Our refugee future

During the current refugee crisis in Europe, it is said that there are many imposters among genuine refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen, all countries, incidentally, that America and its allies have destroyed. Too many of them are men, it is pointed out, and they’re generally not dressed badly enough. Many have smart phones.

When the Vietnamese boat people fled Communism after the Vietnam War, the percentage of men was also extremely high. Many families could only afford the smuggler’s fee for a single member, and so often the oldest son would be dispatched on the arduous and perilous journey. It was hoped that this individual might become a stepping stone to get the rest out, or he can send desperately needed money back home. There is always an economic reason behind a refugee crisis. People flee because they can no longer make a living due to a tyrannical government, foreign intervention or evil ideology, not just bombs falling.

During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese only became internal refugees, but after Communism had triumphed, they fled overseas because many could not tolerate living under a twisted ideal concocted in Germany then refined in Russia. Their society had been deformed to an unrecognizable degree, just as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and the Ukraine have been violently made over by American aggression disguised as high-minded rescue. Judeo Christianity has bred a perverted mindset that defines the wholesale destruction of a society as its salvation. The Western world view rests on a messianic foundation. When a white family in Minnetonka, say, adopt an Asian or African orphan, they’re acting on this impulse, but this can also be used as the rationale for the US bombing of the poor kid’s country and all of his extended family. We’re here to save you.

France completed its conquest of Vietnam in 1882. During World War I, it brought 92,000 Vietnamese to France to help it fight Germany. Around 30,000 of these died in the trenches. Though most survivors returned home, some stayed to work in factories, and thus, the first overseas Vietnamese community was formed. The invaders are often invaded by the invaded. There are now 300,000 Vietnamese in France. Moreover, nearly 10% of France is Muslim, most of whom are derived from its former colonies of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

There are Pakistanis in Europe posing as Syrian refugees, it is observed, but if a Pakistani is from a region attacked by American drones, shouldn’t he count himself as a war refugee? Of course, this doesn’t mean his next address should be in Berlin. He can just move to Lahore. For the last several centuries, however, the West has been busy remaking the rest of the world in its image, and so every black, brown or yellow man is also a bastard Westerner.

Already wearing a T-shirt flaunting some retarded English, sporting a Cowboys or Yankees cap, listening to Hotel California or Lady Gaga and mispronouncing phrases of the lingua franca, your average car mechanic or street peddler in Ranchi or Accra will see the West, all of it, as a locus of power, opportunity and wealth, as an ideal, so of course many wouldn’t mind moving there if given a chance. Still, it is quite an exertion to do so, and the ties to one’s homeland is not something to sever so casually. It often takes extreme violence to eject a person from all that he’s known and loved, and here is where the United States most eagerly jumps in. As the world’s foremost purveyor of war, we will provide.

The West violates borders, then cringes when its own are ignored. Of course, no one wants to see his society turned upside down. This upheaval could be arrested if only the West would stop wrecking other peoples’ homelands, but this won’t happen. On a planet of exploding populations, dwindling resources and contracting economies, war will only become more pervasive. Many players, Western or otherwise, will instigate it in all corners of this exhausted earth. Massive refugee flows will be the wave of our near future. The mess in Europe is only a preview, so you better get used to it, and you should also consider the likelihood that you yourself will become a desperate escapee who must risk death to start all over in a strange land. Border walls will go up, but there are always ways around walls. Guards can be bribed.

I’m a refugee, and so is my entire family. My parents became refugees twice. They fled North Vietnam in 1954, then South Vietnam in 1975. By early April of that year, Hue, Danang and Nha Trang had fallen, and there was much panic in Saigon, where I was living. On April 8, the Presidential Palace was bombed by Nguyen Thanh Trung, a renegade South Vietnamese pilot whose given name actually means “loyal.” A bomb hit the terrace, another landed in the garden. I was downtown that day and saw the commotion.

Days later, my grandfather placed my 11-year-old ass on his lap and rather testily said, “Who cares if other people are leaving, you’re staying here with grandpa, right?”

