Dear Editor,

A perception persists of migrants, and sometimes even refugees, as basically wilfully becoming permanent financial/resource burdens on their host nations.

There is so much unwarranted contempt for these people, yet so many are rightfully despondent, perhaps enough so to work very hard in cashless exchange for basic food and shelter. And they do want to pull their own weight through employment, even if only to prove their detractors wrong.

Often conveniently ignored is the fact many are fleeing global warming-related extreme weather events and chronic crop failures in the southern hemisphere widely believed to be related to the northern hemisphere’s chronic fossil-fuel burning, beginning with the Industrial Revolution.

Migrant labourers should be treated humanely, including having timely access to proper work-related bodily protections, but too often they are not.

If they feel they must, critics of such refugees/migrants should get angry at the politicians who supposedly allow in “too many”, but please don’t criticise the desperate people for doing what we’d likely all do if we were to find ourselves in their dreadful position.

But then, all that no longer matters when the migrants die in their attempts at arriving. Last winter a young family of four from India froze to death trying to access the US via sub-zero southern Manitoba. And I wonder how many have died, or will, while trying to access Canada.

Frank Sterle Jr

Canada

fgsjr2010@hotmail.com