Open World p 36. Immigration. Speaking

Interaction

 
1. Have a conversation about the pictures above and relate them to the topic of immigration. 

2. Why is the refugee crisis all over the news? How is this related to the political situation in some countries? 

3. How has climate change played a role in the displacement of people in certain parts of the world? 

4. In what way does immigration positively contribute to the enhancement of a country?

5. Have any of your acquaintances moved to a foreign country? Why? 

6. Do you know anyone who has come to live in Spain from another country? Why have they? Are they seeking asylum or are they economic migrants? Do these people have any problems about living away from home? 

7. What would you sorely miss about Spain if you went to live abroad? 

8. What would be your expectations about living in a different country? What do you think immigrants hope to find when they come here? Are their expectations over-optimistic or realistic? Does the reality of what they find fall short of their expectations?

9. Do you agree with Churchill's quote: "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war"? 

10. Do you think that launching an air campaign will make our country a more dangerous place? Do you think a diplomatic campaign is feasible?  

11. When do you think immigrants should be deported?  Do you feel sorry for those refugees who face deportation? Are detention centres necessary?

12. Should asylum seekers be granted a work permit?

 

Monologue
Student A
1. What would be your worst fear or the greatest problem you might be faced with? 

2. What are some things you could do to make your move easier? 

3. Would you be concerned that you might be discriminated against? 

Student B  

1. Do immigrants assimilate easily? 

2. Why do you think discrimination exists? Have you experienced discrimination on a personal level?

3. Do you think that more measures to curb the number of migrants entering the EU should be put in place?


Useful Language:

rubble: broken stones or bricks from a building or wall that has been destroyed or damaged. E.g. The bomb reduced the houses to rubble. There were piles of rubble everywhere.

run-down: in very bad condition; that has not been taken care of. Neglected. E.g. run-down inner-city areas. A rather run-down part of town.
 
refugee: /ˌrefjuˈdʒiː/ a person who has been forced to leave their country or home, because there is a war or for political, religious or social reasons. E.g. a steady flow of refugees from the war zone. Political/ economic refugees.  

A refugee camp.
Makeshift: /ˈmeɪkʃɪft/ used temporarily for a particular purpose because the real thing is not available. Provisional. A makeshift camp/ hospital.

economic migrant: a person who moves from their own country to a new country in order to find work or have a better standard of living. E.g. They claimed they were political refugees and not economic migrants.

asylum (also political asylum) [uncountable] protection that a government gives to people who have left their own country, usually because they were in danger for political reasons. E.g. to seek/apply for/be granted asylum. There was a nationwide debate on whether the asylum laws should be changed.

asylum seeker: a person who has been forced to leave their own country because they are in danger and who arrives in another country asking to be allowed to stay there 

work permit: an official document that somebody needs in order to work in a particular foreign country.

exploit: /ɪkˈsplɔɪt/ exploit somebody (disapproving) to treat somebody unfairly by making them work and not giving them much in return. E.g. What is being done to stop employers from exploiting young people?

exploitation:  /ˌeksplɔɪˈteɪʃn/ a situation in which somebody treats somebody else in an unfair way, especially in order to make money from their work. E.g. the exploitation of children. Starvation and poverty are the result of global economic exploitation, not lack of resources.

deport somebody to force somebody to leave a country, usually because they have broken the law or because they have no legal right to be there. E.g.  He was convicted of drug offences and deported. Many refugees were forcibly( /ˈfɔːsəbli/ using physical force) deported back to the countries they had come from. 

deportation: the act of forcing somebody to leave a country, usually because they have broken the law or because they have no legal right to be there. E.g. Several of the asylum seekers now face deportation.

detention centre: a place where people are kept in detention, especially people who have entered a country illegally. They are confined in a detention centre for asylum seekers, and forced to prove their refugee status.

displace somebody to force people to move away from their home to another place. E.g. Around 10,000 people have been displaced by the fighting. If the dam is built it will displace 100 000 people. 

emigrate
immigrate
immigration
migrant
migrate
migration

integrate
integration

air strike: an attack made by aircraft. Be opposed to/ in favour of air strikes.
jingoist: /ˈdʒɪŋɡəʊɪst/ (disapproving) someone who ​believes that ​their own ​country is always ​best. E.g. He was a ​confirmed jingoist and would ​frequently ​speak about the ​dangers of ​Britain ​forming ​closer ​ties with the ​rest of ​Europe.
jingoism: /ˈdʒɪŋɡəʊɪzəm/ (disapproving) a strong belief that your own country is best, especially when this is expressed in support of war with another country. E.g. Patriotism can ​turn into jingoism and ​intolerance very ​quickly.
jingoistic: /ˌdʒɪŋɡəʊˈɪstɪk/ (disapproving) adj. showing a strong belief that your own country is best, especially when this is expressed in support of war with another country. E.g. Can patriotism in the USA be too jingoistic?
Military action/intervention/ operations will/ won't make any difference
rebels.
Good intelligence
In the short/ long term, launching an air campaign will make our country a more dangerous place