“Yes, grandpa.”

Of course, it wasn’t my decision to make. My father, a lawyer and ex-congressman, had already arranged for his secretary, me and my five-year-old brother to evacuate with a Chinese family. One of their daughters had been employed by the Americans, so they had a way out, but since they didn’t want to lose their considerable properties to lunge into the unknown, the parents and younger kids stayed behind, and that’s why they could sell three spots to my dad. It was the gravest of mistakes. Within weeks, they would lose everything anyway.

Giving me money, my father said, “Two thousand bucks should last you a year.” American bills, I noticed, were less colorful than Vietnamese ones, though longer and crisper. After sewing this cash into the hem of my blue shorts, made of rayon and extremely hot, my grandmother advised, “Whatever you do, don’t take these off,” and I didn’t for nearly a month. I didn’t trust the secretary. Later, this cantankerous woman would become my stepmother. Sickly birthed by history, it was a disastrous marriage.

Three of us, then, left with false papers, but no refugee ever gives a shyster about legal niceties. Before being bused to the airport, we stayed at an American compound for four days. Already, Saigon seemed very far away. On the evening of April 27, just hours before North Vietnamese rockets showering on Tan Son Nhat disabled runways and killed scores of people, mostly civilians, I got on a C-130. No Vietnamese had an idea where it would land. My father was left behind, of course, but I was too dazzled by this strange adventure to even think about him.

The war had come to me only through the media. Open a newspaper and you would see VC corpses lying in disarray. Turn on the radio and you could hear how our side was winning. In the middle of the war, Saigon movie theaters even showed American movies of World War II. Sitting in air-conditioned rooms, Saigonese could enjoy elaborately staged scenes of diving jets, exploding bombs, burning houses, collapsed bridges and incinerated cities. They could stare at mutilated corpses and hear the injured scream. On the big screen, Saigonese could be thrilled by a fake war, while a real killing war was raging and outraging about 80 miles from where they were sitting. Yes, I saw plenty of soldiers, tanks, military convoys and sandbags on the streets, and the twack twack sounds of helicopters were familiar enough, but I never witnessed actual fighting. Once or twice I heard the thumps of distant artilleries.

I had been on a plane just once before. A huge military transporter, the C-130 only had a handful of tiny windows and no seats. People were sprawled all over the floor. I saw a kid eat raw instant noodles. When we landed, it was pitch dark and I heard “Guam” for the first time, but this meant nothing beyond the fact that we were no longer in Vietnam. Where to go from there, then do what, no one knew.

A huge tent city was going up, and that’s where I stayed for a week before being moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas. There, a blue grass band showed up one day to play for us in the theater. When a Vietnamese guitarist tried to jam with the Americans, he was shouted down after two songs. The all-Vietnamese audience wanted to hear unalloyed blue grass.

On April 30, my father fought his way onto one of the last two ships to leave Saigon. Carrying more than 3,000 refugees, the Truong Xuan [Eternal Spring] made it to international waters before stalling. On May 2, a Danish ship rescued everyone and took them to Hong Kong.

Forty-three-years-old when he arrived in the US, my father’s first job was as a janitor in a hospital. He spent three years studying for the bar exam but could never pass. By 1978, we had already lived in Tacoma, Salem and Houston before settling in San Jose. My dad ended up owning a series of grocery stores and restaurants. He also got a real estate license. My father made millions but died worse than broke at age 83 because he became addicted to betting on NFL games. On his death bed, he said to me with genuine astonishment, “That was pretty stupid.”

In 1975, a huge number of ordinary American families sponsored Vietnamese into their homes to assist them with assimilation. This extraordinary fact is totally forgotten, but just think about that for a minute. A black family in Mobile, Alabama, sponsored my aunt, her husband and their four kids, so that’s six strangers they had to put up with and help for several months. The stereotypes of ordinary Americans as louts and racists are often pushed by the American media themselves to deflect blame from our evil elites. A doctor in Vietnam, my uncle continued to practice here and ended up working for many years in Angola Prison.

