Context Note

Very unfortunately we have seen how the support for accepting refugees in Europe have
dropped dramatically in Europe after the terrorist attacks in Paris. It is a fallacy to say that refugees are
terrorists, and it would be extremely unfair to penalize thousands of people that need our help because
some terrorists made an abominable act. Refugees are escaping exactly from what we are afraid of:
terrorists. It is our moral obligation to receive them. Also, besides the fact that by receiving refugees we
are helping others, there is also a selfish reason to accept them as our economy will improve with their
influx.
There are many students' organizations around different universities in Europe that are
promoting the reception of refugees to the continent. I plan to send to these organizations the brochure
I made so that they will provide the brochures to other university students. Most of the times, young
people are the ones that influence the most the society as they are energetic and full of new ideas. I am
sure that if the majority of Europeans want to receive refugees, leaders (politicians) will accept them as
most of politicians respond to public opinion as they need citizens' vote. As more Europeansstarting
with university studentsare convinced that refugees should be accepted, leaders will start accepting
them as they want to continue with their jobs. I hope that with my brochure I will contribute to this
noble cause.

Let
Refugees In!
#RefugeesWelcome

Will They Threat

Europe's Stability?

Who Are The

Refugees?

Absolutely not. Refugees and

migrants represent only 0.11%
of the total EU population; that
is one refugee out of a
thousand Europeans.
Many Europeans believe that it
will be extremely costly for the
EU to ensure the minimum
living standards, but that is not
the case. Turkey has received
24% of all the refugeesthe
highest percentage by farand
has only spent 5.37 billion
euros allocating refugees.
While this is a lot of money, it
will not jeopardize the fiscal
sustainability of any country.5
With the proper security
controlsso that terrorists and
criminals stay outthe influx of
refugees should not threat
Europe's stability at all.

At least 350,000 migrants

crossed the EU's borders in
January-August 2015 and
many more are expected to
arrive in Europe.1 More than
half of the refugees come from
Afghanistan,
Syria
and
Somalia as their countries are
protagonists of brutal civil
wars. 2
62% of the migrants who have
reached Europe say that are
escaping from war, dictatorial
oppression, and religious
extremism. The remaining
38%
are
migrating
for
economic
reasons.3
The
economy of these nations has
been severely affected as
consequence of the civil wars.
It is estimated that 50% of the
refugees are under the age of
18. 4

Refugees in
Europe
Informational
Brochure for
European Students

How to receive an
influx of refugees
There has to be control in refugees'
relocation throughout Europe. Not
only because of security but also for
economics'
reasons.
If
we
encourage European officials to
accept the following steps, we will all
benefit from the refugees' influx:

Why Should We Accept Refugees?

The European Union was born after a
devastating World War "on a promise of solidarity
with the persecuted and downtrodden." 2 We
have an enormous moral test in front of us. We
can pretend nothing is happening and reject
refugees or we can protect all those who are
suffering. We all condemn what the Nazi regime
did to Jews; they were killed because of their
religious beliefs. Many of those coming to Europe
are also being killed for the same reason. Do we
really want to turn back on them?
After the very unfortunate terrorists attack many
question how is it possible to accept refugees
when terrorists can infiltrate through refugees to
hurt us? While you have an understandable fear
it is important to mention that when we look at the
history of terrorism, the perpetrators are rarely

foreign nationals. The story of terrorism in Europe is

one of homegrown radicalism. Although the Paris
terror attacks appear to have been partially planned
or coordinated by Islamic State operatives in the
Middle East, all the identified assailants are so far
citizens of European Union countries.7
We are all shock by what happened in Paris. And
this should give us even more reasons to accept
refugees. Last November 13th we experienced one
very unfortunate terrorist attack; refugees are
escaping from their countries for the exact same
reason why we were scared during those sad days
after the Paris attacks. Refugees suffer every day
from these terrorists' acts in their countries.
Besides the moral reasons, there are also social
aspects where refugees can benefit us. We can
learn the best from their practices and values as also
they can learn the best from us.

1. Relocation of refugees from

where they entered to other
nations will be done using
quantifiable
criteria:
40%
population, 40% GDP, 10%
average number of past five
year's asylum applications and
10% of the unemployment rate.8
2. 780 million of euros from the EU
budget will be distributed
depending on the percentage of
refugees receive by each of the
countries: if a country, for
example, receives 10% of the
total refugees, that country
should expect to have 78 million
of euros to appropriately
relocate all the refugees.
3. Each country must install
refugees' security check camps.
Every refugee will need to go
through a rigorous inspection by
authorities. Refugees will need
to properly demonstrate that
they do not have any criminal or
terrorist connection.

Mahmoud's Story

Refugees Win, We Win

We have a serious problem in Europe: our
population is aging and our debts per capita are
growing. As our population ages the workforce
decreases and the different debts that our
countries have are spread to less working
citizens. As students, we will have to take this
burden of debt and therefore our economic
opportunities will be lower than our parents'.
However, this problem has a solution. If we let
refugees in, which most of them are young, they
will be able to work, earn money and the burden
of the debt will be spread across a bigger
workforce making our debt per capita smaller.
We should accept refugees not only for moral
reasons but for selfish ones. Refugees can easily
solve the biggest issue our continent has: aging.

