We have been here before. Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in rickety boats, many of whom perish at sea as regional governments avoid search and rescue efforts in fear of their "pull factor." Conditions at arrival made unwelcoming in order to deter others from attempting the journey. Still people continue to come.
In the two decades following the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, 3 million people fled the communist regimes of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. More than 1 million were boat people.
A different sea and a different time, but the Indochinese refugee crisis has lessons to offer for today's Syrian exodus. Refugees are crossing the Mediterranean in dinghies, fishing boats and even steel-hulled ships, and struggling through Southern and Eastern Europe on foot, bicycles, buses and trains. They follow the same migration routes as asylum seekers from other nasty parts of the world, as well as economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Syrians account for 53 percent of the nearly 400,000 illegal arrivals by sea to Europe so far in 2015.