Diplomatic campaign
Bombing alone won't do it. It is no guarantee of success.
If we draw an analogy with what happened in/with
ethnic cleansing: (used especially in news reports) the policy of forcing the people of a particular race or religion to leave an area or a country. E.g.  All the speakers at the conference condemned the so-called ‘ethnic cleansing’.
Civilian casualties
Collateral damage: the government denied that there had been any collateral damage (= injury to ordinary people or buildings) during the bombing raid. If bombs go stray and a hospital/school is hit they call it collateral damage.
The war pushed them to leave.

small boat. Sp. Sp. Patera. The small boat is packed.
dinghy: a small open boat. Rubber dinghy.
Rubber boat
Jet-ski: Sp. moto acuática. They are doing jet-skiing.
The refugees/ illegal immigrants have been rescued by the coast guards.
The boat might have been adrift for some days (Sp. a la deriva)
The coast guard ship took the boat in tow and brought it into the harbour.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Just think about how bad their life must have been. They are desperate. I do feel sorry for them.
It's always easier to stereotype and judge than it is to look beneath the surface and "see" the forest, not just the trees... Who would not walk through a dessert, cross an ocean or do whatever it took to feed their children? I'd crawl over glass if that's what it took. The laws of a nation need to be enforced (Sp. hacer cumplir), but we do not need to lose our compassion and empathy for people in a desperate situation in order to do so.



Lifeboat
Ellis Island in the New York Harbour was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. The Greek islands seem to be the gateway for Syrian refugees.
All of these immigrants are looking for free land, freedom of worship, or adventure, or running away from oppressive governments.
They bundle up (Sp. abrigar) their children and take the smugglers' rubber dinghies to Europe.
Many of the immigrants bring new cultural practices with them.
Many immigrants seek work and new lives in Europe.
Immigrants typically face a difficult journey. Most of them have been ripped off by smugglers. They travel in cramped (Sp. apretado) rubber boats. They often experience overcrowding (Sp. masificación) and seasickness.
Despite the hardships, immigrants hold on to their hopes.
They hope to find work and other people from their homelands. Life in Europe is often very different from life in their own country. Therefore, many immigrants move into neighbourhoods with other people of the same nationality. In these neighbourhoods they can hear their own language, eat familiar foods, and keep their customs.
Even with neighbourhood support, immigrants often find city life difficult. Many immigrants live in tenements (poorly built, overcrowded apartments). They often have to work under exhausting conditions.
Most of these immigrants have little money and know little Spanish. These factors force most of them to take low-paid unskilled industrial jobs. Many of these jobs are in the construction industry.
Longer hours are also common.
Although wages are relatively low, they are often higher than those that most immigrants can earn in their home countries.
Some immigrants work long hours for little pay in small shops or factories located in or near working-class neighbourhoods. These workplaces are called sweatshops because of the long hours and often unhealthy working conditions.
Anti-immigrant feelings have grown along with the rise in immigration. Some people fear that too many new immigrants are being allowed into the country. Some also hold racial and religious prejudices against immigrants.

demonstration: demonstration (against somebody/something) a public meeting or march at which people show that they are protesting against or supporting somebody/something. E.g. to take part in/go on a demonstration. A peaceful/violent demonstration.

protest march: /ˈprəʊ.test ˌmɑːtʃ/  an occasion when people show that they disagree with something by walking somewhere, often shouting and carrying signs.

outcry: 



/ˈaʊtkraɪ/ outcry (at/over/against something) a reaction of anger or strong protest shown by people in public. E.g. an outcry over the proposed change. The new tax provoked a public outcry. There was outcry at the judge's statement. To raise an outcry about sth: Sp. levantar fuertes protestas por algo.



uproar



/ˈʌprɔː(r)/ [uncountable, singular] a situation in which there is a lot of public criticism and angry argument about something that somebody has said or done. Outcry. E.g. The article caused (an) uproar. Great | mild | emotional uproar. Cause, provoke uproar. The trial proceeded amid uproar. Financial markets were in uproar after the crash of the rouble. The classroom was in an uproar. There was a great uproar over plans to pull down the old library.



furore 



 /fjuˈrɔːri/ /ˈfjʊərɔː(r)/ (also furor /ˈfjʊərɔː(r)/) [singular] great anger or excitement shown by a number of people, usually caused by a public event. Uproar. E.g. furore (among somebody) His novel about Jesus caused a furore among Christians. Furore (about/over something) the recent furore over the tax increases. Such a major policy reversal is certain to spark a furore among conservatives. Cause, create, provoke a furore His choice of words created quite a furore. The furore which surrounded her appointment as chairman. His resignation passed almost unnoticed amid the furore of the elections. The furore about/over/surrounding the furore over the proposed introduction of tax on fuel. The sale of the two best players caused a furore among the fans.


