西方必須正視難民危機 National perceptions swept away by the flow of humanity
Before our eyes, as drowned children are washed up on the shores of our shame, two great nations are undergoing historic role reversals. The mass movement of peoples lies at the heart of both American and German history. But faced with immigration crises they have responded in ways very different from what those histories might have predicted.
當海浪將那個被淹死的孩子衝上我們的恥辱之岸時，世人目睹了兩個大國的歷史角色發生轉換。美國和德國在重大歷史時刻都經歷過人口大遷徙。但面對移民危機，兩國作出的反應與歷史所預示的可能方向截然不同。
In the US Emma Lazarus’s lines, which transformed the Statue of Liberty, originally designed as a symbol of international republicanism, into a beacon of hope for “the wretched refuse of the teeming shore” still face New York harbour. And yet today the country’s activist president is uncharacteristically quiet on the plight of refugees. Meanwhile Republican contenders to succeed him in the White House, including those of immigrant background, compete to denounce illegals, issuing proposals to “secure” a border already defended by some 20,000 personnel, a budget of $3.6bn and hundreds of miles of fence.
自由女神像原本被設計成國際共和的象徵，但在美國女詩人愛瑪拉扎露絲(Emma Lazarus)的詩歌中，它被描述成一座希望燈塔，迄今仍佇立在紐約港，召喚着彼岸“那熙熙攘攘的岸上被遺棄的可憐的人羣”。然而，面對當今難民的苦難，原本積極的美國總統一反常態地一言不發。與此同時，那些等着接替他入主白宮的共和黨競選人（其中不乏有移民背景者），競相譴責非法移民，紛紛提案“嚴守”美墨邊境。美國在這條邊境上已經投入了2萬左右的邊防人員，36億美元預算，以及延綿數百英里的鐵絲網。
In Germany, on the other hand, where a mere three-quarters of a century ago the most pitiless campaign of dehumanisation and extermination was executed in the name of racial purity, the chancellor has been a tower of moral decency. The country’s people have, by and large, responded to the plight of refugees with heartwarming humanity. Across the Atlantic, the talk is all of walls and mass deportations (in Donald Trump’s case of fully 11m souls) in Germany it is of making arrangements so that 800,000 desperate people might find asylum.
而另一方面，德國總理展現出道德正氣的高大形象。僅僅四分之三個世紀之前，該國的納粹以種族純潔爲名，執行了一場最慘無人道的非人化和滅種運動。總體上，當今的德國人民對難民的苦難做出了讓人感動的人道迴應。在大西洋彼岸，言論都是關於隔離牆和大規模驅逐——唐納德礠朗普(Donald Trump)聲稱要驅逐多達1100萬非法移民，而德國人則作出種種安排，準備安置80萬名絕望的難民。
Our world is facing three overwhelming problems. There is the relentless degradation of the planet’s ecosystem; then the monstrous, ever-widening inequality between rich and poor . And then there is the big one, which those of us born at the end of the second world war did not see coming and which has proved intractably murderous. It is the division between those who want to live with people who look and sound pretty much like themselves, and those who think differences of skin colour, faith, language are no bar to sharing the neighbourhood — provided that newcomers subscribe to the same tolerant principles which brought them there in the first place.
我們的世界正面臨着三個巨大的問題。一是地球生態系統無情的退化；再就是可怕的日益擴大的貧富差距。還有一個大問題，我們這代生於二戰末尾的人沒有預見到它會出現，而且現實證明這個問題極爲棘手極爲有害。那就是兩類人的分歧，一類人想跟與自己有着同樣的相貌特徵，說着相似語言的人生活在一起，而另一部分人認爲膚色、信仰、語言的不同並不妨礙大家比鄰而居——前提是新人要遵守當初激勵他們來到此地的那些寬容原則。
Though since its foundation America has celebrated its exceptionalism as being the first nation of immigrants its attitude has long been fickle. One of the great eulogies of American life, Hector St John Crèvecoeur’s Letters of an American Farmer, published in 1782, lauded the young republic for being the only place in the world where, regardless of one’s origins, race or language, subscribing to the common democratic ideal was enough to make a citizen out of an immigrant. But a century later, with hundreds of thousands pouring in from Italy and eastern Europe, the New York Times sounded a proto-Trumpian alert. In May 1887, seven months after the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, on a day when 13 steamers landed 10,000 immigrants on a single day, its editorial writers fumed “shall we take Europe’s paupers, her criminals, her lunatics, her crazy revolutionaries, her vagabonds?”
