My Rebuttal To "Nobody wants to stay in Lebanon. It's a miserable life"

“Nobody wants to stay in Lebanon. It’s a miserable life” – This is the title of an article that showed up on my Facebook newsfeed Wednesday morning. My first reaction was sadness, because with the current political situation in the country and the region in general, many people are truly finding it hard to get by in Lebanon. However, as I clicked on the link to read more, my sadness turned into disgust and outrage. Where did Mr. Shaheen get his information? Where are the numbers, the statistics, and the hard facts?

His piece is too broadly descriptive. A poor choice of words in the article leads the reader to believe that “Most Lebanese tend to…” migrate by way of sea. Who said that "most Lebanese" are resorting to migration by ferries or boats? I would like to see his research. It is about time that international media stop exploiting the situation in the Middle East to depict a terribly general and distorted image of Lebanon. It is very sad for the people who have chosen that sort of migration as their only solution, but it is not at all the entire country's situation.

“Nobody wants to stay in Lebanon.” – With the political unrest and social issues the country has been facing, this might be melodramatically true, but from a very narrow vantage point. Yes, many Lebanese are migrating for work or other reasons. Lebanese emigration has been happening for centuries. I did some light research and found the following.

According to the MPC Migration Profile on Lebanon (June 2013), Lebanese emigration started in the second half of the 19^th C. So, this is nothing new.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Lebanon’s population (July 2015 est.) is 6, 184, 701. Its Net Migration Rate is -1.1/1,000 population, and that indicates the contribution of migration to the overall level of population change, the negative sign indicating the excess of persons leaving the country, or the net emigration.

Lebanese emigrants are holders of university degrees. We learned about it in geography and history classes growing up, the expression “hojrat l admigha” AKA “brain drain” AKA “human capital flight”. In a piece entitled The Road Not Travelled presented by the World Bank, chapter 8 “Education and Migration” discusses the migration in relation to education in the MENA region, presenting graphs and numbers from the region in the years 1970 to 2001. One table, presenting immigrants (aged 15 and over) in Canada by their country of birth and education level in 2001, showed the following: Out of a total of 65,045.00 Lebanese immigrants in Canada, 54.60% were of “high education”, meaning tertiary education. Discussing the “brain drain”, the piece also states, “Lebanon in particular, followed by Morocco and Tunisia, are losing a substantial proportion of their educated population.” Yes, that was in the year 2001, and many things have happened politically and socially since then to change the circumstances and create a more difficult living situation in Lebanon. Still, does that mean that the majority of emigrants flocking to the West and to the Gulf are doing so illegally, by boat? Would the holders of university degrees risk illegal and life-threatening emigration in order to flee Lebanon? I couldn’t find numbers or hard facts on legal Lebanese emigrants as opposed to illegal Lebanese emigrants.

My aversion here is not with the statement that Lebanese are emigrating and seeking a better life outside their country. It is not even with the assumption that “most” Lebanese are choosing emigration. My problem is with the generalization and the suggestion that all Lebanese emigrants are seeking asylum by way of illegal migration. To state that this migration is mostly being done by illegal boat transportation is ignorant.

 “Nobody wants to stay in Lebanon. It’s a miserable life” - I believe that is a tremendously overstated opinion. Some people are moving back to Lebanon. Some people love the country. Some people want to stay in Lebanon. A lot of people have found better jobs elsewhere, though they wish they could stay in their homeland. Everyone has the right to his or her own opinion, of course, but as an Arab (judging from the writer's name), Mr. Shaheen should realize he holds the responsibility of not defaming his own land out of pure frustration. This is, at most, an op-ed. This should not have been posted as news to be taken at face-value. It is shameful.

Yes, I might be one of the (perhaps) few people of my generation who still have faith in Lebanon. Yes, I do come from a privileged, educated, “white collar” background. Yes, I might not see all of the atrocities and poverty and deprivation in Lebanon, because it is not part of my personal environment, and not everything is reported in the news. However, I am allowed to defend my country from such claims, such degrading reputations, and such unsupported declarations that might make a nice, heart-breaking headline in international news, but seemingly have no rational or statistical backing as evidence.

N.B: I sent a much shorter version of the above to The Guardian (to be considered) to be posted on their Letters page. If they do post it, I will update here with the link.