In economic terms, many fear that refugees will

poach jobs or drag down local wages, but this fear is
misplaced. Refugees bring complementary skills,
ideas and connections, they tend to raise wages of
the native-born overall. And the migrants
themselves benefit enormously. By moving to
Europe, with our predicable laws and efficient
companies, they can become several times more
productive, and their wages rise accordingly.9
Immigrants tend to be hard workers and
entrepreneurs as they bring new ideas to a region. A
study from The Economist Intelligence Unit found
that immigrants around the world are more likely to
start businesses than the native born, and are less
likely to commit serious crimes.9 It would be difficult
to think that people that cross deserts and stormy
seas for a better life will not be hard workers once
they arrive to their destinations.

In the autumn of 2012,

Mahmoud, then nine years of
age, and his family fled their
hometown of Aleppo, Syria
and settled in Egypt, where
they rented a small apartment
in Cairo. However, with a
change in government in June
2013, public opinion soon
turned against those Syrians
seeking refuge in Egypt.
Mahmoud started to be
bullied by boys from his
neighborhood, and was at one
point
even
physically
attacked. Afraid for his life and
unable to attend school,
Mahmoud refused to leave
the apartment and instead
chose to help his father, who
was struggling to make ends
meet by selling bread to
neighbors. In desperation,
Mahmouds father, seeing no
future for his son in Egypt and
concerned for his safety, put
Mahmoud on an illegal boat
bound for Italy alone.10

Sources:
1) "Why Is EU Struggling with Migrants and Asylum? - BBC News." BBC News. Bbc.com, 21
Sept. 2015. Web. 01 Nov. 2015.
2) Huet, Donatien. "Where Do the Refugees Come From?" Http://info.arte.tv/en/where-dorefugees-come-where-are-they-going. N.p., 5 Sept. 2015. Web. 25 Nov. 2015.
3) Kingsley, Patrick. "10 Truths About Europe Refugee Crisis." The Guardian.
Www.theguardian.com, 10 Aug. 2015. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.
4) "11 Facts About Refugees." Do Something. www.dosomething.com N.p., n.d. Web. 29
Nov. 2015.
5) Holger, Dieter. "29 Countries Accepting Refugees From Syria And The Mideast." The
Inquisitr News. Inquisitr, 6 Sept. 2015. Web. 04 Nov. 2015.
6) "Merkel the Bold." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, 05 Sept. 2015. Web. 04
Nov. 2015.
7) Tharoor, Ishaan. "Were Syrian Refugees Involved in the Paris Attacks? What We Know
and Dont Know." The Washington Post. N.p., 17 Nov. 2015. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.
8) "Refugee Crisis: European Commission Takes Decisive Action." European Commission.
European Commission Press Release Database, 9 Sept. 2015. Web. 04 Nov. 2015.
9) "Let Them in and Let Them Earn." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, 27 Aug.
2015. Web. 04 Nov. 2015.
10) Bond, Kate. "Refugee Testimonies on Resettlement." European Resettlement Network.
N.p., 17 Apr. 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.

Reflection Letter

Unit 4 is the assignment that I have enjoyed the most doing. Before this assignment I already
knew all the information regarding the topic because of all the previous information gathered for the
previous unit. Therefore, doing Unit 4 was more about creativity than research. It took me a long timeI
would say half of the project's timeto decide which format I would use for this assignment, after I
decided that I was going to do a brochure I also took a substantial amount of time to decide how I was
going to provide my message (in which style). Where I struggled the most on this unit was on trying to
compress all the information and deciding what not to include on the brochure. At the end, I managed
to include all the main ideas on the topic and the few ideas I did not include in the brochure were not
very important. I also enjoyed doing this unit for the fact that I had to make a brochure design as if I
were a graphic designer. It was not easy to decide which pictures to include. Also, it was entertaining to
do this unit as I had to communicate in a non-professional way. After an entire semester writing in a
very technical style, going back to informal communication was very interesting and fun.
That being said, I would like to thank professor Enos, Chintu and Robert for their great feedback
on Unit 4 draft. From professor Enos the feedback that helped me the most came from her opinion on
how a context note should be. My original context note only included to 'who' and 'where' was my
brochure going to be provided. After reading at her thoughts on context notes I included 'why' my
brochure was going to be given and 'how'. I am sure that because of this update I did to my context
note, my Unit 4 assignment will be much more understandable and easy to follow for any reader I might
have, including professor Enos. From Robert I really appreciated his feedback on my grammar. To be
honest, I thought that my grammar was correct before his comments, however, Robert mentioned to
me a couple mistakes I was committing. One of my mistakes was in one of the titles! Thanks to his help I
did a rigorous check on grammar and hopefully I do not have any mistake now. Also, I investigated the

mistakes I made hoping that I will not commit them never again. And finally, from Chintu's long but
precise feedback what I appreciated the most were his comments on the design of my brochure. Chintu
recommended me to make the brochure interesting and attractive for university students so that once
they would open the brochure, they would be tempted to read the information in it.
Because of the great feedback I received I am sure that I am turning in a strong final Unit 4
assignment. This was a very entertaining unit for me since it required converting technical information
into more practical one with pictures and an attractive design. So far I have not received good grades on
my units' assignments. I know that as an international student is not easy to write as well as Americans.
But in every assignment I have had the feeling that I was going to get an excellent grade because of the
time and effort I have invested on my papers. It has been very frustrating for me to see that my grades
are not reflecting the effort I am putting on this class. Hopefully in this assignment, as it is something
completely different, which requires creativity and a new style rather than professional writing, I will be
able to get the good grade I have been trying to get throughout the entire semester.