First of all, hugs to you and your family, @mirrorhunt . Wishing you a peace of mind.
Secondly, I've been a refugee for some time, and I can relate.
Some part of the people of the countries that have accepted our refugees live in a dome of safety in their minds. They have no idea what we're literally facing. To them, it's an image on TV and a bunch of foreigners with slightly different mentality suddenly arriving at their lives and their streets and their jobs.
Let me break it down for you, Tumblr: it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to understand what it's like being under a shelling unless you've lived through it. I mean, up to 24.02.2022 I was living my normal life - going to work, having hobbies, meeting people dear to me, and basically living a pretty ordinary life. I'd known what my next few months would look like, what my career would look like within a year, I had certain hopes and plans.
On 24.02.2022 I was walking my district looking at my neighborhood with a completely shocking thought of what balcony would protect me as an improvised cover in case something would throw bombs at my district. Looking at the sky in horror. The sky itself wasn't feeling like safe anymore.
On the evening of 24.02.2022 I was crying my heart out over a world that suddenly ceased to exist: a predictable world, a relatively safe world, a world I used to understand and believe in.
Within days I've decided that to preserve my work I had to move. Without a plan, without knowledge. Just move. Pack my entire life in two bags and leave.
I've torn myself out of the ruins of the life I knew to end up a nameless lost person in a scary world that barely gives a damn about whether I'd have a place to sleep for the night.
Next thing to mention: work. See, when refugees arrive, they're usually desperate to find any job and any living place. Mind you, their ordinary life has already suffered: they've lost jobs, or homes, or had to leave their own homes to rent something else (which makes living somewhere more expensive), and they're definitely separated from most of their social environment - family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues, people speaking the same language, people having the same experience and history as part of a nation. Oftentimes refugee life is starting EVERYTHING from scratch with a couple of bags filled with strictly necessary possessions. Buying a frying pan and a couple of plates just to, you know, eat something. A towel, a pillow, a mop. I remember freezing in the middle of the night in one of the rented homes because I didn't have a blanket. I DIDN'T HAVE A FRIGGIN BLANKET. Buying some cheapest pants and jacket. Buying summer footwear because you've left your home with only one pair of footwear, a winter one. Expenses, expenses, expenses. Countless expenses. God forbid you get ill and the country you ended up in doesn't provide any basic state-funded medical insurance.
That's why refugee may agree to jobs locals wouldn't agree. It's easy to manipulate a foreigner to believe that the money they'd earn would be enough to live a proper life while refugees don't know the local life yet and don't have the privilege of having families and friends around to help in case of trouble. What does it mean? It means that employers set wages anyone could barely survive with, and if the market is full of people looking for a job locals wouldn't do, thus involuntarily creating a high demand for low-waged jobs, it leads to two things: first, employers think they can get away with that, minimum wages and stuff. Second, the market becomes oversaturated with workers, and wages go down even more. A job market is a market, and anyone who knows how a market economy works, knows that demand and supply cross at a certain point.
It's easy to think that if refugees wouldn't arrive, the job market wouldn't be turbulent. Well, who's to blame in that turbulence happening? NOT the people who have discarded all that was their lives to walk the incredibly difficult path of starting from scratch in a country they maybe don't even know the language of (BECAUSE MIGRATING TO THAT COUNTRY WAS NEVER A PLAN!!!). I've been there. It's a path that leaves your mind in shreds. People who make such a drastic change to their lives do it out of desperation! Not because they want to suddenly drop their life level to zero!
Along with that, at applying to any job in a foreign country, refugees face language barrier, mentality difference, superstitions (fueled by ruzzia, by the way), qualifications deterioration, etc. Many people used to have jobs that can't be performed well in a foreign country: sellers (language barrier), lawyers (completely different legislation), doctors (need to prove their qualifications or even receive new ones), accountants (very different tax system), CEOs and managerial staff (language barrier + their level of expertise might not be recognized in a foreign country). Some people will learn and receive qualifications. But a big part of people wouldn't be able to perform jobs they used to perform, because, one, the market wouldn't accommodate the increased number of specialists of that profession, and, secondly, employers would prefer locals for many reasons (including the organizational and legal difficulty of employing a foreigner).
Don't get me wrong, I've met some amazing, caring people out there. I'll always remember everyone who's been kind to me and patient with the entire situation. I'll always remember fondly everyone who's helped, who supported me or any other Ukrainian, who just were not hostile. But I've also seen another side of a refugee life. Along with that life itself being difficult, hearing "go home" is painful. What if the person hearing "go home" has no home to speak of because ruzzia has razed it to the ground? What if their home is now under ruzzian occupation and going back there and staying there is simply unsafe and is barely possible? What if that person has been violated by the invaders back at home? What if that person has PTSD and cannot even visit home due to all the stress they've experienced at home?
It's easy to send people home when the shit is going on only on the TV screen. Those people who wish us to go home are tired of hearing those news and experiencing the effects of world economic, social, and political situations shifting. Well, how can I help them while standing in my bathroom at 3 AM after having been woken up by a very loud explosion, with my heart pounding and my stomach willing to throw up because my body is thinking we're gonna die and is pushing adrenaline through my veins and is shutting down the digestion as a non-critical system? How can I help them while I'm riding past a residential house where a part of the house has been destroyed in the middle of the night (NINE FLOORS RAZED TO THE GROUND) with 24 people killed instantly, and I'm feeling like I'd burst into tears because those were ordinary people and ordinary apartments and now people are dead and who survived are basically homeless???
Let's switch places: I'll work and live in my country with my life just slightly influenced by a war in NOT MY country, sleeping night after night peacefully without thinking whether I'll see the morning light, and those "go home!" people are welcome to spend a night in a bomb shelter in Kyiv or Kharkiv or Odesa. Or let them see their neighbor killed by a ruzzian drone in an ordinary street in Kherson. I'll sit and listen to what they'd say then. NOT in their safety bubble. Here, where the shit is very real.
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