Europe: Embracing Immigrants Only in the World Cup Isn’t Good Enough

.......But away from the soccer pitch, the reality is starkly different. As England and Belgium prepared to face each other on Thursday, European leaders gathered in the Belgian capital, Brussels, to discuss a number of issues. Chief among them was migration, as the European Union tries to keep migrants out, hoping to avoid a repeat of 2015, when hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers arrived at Europe’s shores..... 

......... For immigrants and their descendants in the United Kingdom, the Brexit referendum brought back memories of a not-so-distant past, when black and brown people across the country were conspicuously made to feel unwanted, giving racists carte blanche to spew their hate. “The environment after the referendum has made racial and ethnic minorities more vulnerable to racial discrimination and intolerance,” said Tendayi Achiume, the U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance........

..... There is an obvious contradiction in the way Europe treats its immigrants. Not even the most avid xenophobe can deny their contributions to building the continent’s social patrimony in the wake of its wars. Caribbeans and South Asians provided crucial labor to build Britain’s beloved National Health Service when the country was in desperate need of health professionals. In the 1950s, Turkish workers arrived in Germany to fill the demand for cheap labor in a booming post-war economy......

....... As Europe faces an identity crisis, it needs to accept the fact that there are countless Lukakus and Sterlings among us, contributing to every level of society. Embracing immigrants for three weeks when the World Cup comes knocking every four years is just not good enough......

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