西方必须正视难民危机 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.

当海浪将那个被淹死的孩子冲上我们的耻辱之岸时，世人目睹了两个大国的历史角色发生转换。美国和德国在重大历史时刻都经历过人口大迁徙。但面对移民危机，两国作出的反应与历史所预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.

自由女神像原本被设计成国际共和的象征，但在美国女诗人爱玛拉扎露丝(Emma Lazarus)的诗歌中，它被描述成一座希望灯塔，迄今仍伫立在纽约港，召唤着彼岸“那熙熙攘攘的岸上被遗弃的可怜的人群”。然而，面对当今难民的苦难，原本积极的美国总统一反常态地一言不发。与此同时，那些等着接替他入主白宫的共和党竞选人（其中不乏有移民背景者），竞相谴责非法移民，纷纷提案“严守”美墨边境。美国在这条边境上已经投入了2万左右的边防人员，36亿美元预算，以及延绵数百英里的铁丝网。

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，德国总理展现出道德正气的高大形象。仅仅四分之三个世纪之前，该国的纳粹以种族纯洁为名，执行了一场最惨无人道的非人化和灭种运动。总体上，当今的德国人民对难民的苦难做出了让人感动的人道回应。在大西洋彼岸，言论都是关于隔离墙和大规模驱逐——唐纳德礠朗普(Donald Trump)声称要驱逐多达1100万非法移民，而德国人则作出种种安排，准备安置80万名绝望的难民。

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.

我们的世界正面临着三个巨大的问题。一是地球生态系统无情的退化；再就是可怕的日益扩大的贫富差距。还有一个大问题，我们这代生于二战末尾的人没有预见到它会出现，而且现实证明这个问题极为棘手极为有害。那就是两类人的分歧，一类人想跟与自己有着同样的相貌特征，说着相似语言的人生活在一起，而另一部分人认为肤色、信仰、语言的不同并不妨碍大家比邻而居——前提是新人要遵守当初激励他们来到此地的那些宽容原则。

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?”

美国作为第一个移民国家，自建国以来一贯颂扬其例外主义，但它的态度向来变幻无常。对美国生活的著名颂词之一，赫克托圣约翰克雷夫科尔(Hector St John Crèvecoeur) 1782年发表的《一个美国农民的信》(Letters of an American Farmer)盛赞这个年轻的共和国是全世界唯一无论出身、种族或语言，只要秉持共同的民主理想，移民就能成为公民的地方。但一个世纪后，随着数十万名意大利人、东欧人涌入美国，《纽约时报》(New York Times)敲响了最早的特朗普警钟。1887年5月，就在自由女神像落成典礼7个月后，13艘轮船在一日之内载来一万名移民，该报的社评作者愤怒地问道：“难道我们就该接纳欧洲的贫民，她的匪徒，她的狂人，她的疯狂革命者，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.”

然而数以百万的移民还是继续涌来，为美国铺下种族多样性的肥沃土壤，20世纪的美国从这片土壤汲取了文化和经济营养。第一次世界大战后，氛围出现了变化。1924年，南卡罗来纳州参议员埃里森尠灧祑史密斯(Ellison DuRant Smith)在国会发言时坚称，“现在我们国内已经有了足够的人口，可以关上国门，培育纯正的美国公民。”

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.

果然美国开始关闭国门，根据当时已经进入美国的非常低的种群比例，执行起无情的配额制度。20世纪30年代，当犹太人面临灭种危机，拼命地要逃出德意志帝国时，美国对他们关紧国门，使他们被逼入绝境。还是这个时期，加州的墨西哥工人受到暴力袭击，迫使他们逃回家乡，还有数万人被驱逐出境。更糟的是，美国还支持举行两场“难民问题”会议，一次是1938年在埃维昂，另一次是1943年在百慕大。当时犹太人遭到大屠杀的恐怖情形已广为人知，美国在这些大会上捶胸顿足，挤出几滴鳄鱼的眼泪，然而并未拿出任何行动。

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，德国对叙利亚难民苦难的极大同情异常难得——不仅体现于安格拉默克尔(Angela Merkel)的直截了当（她在对付卷土重来的反犹太主义时也表现出色），还体现于德国民众的慷慨。或许，正是因为默克尔被妖魔化成令希腊人长期遭受苦难的折磨者才使她认识到，欧盟如果要生存下去，除了充当财政清廉的监督者以外，还需要其他存在理由。又或许，她和德国民众乃至欧盟28国只是在不经意间迎来这一关键时刻。

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.

不管怎样，这个问题（而不是主权债务问题）将决定欧洲作为商业周期微调者以外的角色的生死存亡。无疑各方将举行一场会议。但愿这次会议不会像埃维昂和百慕大会议那样走过场。但愿这次会议能让欧洲——包括英国——最终发现自己遗失已久的政治器官：正义脊梁。