Harmanli, Bulgaria: Refugees aren't the problem, they're the solution.

Over the weekend, my friend Julie, a human rights lawyer, and I travelled to Harmanli, Bulgaria, a tiny town 30 miles from the border with Turkey. Harmanli is typical of post-Soviet small towns. You see almost no young or middle-aged people — only little kids and very old people — because the economy is busted and working-aged people move away. It’s not exactly desolate: there are cafes and restaurants. But signs of decline are visible, in say, the public library being closed in the middle of the day. The parks and playgrounds are rundown; the architecture is depressing Soviet style. Monuments to the grand socialist experiment still sit there, faded and topped by crumbling stars that have lost their red paint. It feels like a different country compared to bustling cities like Sofia and Plovdiv. We went to Plovdiv after and I kept being slightly startled that people were speaking Bulgarian and not French or Italian (seriously go—Bulgaria is the most underated tourist destination in the Balkans).

What’s atypical about Harmanli is that the primary refugee center for asylum seekers coming in through the Turkish border is located there. So in addition to old Bulgarian people, the streets are filled with Syrian men in their 20s.

“They scare me. I haven’t seen it myself, but they say they carry knives,” one woman anxiously whispered to me.

There’s a gendarme cop occasionally stationed outside of the center. “They carry knives! Every day an ambulance comes here because they fight with knives! They raped a woman in Germany and here too and the governments covered it up!” the gendarme cop told Julie.

But, a funny thing happened when the government considered removing the center of alleged knife-wielding rapists. The town rose up in protest—they wanted to keep the shelter, as the Syrian asylum seekers, many of whom get some money from family in Western Europe, are the economy: they’re the ones buying 1,000 espressos per day and cigarettes and Red Bull and eating at the restaurants (and, it might surprise you, but the governments of Germany and Bulgaria are not, in fact, covering up refugee rape sprees, and while there have been some altercations at the camp—it’s 20-year-old dudes stuck in a crappy small space together!—our sources assured us that the fights did not involve knives and an ambulance had come only once in months).

Julie and I were supposed to meet with a Migrant Wing, a nonprofit that works with the asylum seekers. We thought it’d be the only way to get hooked up with people to speak with, thinking they’d be wary of strangers.

Five minutes after we arrived, we turned the street corner looking for a cafe to eat lunch and saw a table full of young guys mainlining espressos and cigarettes and listening to Arab music and I was like, “I think we found some asylum seekers. Do you think they’ll talk to u… "

Before I could finish my sentence they started shouting, “Come come!!” With superhuman speed they pulled out chairs, bought us espressos, shoved cigarettes at us, and began to heavily flirt. They also told us about getting beaten by cops with batons at an intake center and the arduous journey to the border: 5 to 6 days in the forrest with barely any food and water. Then they'd go back to flipping through Tik-Tok, their legs shaking from espresso jitters. That day, we talked to dozens of refugees, mostly young men. I came in thinking, “Well I get why people are a little wary, this is like a ton of 20-something men, the age group that, universally, causes the most trouble.” But they were the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever met. Which makes sense! Why would you go through all this trouble just to fuck it up by committing a crime? I’d feel less safe surrounded by Harvard students.

I believe in open borders. It’s completely irrational that internal migration is just fine, even encouraged, but refugees are viewed as an invasion. You see it in the language even of mainstream papers. The New York Times can’t come up with anything better than describing a “flood” of refugees—in Europe and in the US—destabilizing the regions they move through as well as their final destination. They’re not a “flood.” They’re young people with harrowing stories of missile strikes, ISIS and the worst war of the 21st century, that started when most of them were children. They showed us their scars from missile strikes. They told us about the friends and family members who were killed. The saddest were the ones whose entire families had been killed and who didn’t have relatives abroad to help by sending money.

And the class element is striking. Wealthy Syrians got the hell out of dodge when shit hit the fan. I had friends in Brooklyn whose family had bought, say, an apartment in Williamsburg. They were so worldly and well-traveled and sophisticated I felt like a peasant around them. They still had to deal with a xenophobic Trump administration and the bureaucratic horror movie that all immigration entails, so they didn’t have it easy. But, they didn’t have to trek through a giant forrest for 5 days without food or water to come to a crappy village where the locals think they’re knife-wielding rapists. The well-off Syrians I knew seamlessly slid into the Brooklyn hipster scene and threw really great parties.

Meanwhile, many middle and upper middle class Syrians were able to go to Germany. Angela Merkel has been, rightly, praised for letting in the highest number of Syrians into the country—something like 50,000. But these were mostly people who had enough money to immigrate: doctors, lawyers, engineers—professions that just happened to coincide with Germany’s need for doctors, lawyers, and engineers. After that, there was suddenly no more room.

It’s a little tough to gauge class with people from a different country; US class markers don’t apply. But, one can reasonably assume that the people who are only now leaving, after 10 years, are not sitting on fabulous wealth. When Julie and I were walking out of the camp, an adorable little 16-year-old ran after us, announcing, “I love you!!” His friend, 15, motioned to the deep burn marks running up his arm and indicated they extended to his chest. The kid lifted up his shirt to show burn marks all over his chest. We assumed it was war related, but no: he’d gotten electrocuted while laying down wire on a roof. I think it’s a safe bet to presume that rich people’s kids don’t have jobs laying down wire on a roof at the age of 14. Both boys had made the trek unaccompanied by adults.

My main point being: I cannot comprehend why both Europe and the U.S. spend unfathomable time and resources to keep asylum seekers out. In the case of Harmanli, they’re providing an instant boost to a dead town. The real problem on Harmanli’s hands is that it sucks too much for any of them to want to settle there. Even the two guys we talked to who want to stay in Bulgaria are obviously going to shoot for Sofia or Plovdiv.

I’m taking this sentiment to broken-record levels, I know: But you want people brave and strong enough to survive a 5 day trek without food or water, after surviving a lifetime of war, who stay spirited enough to try and flirt with two middle-aged American ladies.