美國作爲第一個移民國家，自建國以來一貫頌揚其例外主義，但它的態度向來變幻無常。對美國生活的著名頌詞之一，赫克託聖約翰克雷夫科爾(Hector St John Crèvecoeur) 1782年發表的《一個美國農民的信》(Letters of an American Farmer)盛讚這個年輕的共和國是全世界唯一無論出身、種族或語言，只要秉持共同的民主理想，移民就能成爲公民的地方。但一個世紀後，隨着數十萬名意大利人、東歐人涌入美國，《紐約時報》(New York Times)敲響了最早的特朗普警鐘。1887年5月，就在自由女神像落成典禮7個月後，13艘輪船在一日之內載來一萬名移民，該報的社評作者憤怒地問道：“難道我們就該接納歐洲的貧民，她的匪徒，她的狂人，她的瘋狂革命者，她的流浪者？”
Yet millions continued to come, laying down the rich loam of ethnic diversity from which 20th century America drew its cultural and economic nourishment. This changed after the first world war. In 1924 the aptly named Ellison DuRant Smith, senator for South Carolina, in a speech to Congress insisted that “we now have sufficient population in our country for us to shut the door and to breed up a pure unadulterated American citizen.”
然而數以百萬的移民還是繼續涌來，爲美國鋪下種族多樣性的肥沃土壤，20世紀的美國從這片土壤汲取了文化和經濟營養。第一次世界大戰後，氛圍出現了變化。1924年，南卡羅來納州參議員埃裏森尠灧祑史密斯(Ellison DuRant Smith)在國會發言時堅稱，“現在我們國內已經有了足夠的人口，可以關上國門，培育純正的美國公民。”
Sure enough a brutal quota system, based on tiny percentages of populations already in the country, began to close the gates. During the 1930s they slammed tight against Jews desperate to exit the Reich dooming them to destruction. In the same decade, violent attacks on Mexican workers in California persuaded them to flee back home; tens of thousands of others were deported. Worse still the US sponsored two conferences on “the refugee problem” in Evian in 1938 and Bermuda in 1943 (when the horror of the holocaust was known) in which the wringing of hands and the shedding of crocodile tears was followed by stony inaction.
果然美國開始關閉國門，根據當時已經進入美國的非常低的種羣比例，執行起無情的配額制度。20世紀30年代，當猶太人面臨滅種危機，拼命地要逃出德意志帝國時，美國對他們關緊國門，使他們被逼入絕境。還是這個時期，加州的墨西哥工人受到暴力襲擊，迫使他們逃回家鄉，還有數萬人被驅逐出境。更糟的是，美國還支持舉行兩場“難民問題”會議，一次是1938年在埃維昂，另一次是1943年在百慕大。當時猶太人遭到大屠殺的恐怖情形已廣爲人知，美國在這些大會上捶胸頓足，擠出幾滴鱷魚的眼淚，然而並未拿出任何行動。
How remarkable, then, that it is Germany which has been most receptive to the plight of Syrian refugees — not just through the forthrightness of Angela Merkel (who was also exceptional in tackling resurgent anti-Semitism) but the generosity of its people. Perhaps it is precisely her demonisation as the tormentor of the long-suffering Greeks which has made Ms Merkel realise that if it is to survive at all the EU is in need of some other raison d’être than as the superintendent of fiscal rectitude. Or perhaps this moment of truth has just come to her and to Germany and for that matter to all 28 states of the EU inadvertently.
因此，德國對敘利亞難民苦難的極大同情異常難得——不僅體現於安格拉默克爾(Angela Merkel)的直截了當（她在對付捲土重來的反猶太主義時也表現出色），還體現於德國民衆的慷慨。或許，正是因爲默克爾被妖魔化成令希臘人長期遭受苦難的折磨者才使她認識到，歐盟如果要生存下去，除了充當財政清廉的監督者以外，還需要其他存在理由。又或許，她和德國民衆乃至歐盟28國只是在不經意間迎來這一關鍵時刻。
Either way it is this issue, not the question of sovereign debt that will decide whether Europe lives or dies as something other than a fine tuner of the business cycle. Doubtless there will be a conference. Pray it is not an empty charade like Evian and Bermuda. Pray again that it might be the moment when Europe — including Britain — finally discovers that long lost item of its political anatomy: moral backbone.
不管怎樣，這個問題（而不是主權債務問題）將決定歐洲作爲商業週期微調者以外的角色的生死存亡。無疑各方將舉行一場會議。但願這次會議不會像埃維昂和百慕大會議那樣走過場。但願這次會議能讓歐洲——包括英國——最終發現自己遺失已久的政治器官：正義脊樑。
