LETTER: No to camps for migrants

I was astounded by Robert Stone’s letter regarding those two soft targets, immigrants and Muslims (“Tougher stance needed over illegal immigrants”, September 6).

Most undocumented migrants work in the informal economy and do not rely on the state. Rounding up the estimated 3-million of them and putting them into camps with a “space to grow vegetables for their own sustenance”, as he suggests, would be an astonishing waste of resources.

The cost of maintaining this infrastructure would bankrupt us. Even a token 20mx20m plot per person would require a land area of 1,200km², about two-thirds the size of Gauteng. 

I can assure readers that, contrary to Stone’s statement, most Muslim countries have long-standing non-Muslim minorities who have survived centuries. Muslims are equally likely to fight among each other, for being Shia/Sunni/Alevi/Ahmadi/Kurdish /Arab/Farsi or any other denomination/ethnic group, than to fight with non-Muslims.

The common linkage is failed states, autocratic governments, poverty and poor literacy. There are 8-million Christians in Egypt with thousands of centuries-old churches. Until Iraq was decimated by the 2003 invasion, Christians made up 10% of that country’s population. Even Iran has compulsory (albeit token) representation in its parliament for Armenian and Assyrian Christians, its ancient Jewish community and Zoroastrians.

The Saudis aside (and even this is changing) I can give countless examples from Indonesia to Bangladesh of minority populations doing just fine relative to the majority. Is life perfect for religious minorities in the Muslim world? Absolutely not. But life is equally miserable for most citizens in some of these poorly run and autocratic countries, so both Muslims and non-Muslims are trying to get out.

If any of them end up here, I really hope we don’t put them in camps.

Suhail Suleman
Cape Town

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