Tahar Ben Jelloun Quotes

Migrants are essentially escaping from countries with dysfunctional social models.

The migrants are not a temporary crisis. The crisis is mounting.

A refugee in the traditional vision is someone who flees from country to another because of persecution or conflict. But what we're witnessing now more and more is a certain number of mega-trends interacting with one another: population growth, urbanization, food insecurity, water scarcity, climate change, and conflict.

We live in an era where masses of people come and go across a hostile planet, desolate and violent. Refugees, emigrants, exiles, deportees. We are a tragic contingent.

...in the midst of migrants in search of a better life there are people in need of protection: refugees and asylum-seekers, women and children victims of trafficking...Many move simply to avoid dying of hunger. When leaving is not an option but a necessity, this is more than poverty.

The time when I had desire to go to the United States I didn't have a penny. It was in the middle of the depression, you know. I couldn't get as far as Hoboken at that time.

Before I left Russia in 1999, I was living in a very poor factory town with my family and friends, and nothing was ever going to change.

Most of the people who are coming to Australia by boat have passed through several countries on the way, and if they simply wanted asylum they could have claimed that in any of the countries through which they'd passed.

We live in the age of the refugee, the age of the exile.

If there is a spot where you have dictatorship, where people are not free, people are not satisfied, they do not find food and shelter, they are under the poverty level, this is a dangerous spot for the whole world, because those people will move, and they will move to different places. They will be carrying bad feelings towards others.

There is a big cry in California to stop everyone from running to Canada.

Marriage is the death of hope.

She's not happy about the life she is living but to jump through the hoop would mean to succumb to death.

Nearly a million persons formerly dwelt in Venezuela, and it is no exaggeration to say that one out of four has succumbed either to the land, sword, hunger, plague, flight, or privation, all consequences of the war

Displacement is very tough on the people who are displaced and for the country that is hosting them.

Most human experience has been that of statelessness.

If resources become scarce, people tend to fight for them. This is increasing the number of people on the move and the number of people forced to move. They're not refugees, according to the legal definition, but they represent a major humanitarian and human rights challenge, as well as a major challenge for world politics.

The powers, conditions, and desires that propel Mexicans and Central Americans into this country are so fundamental, so vast, that no action, legislative or other-wise, can discourage this flight.

Migration is as natural as breathing, as eating, as sleeping. It is part of life, part of nature. So we have to find a way of establishing a proper kind of scenario for modern migration to exist. And when I say 'we,' I mean the world. We need to find ways of making that migration not forced.

Migrants don't come to the United States because, as Ambassador Aponte argued in her press conference, of 'lies' told by smugglers that, once here, you can't get deported. They come because their countries have been destroyed by U.S. policy.

Refugees are the human dimensions of a failed state.

People traverse the dangerous journey to the US because of deep fear. They are often escaping brutality, even life-or-death situations.

In 2015, the majority of refugees and migrants reached the European Union through Greece. Greek authorities were overwhelmed by the sheer number of people arriving at their shores. But they did not stay there. They were waved through to Central Europe at an increasing pace.

We refugees, we become always a punchbag. A political punchbag between China and South Korea and North Korea.

Between the summer of 2015 and spring 2016, Austria became one of the European countries most affected by the migration and refugee crisis.