Refugees around the world can be used as scapegoats for a country's problems and discriminated against because they don't follow a country's culture and are badly misjudged. In Ten Borders by Nicholas Schmidle chronicles the journey of Ghaith, a law student who is trying to escape war torn Syria and immigrate to Sweden and start a new life for his Family, but over the course of the story many different people of different backgrounds treat him differently both as welcoming and with disdain and contempt. Multiple people on Ghaith’s journey from Syria to Sweden were nice and helpful to him, and did not treat him like an alien because he was from another country. When Ghaith is on the greek island of cyprus and he is trying to get to an immigration …show more content…
When Ghaith is in Austria just trying to sleep through the night and move on a cop had a different idea, “Ghaith and Bahaa climbed back into their sleeping. It wasn't long before Bahaa felt a baton cracking again on his shoulders.”. This displays how some people, like this police officer, have an intate disdain for refugee’s as he is beating them simply for sleeping in his city. The quote shows how the cop sees them as less than himself, and other citizens, even if they are all human. When Ghaith is on Cyprus it is not all sunshine and apricots as when he is just arriving he speaks to another cop who said, “Go back to turkey! Why did you come to our country? Why do you Muslims want to come to Europe? Christians don't like you.”. This shows how some people see refugees as selfish and a problem to be turned away and sent home. It also shows the underlying racism in this thinking as the thinks of ghaith as not a person, but a muslim, a problem. In summary, the views of refugees as a problem comes from a closed-minded viewpoint and underlying