One of the first major instances of refugees occurred in 1685 in France under the rule of Louis XIV. With the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenots, French Protestants, were allowed to practice their faith in safety, but after the Wars of Religion were renewed, King Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainebleau. This stated that if the Huguenots practiced their religion, they risked persecution by the state. Historians estimate that over the next twenty years, two hundred thousand people fled France out of fear for their lives. Those who remained were subjected to having their marriages nullified, their children declared illegitimate and their churches burned down.
In 1881, Russian Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by a leftist group called Naradnaya Volya. They were not a Jewish group but the media placed the blame on the Jewish population for the assassination of the Tsar. The reaction by the population towards the Jewish population resulted in progroms: the organized massacre of a specific ethnic group. Over the course of 20 years, Jewish homes were attacked violently, causing 2 million Jews to flee Russia and seek refuge in Europe.
With the onslaught of World War I, Europe saw thousands of civilians massacred and a mass exodus of people from several countries, especially Belgium and Armenia. Fortunately for the Belgians, most of the two million refugees were able to return to their country after the war. But the Ottoman empire decimated much of the Armenian population and 5 million Armenians are still without a homeland today. The attack on the Armenians is considered to be the first genocide of the 20th century.
The number of refugees that fled during World War II far surpassed the numbers of the "Great War," World War I. By the end of the WWII, 40 million people were refugees in Europe alone and the world did not know how to deal with this issue. In response, organizations such as the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions were created to help the refugees recover from the horrors of war.
Today, due to the Syrian Civil War, four million Syrians have been displaced and are refugees. When World War II ended and non-governmental organizations were created to protect the rights of refugees, it appeared that the world was planning to help refugees. But today, there are currently 60 million refugees in the entire world and many countries are closing their borders to these people in need.
There are claims that these people will bring terror, destruction and disaster to the countries that welcome them in. In fact, refugees are the least likely to cause harm to their new homes. They are actually fleeing terror, are thankful to their new host country for giving them a second chance, and they are focused on rebuilding their lives. Despite the fear-mongering by the small-minded who are ignorant of history, immigrants and refugees have always been the strength of America, since America was created by immigrants and refugees.
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