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”.

Centuries of colonial subjugation, meddling, fossil-fuel machinations, arms-industry opportunism, cultural decimation and the imposition of national boundaries are being overlooked. The George Bush-Tony Blair invasion capped the lot, of course.

Thus, the West has every ethical and moral responsibility to resettle immigrants and redress these many injustices.

Jim Cosgrove

Chapel Street

Lismore

Co. Waterford