Here is the central conceit of Mr. Kuper’s essay:
Almost all the refugees I’ve met since 2015 want to work their backsides off in exchange for the life that the laziest westerner regards as his birthright —…
Not to take anything away from the achievements of the refugees mentioned in his essay, (how many people know someone with a double Masters?) but Mr. Kuper has more important business, a target worthy of his contempt: the coddled lazy western worker is the real star of this Capitalist Morality Play! The contemporary thinkers, of present and former colonial empires, need to learn to practice at the least circumspection, or better yet cultivate a rhetorical modesty, as a strategy in the face of a refugee crisis they enabled.
I live in San Diego, California and the refugees I see everyday are the gardeners, the housemaids and the dishwashers, that are chronicled in the work of the most prominent practitioners of the artist as social critic/moral conscience, Ramiro Gomez. See a report on his work here:
America is a nation of immigrants, slaves and slave holders, not to speak of unapologetic land thieves, so the value of the ambition and will to succeed, of the refugee, legal and otherwise, is the American Story!
American Writer
https://www.ft.com/content/ea7c9414-1f01-11e7-a454-ab04428977f9
