A Syrian Crisis Joshua Liao

A Syrian Crisis

Joshua Liao

            You might have seen images on the news or on the cover of time magazine, depicting Middle Eastern looking people with exhausted or sad expressions on their faces. However, most of us move on without taking a moment to consider what the images are about. After all, those people are not in America and there’s very little that we can do to help them. That much is true. But it is still important to understand this issue that is currently one of the world’s largest and hottest topics: the European Immigration crisis. To begin, Syria has been engulfed in a civil war that has gone on for almost four years now, with pro-democracy rebels fighting against the al-Assad regime. As the country has been torn apart by war, many Syrians have left, fleeing due to the destruction and persecution. The destruction, of course, has come from the war. The religious persecution comes from a group that you’re sure to have heard of: the Islamic State in Syria otherwise known as ISIS. The immigrants begin a journey that will last thousands of miles into Europe, where they hope to regroup and start a new life. Now just take a moment to put yourself in the immigrants shoes. You’re living a normal, routine life one day, when all of a sudden you receive news that a peaceful democracy protest has turned violent and war breaks out across your neighborhood. After a couple years of surviving bombs and fires, the situation has become too dangerous and you now have to pack up and leave the place where you grew up. You don’t even know where you are going, just that it will take a long time to get there. That is the situation that millions of Syrians are facing as they leave their country. They flee to European nations that are already overwhelmed with millions of other migrants. There are camps set up for the migrants to stay in, but they are overcrowded and dangerously short on supplies and medical aid. People are dying everyday, yet the efforts to help them are barely noticed due to the massive amounts of people that need attention. It is hard to imagine that so many people in the world are suffering so much, yet others know so little about their predicament. With this background, the next time you see a news article or a CNN report covering the crisis, take a moment to listen, to see what new developments are going on. There might just be some way that you can help.