If mere immigrants can sometimes pose as refugees, many refugees are also mislabeled as just opportunistic fence jumpers. Near my Philadelphia apartment, there’s a Korean owned-bar, Wings and More, that caters mostly to Mexicans. A sign on its wall, “NO ESCUPIR EN EL SUELO GRACIAS.” There is no English equivalent asking patrons not to spit.

Recently, I met in Wings and More a 36-year-old Mexican. Humberto is a beefy dude with moustache, whisker and slicked back hair. On his arms are tattoos of the Virgin of Guadalupe, “Hecho en Mexico,” tragedy and comedy masks, a stylized puma and something I couldn’t quite see. On his neck is “El Rey.”

Leaving behind a wife and two children in Mexico City, Humberto came to Philly in 1998. By 2000 or so, his wife had found another man, but Humberto’s mom didn’t tell him about it until 2002, “When she said, ‘I must tell you something. I have something to tell you,’ I knew something was wrong. Then she told me. She said, ‘Do not drink.’ She knew I would drink to not feel the pain.”

In 2003, Humberto returned to Mexico to try to salvage the situation, but his wife wouldn’t even let him see their children.

“My wife, she was an angel. She still is. She was my everything. I came to the USA to make money to build us a house. Now I can’t even see my children.”

Humberto has spent 17 years in the US, nearly half his life, yet he has only been back to Mexico once. In Philly, he rides a bike to deliver pizzas.

“I said to my mother, ‘Don’t die before I can see you again.’”

Besides me and Humberto, there were six other men, all Mexicans, in Wings and More that day. “Humberto, there are never any women in this bar.”

“I know. They cannot come in because they get attacked.”

He didn’t mean that literally, of course. He just meant these lonely drunk guys would pay her way too much attention.

Fights do break out there regularly. Cops have been called.

When Vicente Fernández’ “Por tu maldito armor” came on the juke box, Humberto sang along with tremendous feeling, “Por tu maldito amor / No puedo terminar con tantas penas . . .”

You must be pretty desperate to leave your wife, kids and mother behind to work a series of low paying jobs in a foreign country for years on end, maybe forever, but there are millions of people like Humberto all over the US and, of course, all over the world. With NAFTA, America dumped subsidized corn onto Mexico, bankrupting its farmers and forcing millions into American owned maquiladoras just across the border. When many of these relocated to Asia for even cheaper labor, the destitute of Mexico spilled over here, and just in time to fill construction jobs for our bank-inflated housing boom.

Just as “free trade” and Globalism have wrecked the American working class, they have also ruined the most vulnerable of Mexico. By subsidizing corn, we’re really giving money to Coke, Pepsi, McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell, etc., since they all use corn feed and/or corn syrup. It’s just corporate welfare. Humberto and those like him, then, should be seen as refugees from the economic war that’s being waged most ruthlessly by globalist elites.

Count yourself lucky if you’re allowed to thrive in your native environment, a place you’ve been groomed for since birth. Too many of us, though, have been forced to reinvent ourselves to somewhat fit into one or even several alien environments. There are those, though, who welcome being uprooted, and since this destiny is becoming increasingly the norm, it won’t hurt to consider some of their survival techniques. Two blocks from my door is The Dive, where Pascal bartends.

In his own words, “Pascal was born in 1965 in France and moved to the US in 1989 to escape the French Police, the street life and drugs.

“Pascal has been working as: a sex worker, photographer, musician, cameraman, plumber, waiter, bartender, set designer, prop designer, costume designer, bondage master, actor, art restoration, social worker, heating technician, driver, radio and club DJ, music producer, master craftsman, guilder, painter, etc . . .

“Dirty Frenchman he’s a bohemian, he traveled at early age and lived in many European cities doing things most people would not do to survive. He always had an appetite for new and out the ordinary experiences.

