The history of migration is a catalogue of overblown fears with countless examples of exiles forming vibrant communities that enrich their host countries: the Jews, the Armenians, the Vietnamese boat-people and the Ugandan Asians, the article in The Economist reads.

According to the authors, perceiving migration as chiefly a burden is profoundly mistaken. It’s necessary to no longer put up more barriers, but to manage the pressures and the risks to ensure that migration improves the lives of both immigrants and their host countries.

As to the Syrian refugees, according to the authors, helping them is the moral duty of not only Europe, but also the world as a whole. “America, Western countries and especially the rich monarchies of the Gulf should resettle many more Syrians—just as 1.8m Indochinese refugees were resettled in the 1970s and 1980s,” the article reads. 

At the same time, there’s another problem: influx of refugees is intertwined with economic migrants. The article says that the main issue is that Europe needs economic migrants, since it has too few workers to pay for its citizens’ retirement and to provide the services they want to receive.

The article underscores that Europe has closed its eyes to Syria’s foul and bloody civil war for too long but two political forces managed to push open the continent’s gates. One of them is moral conscience, wakened by the image of a drowned Syrian child and the other is the political courage of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who told her people to set aside their fear of immigrants and show compassion to the needy, the article reads.