Question 2
In the summer of 2015, Europe experienced the highest influx of refugees since the Second World War. The main reason is that Syria has become the world’s top source of refugees.
Syria is located in the Middle East, an ancient fertile land settled for at least 10,000 years. Since the 1960s, it’s been led by the al-Assad family, who have ruled it as quasi-dictators until the Arab Spring happened in 2011, a revolutionary wave of protests and conflicts in the Arab world that toppled many authoritarian regimes. But the Assads refused to step down and started a brutal civil war. Different ethnicities and religious groups fought each other in changing coalitions. ISIS, a militaristic jihadist group, used the opportunity and entered the chaos with the goal to build a totalitarian Islamic caliphate.
Very quickly, it became one of the most violent and successful extremist organizations on Earth. All sides committed horrible war crimes, using chemical weapons, mass executions, torture on a large scale, and repeated deadly attacks on civilians. The Syrian population was trapped between the regime, rebel groups, and the religious extremists. A third of the Syrian people have been displaced within Syria, while over four million have fled the country. The vast majority of them reside now in camps in the neighbouring countries, who are taking care of 95% of the refugees, while the Arab states of the Persian Gulf together have accepted zero Syrian refugees, which has been called especially shameful by Amnesty International. The UN and the World Food Program were not prepared for a refugee crisis on this scale. As a result, many refugee camps are crowded and under-supplied, subjecting people to cold, hunger, and disease.
The Syrians lost hope that their situation will be getting better any time soon, so many decided to seek asylum in Europe. Between 2007 and 2014, the European Union had invested about €2 billion in defences, high-tech security technology, and border patrols,but not a lot in preparation for an influx of refugees. So it was badly prepared for the storm of asylum seekers. In the EU, a refugee has to stay in the state they arrived in first, which put enormous pressure on the border states that were already in trouble. Greece, in the midst of an economic crisis on the scale of the Great Depression, was not able to take care of so many people at once, leading to terrible scenes of desperate, hungry people on islands usually reserved for tourists.
The world needed to come together and act as a united front, but, instead, it has become more divided. Many states downright refused to take in any refugees, leaving the border states alone in their struggle.
In 2014, the UK lobbied to stop a huge search-and-rescue operation called Mare Nostrum that was designed to stop asylum seekers from drowning in the Mediterranean. The idea seems to have been that a higher death toll on the sea would mean fewer asylum seekers trying to make the journey. But, of course, in reality, that’s not what happened.
The perception of the crisis around the world suddenly changed when photos circulated of a dead boy from Syria found lying face down on a beach in Turkey. Germany announced that it will, without exception, accept all Syrian refugees, and is now preparing to take in 800,000 people in 2015, more than the entire EU took in 2014, only to impose temporary border controls a few days later and demand an EU-wide solution.
All over the West, more and more people are beginning to take action, although support for asylum seekers has mostly come from citizens, not from politicians. But there are fears in the Western world: Islam, high birth rates, crime, and the collapse of the social systems. Let’s acknowledge this and look at the facts.
Even if the EU alone were to accept all four million Syrian refugees and 100% of them were Muslims, the percentage of Muslims in the European Union would only rise from about 4% to about 5%. This is not a drastic change and will certainly not make it a Muslim continent. A Muslim minority is neither new nor reason to be afraid. Birth rates in many parts of the Western world are low, so some fear asylum seekers might overtake the native population in a few decades.
Studies have shown that even though birth rates are higher among Muslims in Europe, they drop and adjust as the standard of living and level of education rises. Most Syrian refugees already are educated, the birth rate in Syria before the civil war was not very high, and the population was actually shrinking, not growing.
The fear that refugees lead to higher crime rates also turns out to be wrong. Refugees who become immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native population. When allowed to work, they tend to start businesses and integrate themselves into the workforce as fast as possible, paying more into the social systems than they extract from them. Syrians coming to the West are potential professional workers, desperately needed to sustain Europe’s ageing population.
Refugees’ travelling with smart phones has led to the misconception that they’re not really in need of help. Social media and the internet have become a vital part of being a refugee. GPS is used to navigate the long routes to Europe; Facebook groups give tips and information about obstacles in real time. This only proves that these people are like us: if you had to make a dangerous journey, would you leave your phone behind?
The European Union is the wealthiest bunch of economies on Earth, well-organized states with functioning social systems, infrastructure, democracy, and huge industries. It can handle the challenge of the refugee crisis if it wants to. The same can be said for the whole Western world. But while tiny Jordan has taken in over 600,000 Syrian refugees, the UK, which has 78 times the GDP of Jordan, has only said it will allow 20,000 Syrians across its borders over the next five years. The US has agreed to accept 10,000, Australia 12,000 people.
Overall, things are slowly getting better, but not fast enough.
We are writing history right now. How do we want to be remembered? As xenophobic rich cowards behind fences?
We have to realize that these people fleeing death and destruction are no different from us. By accepting them into our countries and integrating them into our societies, we have much to gain. There is only something to be lost if we ignore this crisis. More dead children are sure to wash ashore if we don’t act with humanity and reason.
Let’s do this right and try to be the best we possibly can be.