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How much compassion can exist before responsibility begins to ask for something in return?

In July, thousands of migrants attempted to enter Spain’s Ceuta from Morocco. Many risked their lives in the attempt, and dozens lost their lives. Most later returned to Morocco. But perhaps the more difficult part of the story was what they left behind: a question with no comfortable answer. When someone is forced to risk their life for a different and safer future, where does compassion end, and where does responsibility begin?

Migration has always carried more than a suitcase. It carries with it fear, hope, hunger, ambition, grief or simply the wish for a life that feels more possible. At the end of 2024, 123.2 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced because of conflict, persecution, violence and human-rights violations. That is roughly one in every 67 people on Earth. Behind a number that large are individual lives, each with reasons that cannot always be understood from a distance. Yet, compassion has never meant that every boundary disappears. 

A country holds responsibilities too. It has to protect its people, manage limited resources, maintain laws, and decide who can enter and remain. A sudden arrival of thousands of people can place real pressure on housing, healthcare, schools and jobs. The United Nations Global Compact for Migration recognizes this tension itself, describing migration as capable of bringing opportunities while also creating challenges for migrants and host communities when it is poorly managed. 

But perhaps responsibility also means asking what happens before a person reaches a border. What makes someone leave a familiar street, a language, a family and a life they know? What makes an unknown country seem worth the risk? Sometimes the answer is war. Sometimes poverty. Sometimes unemployment. Sometimes the belief that there is simply no future where they are. The distinction matters because not every migrant is a refugee, and not every migrant has the same claim to remain. But a legal category does not make a human story disappear. 

History offers reminders of both sides. In 2015, Europe experienced one of its largest refugee movements since the Second World War, with more than a million asylum applications lodged across the EU. The years that followed brought both stories of integration and stories of social tension. Research has found that migrants can contribute to economies, fill labour shortages and create businesses, while poorly managed migration can also place pressure on local communities. The OECD continues to document both the economic contribution of migrants and the challenges surrounding their integration. 

Perhaps this is why compassion becomes difficult. It is easy to care about a single person standing in front of a dangerous sea. It is harder to decide what should happen when that single person becomes ten thousand. It is easy to believe that nobody should drown while searching for a better life. It is harder to decide how a country should respond when its own citizens feel uncertain about what such an arrival may mean for them. These two feelings can exist together. 

There can be compassion for the person who has travelled thousands of kilometres and responsibility toward the people already living at the destination. There can be sympathy for someone who has broken a border rule and still be an acknowledgment that borders and laws serve a purpose. There can be concern for migrants without dismissing the concerns of the communities receiving them. Pope Francis once wrote that migrants should never be reduced to “numbers or case files,” but recognized as people with lives and dignity. The thought is simple, but difficult to practise when migration becomes a statistic.

Perhaps the real measure of compassion is not whether every boundary is removed. Perhaps it is whether boundaries can exist without removing humanity on either side of them. And perhaps responsibility is not the opposite of compassion after all. It may be what gives compassion a place in the real world. 

The question, then, may not be where compassion should end. It may be how far responsibility can go without compassion ending first.