Colonialism, state building and the oil race mean we have to help migrants

“ I’m sorry, but sometimes you have to be blunt to get the message through.”

Desmond Fitzgerald (Irish Examiner, Letters, September 3) posts yet another of his lengthy prognostications, with merely a mild apologia regarding his “blunt” appraisal of the migration humanitarian crisis. One supposes that the comfort of Canary Wharf affords him something of a perch of privilege, when it comes to empathy for the downtrodden.

Perhaps his allegiance to neo-liberal corporatism overrides his empathy for those suffering the brutalities of enforced migration. After all, as he posits, “they do not share our European ideals”.