Refugees

Today's NY Times has two powerful op-eds on the refugee crisis, one by Michael Ignatieff, the other by Nicholas Kristof. Some interesting excerpts:

• The Syrian civil war has created more than four million refugees. The United States has taken in about 1,500 of them. Canada 1,074. Australia 2,200. Brazil 2,000.
• The Gulf States and Saudi Arabia have taken in 0 refugees. 
• The United Nations system to register refugees is overwhelmed. 
• If governments won’t help refugees escape Syria, smugglers and human traffickers will, and the deadly toll will rise. 
• Other refugees. Albert Einstein. Madeleine Albright. The Dalai Lama.
• In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States received hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese boat people. 
• United Nations aid requests for Syrian refugees are only 41 percent funded, and the World Food Program was recently forced to slash its food allocation for refugees in Lebanon to just $13.50 per person a month. 
• Half of Syrian refugee children are unable to go to school. 

Is there anything more to be said?