over 6 million to flee the country, and a further 8 million to be internally displaced.

While Russia is the single-largest recipient country, taking in over 1.2 million, Western Europe has collectively absorbed the most. In contrast to the 74,000 places the UNHCR struggled to find for Syrian refugees, Western European states have taken in over 4 million refugees from Ukraine.

As with the Syria crisis, Germany has led the way again, taking in over 1 million, followed closely by Poland, which welcomed a similar number. Nearby Czechia took 350,000, while Spain, Italy and Bulgaria have each over 150,000.

Unlike with the Syria crisis, Britain, the US, and France have all accepted much larger numbers from Ukraine – though still noticeably fewer than Germany and Poland. Britain has received over 200,000, the US 270,000 and France 106,000.

The differing approaches to Syrian and Ukrainian refugees by Western governments prompted charges of hypocrisy from commentators and activists.

Some, such as James Traub of Foreign Policy, have suggested there is a degree of racism at play. Ukraine's mostly white Christians were deemed more desirable immigrants by Western leaders than the mostly Arab Muslims coming from Syria.

Traub also notes a pragmatic component too: Syrians heading to Europe could be more effectively regulated given the narrow land crossing between Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria, but Ukraine's long border with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania made such an operation more difficult even if it were desired.

There were also ideological factors. Western governments were quick to take sides in Ukraine, viewing Moscow as the aggressor and Kyiv as the victim, whereas Syria's conflict was perceived as complex, engendering less immediate sympathy.

There was also a security element. Given the presence of Islamic State (IS) and other jihadists in Syria, some Europeans feared hostile elements might enter Europe, posing as refugees and present a threat. At the same time, no such radicals appeared among Ukrainians.

Changing narratives on refugees

One of the starkest differences between the Ukrainian and Syrian refugees was the difference in political narratives. Most Western leaders, with the exception of Hungary's Viktor Orban and some US Republicans, present the Ukrainian refugees as clear victims of Russian aggression deserving of sympathy.

In contrast, the attitude to Syrian refugees was more ambiguous. While some, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, expressed public sympathy, there was a considerable backlash, and not just in Germany from right-wingers like 'Alternative Fur Deutschland.'

In the UK, for example, during the 2016 Brexit referendum, leading 'Leave' politician Nigel Farage unveiled a huge poster showing (mostly) Syrian refugees crossing into Europe on foot, with the headline, "Breaking Point." 

Farage is far from an anomaly. Targeting refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers has gradually become a right-wing staple in Western countries in recent decades.

In the US, Donald Trump adopted a harsh line: cracking down on illegal immigrants via ICE, toughening border measures and slashing refugee admissions by over 85%.

In the UK, the Conservative government has long promised to crack down on illegal immigrants, mainly focussed on those crossing the Channel in small boats, including the controversial plan to deport failed asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Meanwhile, new premier Georgia Meloni won power in Italy partly by promising to crack down on illegal immigration boats from North Africa.

Read more: Between Lampedusa and Naples, Meloni's political fate hangs in the balance

This contrasts sharply with right-wingers in the past.

In the UK, for example, it was a Conservative government that welcomed both the Ugandan Asians in 1972 and the Indochinese in 1979-80. It seems unthinkable today that right-leaning Western politicians would be so accommodating. Anti-migrant sentiment has become mainstream for many on the left and right.

The positive response to Ukraine was remarkable but exposed how far Western leaders have come since the 1970s. Then, there was a recognition by governments that refugees fleeing violence or persecution were people who needed help, irrespective of where they were from, their race or their culture.

Moreover, there appeared to be some recognition that Western policies had contributed to the problem, and some responsibility needed to be taken.

Today, the Syria and Ukraine crises show these sentiments are now more qualified. If the refugees are from the 'right' place and the 'right' conflict, then the welcome mats are rolled out.

If not, some countries like Britain, France, and the US shun their responsibilities despite the fact that their policies have contributed to the problem.