“Today Dirty Frenchman is considered a pervert from most of the people he talks to. He dislikes fake boobs, American porn, meat heads and women without natural smell. He loves to eat and sodomize a nice hairy butt hole.”

So there you have it, to survive in the years ahead, you must be flexible, resilient and, when absolutely necessary, even illegal, but preferably without hurting anybody. You must also evolve a technique for dealing with assholes. They’re multiplying.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, Postcards from the End of America.

One Response to Our refugee future

  1. A German friend emails me:

    Hey Linh,

    “our refugee future” – well put! In the end they want all of us to be refugees – and I guess, too, it will work.

    Tensions are still rising in Germany – while hundreds of thousands flee to us, Germans are beginning to understand, that it will cause massive problems in the future. Turks in general never really integrated here – Arabs will do the same. And of course they bring their own conflicts with them.

    Germany still is a rich country- but that doesn’t mean, that all Germans are rich.

    On the contrary the number of poor Germans has been rising for the last 20 years – and the number of homeless people has doubled in the last five years (still only 400.000 – but way too high in my view).

    Now the little German worker with his shitty job or the poor pensioner, who can buy less and less with his money each year, because pensions are frozen and prices are rising, is seeing these thousands and thousands of mostly young men coming in – and they see them getting health care for free, having doctors treat them for free, that they all have these trendy smartphones, that they do not need to buy a ticket for the bus or the train, because they are refugees, while HE, the German, has to pay some extra money for the doctor and has to pay for the bus etc.

    It is mostly well meant, what German officials and actors and ordinary people do, to help the refugees – but since nothing is done in the same way for German homeless people and since some Germans have to leave their apartements for refugees (there were some cases where people in social housing had to leave, because the landlord or the government wanted to put in refugees – in Munich, where my brother lives, they wanted to use a facility for coma patients, but turned it down, when the parents of these patients complained) – in short, it is a social disaster rising.

    There are no jobs for these people. Most of them are not qualified for the labor market here. There are no houses for them. In fact, the German housing market for people with little money is down – so the poor will compete with the refugees.

    At the moment most of them are in former military areas or even tents. When winter comes, the mood will get worse on both sides.

    The refugees will be disappointed, because some of them will have had a totally wrong picture of Germany – that they will get homes here, work and all.

    And Germans will be less and less willing to help these people, because they will see more and more coming, demanding more and more.

    It’s not a zero-sum-game – in fact, it is the most efficient play of chess.

    The population gets more and more divided, segregated and anxious against each other.

    There are no women for these 600.000 or more young men. Most German women will not want to get involved with them – not because they are racist, but because most German women want a partner with a perspective.

    Last year there were 328 suspects under asylum seekers, who had committed a rape crime. This number should significantly rise this year – there were already cases of asylum seekers trying to rape a young girl or of an Arab, raping a seven year old child etc.

    These things will happen more often. They will add to the change of the mood. Also that Germany is almost the last country, letting in refugees (most European countries don’t).

    At the moment, anyone saying something against the refugees is considered to be either a bad man or even a Nazi – and because of this, a critical view is seldom expressed in the media.

    And this also contributes to the anger of many people, because in their view, the refugees keep coming, THEY have to pay for it (rising taxes will come – it is only a matter of time) – and so it is the perfect storm, which is brewing here.

    Unfortunately most Germans are so ill-informed about politics etc. that they will not get the bigger picture- that it is a great chess game we are in – and we are an expendable pawn.

    Germany has done its part in US plans – now (meaning the next years) the chaos shall rise so that we will accept anything and everything our masters present to us as a solution, when the real riots come.

    Martial law? Yes please! No civil rights anymore? Please!

    All right – we will protect you. Just give us all your money and your freedom. – There! Have it! Please protect us!

    It’s kinda odd to watch that from the outside, Linh- I just hope, that my parents will peacefully pass away, before the real chaos starts.

    We shall see.

    Keep up the great work!

    Rgds

    Christian

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK1TyizRoYo