Europe-Middle East-Africa Refugee Crisis General Thread

[ingemann]

Does the term "western immigrant" cover the newer members of the EU?

Yes Poles and Romanians are western immigrants

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Immigrant children is part of this statistic, but children of immigrants (both children and adults) who born in Denmark is covered under a separate category; descendants. this group give a even higher deficit, but they're expected to give a surplus further down the road (there's a graph for 2050 where we can see they're expected to give a annual surplus at that time).

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All those aspects are taken into account.

[ingemann]

Sweden says "take our migrants please", Denmark tells them to shut the f up and deal with a problem of their own making. http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=6296336

Okay I need to ask our Swedish posters; why do the Swedish government do this, it should be obvious that Danish reaction is around as good as Sweden could expect (the rest of EU just ignored the Swedish government), why ask for something you will never get?

[ingemann]

Sweden says "take our migrants please", Denmark tells them to shut the f up and deal with a problem of their own making. http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=6296336

Okay I need to ask our Swedish posters; why do the Swedish government do this, it should be obvious that Danish reaction is around as good as Sweden could expect (the rest of EU just ignored the Swedish government), why ask for something you will never get?

Beezeer makes it sound like the government is begging Denmark to take the refugees, which is not the case. They have merely highlighted that there are countries beside Sweden and Germany where it is possible to claim asylum.

I'm sorry to tell you this, the Swedish government may not mean to sound like they're begging, but they do, in a real pathetic way

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First of all, Sweden and its governments are and have been a great help to anybody in Denmark who want to take fewer refugees.

Second we lack the Swedish racialistic political tradition, so our refugee policies are based a mix of humanitarianism (seeing as we're the EU country who take the 4th most refugees per capita) and pragmatism (as we seek to avoid being as big idiots as our easten neighbours).

BTW I asked because I don't get what the Swedish government get out of something which will be a international defeat, do they say this for domestic use or are there another purpose with bringing thi9s up in EU and at Nordic Council?

[ingemann]

Do you have a chart of countries by refugees per capita?

No but I found this graph with google (warning it comes from Gates of Vienna).

[ingemann]

Thanks for this, Tender and ingemann. It seems Austria gets even more applications than Germany and Sweden, relatively, and whereas the high number of migrants in Sweden and Germany seems due to open-border policies, the high number in Austria is largely due to a combination of socio-economic prosperity and geographical location.

At the same time, I don't really understand the chart Tender posted, since it shows that many migrants apply for asylum seeker status in Hungary - but in reality, almost everybody travels along to Western Europe, right? Nobody wants to stay there. So how is the number that large?

It just show where the refugees are registed first. Hungary registed people early on, before they gave up, Greece and Italy had already to large extent given up. It's also why the Austrian numbers are so high compared to Sweden and Germany.

[ingemann]

Have they been surveyed on their skills? I assumed it was mainly the relatively wealthy ones who could afford to pay smugglers...

Here's some numbers in Danish

In short the Syrian refugees Denmark received 1999-2006 17% had a tertiary education and 5% had some kind of practical education. The number for other refugee groups in Denmark was 16% and 10%.

Also many or their tertiary education are not recognised in European countries, especially as the refugees often lack evidence for their education.

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[ingemann]

I'm sorry to tell you this, the Swedish government may not mean to sound like they're begging, but they do, in a real pathetic way

To me it sounds more like whining, than begging, but I would agree with the fact that it does seem rather pathetic.

To answer your original question, as to why the Swedish government is asking for something they will never get; my analysis is that it's a desperate attempt to get themselves out of a tricky situation of painting themselves into a corner on the immigration issue. On the one hand the government has committed itself to helping all asylum seekers and is thus not willing to adopt more strict limitations than those they agreed to recently with the opposition (bar the Left and Sweden Democrats) but on the other hand they're also out of money to pay for more immigration and are not willing to make any substantial cuts to other areas to finance the increased costs. The idea that they can appeal (or shame) other EU countries into doing more is their last hope of get out of that predicament.

It's pretty futile, but they have to signal the Swedish people that they are doing something at least.

Thank you I suspected it was something like this, but there could have been some kind of grand plan. BTW how popular is this diplomatic effort among the Swedish media and people?

[ingemann]

The tricky thing for Sweden is that asylum seekers probably won't care so much for Sweden's problems in terms of finding proper accommodations and financing everything. Due to its reputation and its laws, Sweden will likely remain a destination more attractive to migrants than, say, Denmark or Finland.

Also because of a existing diaspora, we shouldn't ignore that Sweden is the target of many Iraqi and Syrian refugees because Sweden already had large Iraqi and Syrian populations.

[ingemann]

Wow, Germans are really pushing the whole "fleeing the same terror we are experiencing now" narrative. Couple of weeks ago Assad was still behind the crisis, now it's all of a sudden ISIS. Moreover what sort of terror are they escaping when they cross from Slovenia into Austria?

most people are fleeing both daesh and al-assad. i have no idea how this is not incredibly obvious to you.

ISIS appeared a few years after the Syrian civil war started where most of the influx to turkey was around 2011-2013.

ISIS went from being based mainly in Anbar region in iraq to crossing over to syria and taking most of the Deir es Zor to Jarablus.

Besides the areas that have intense ISIS conflict(Raqqa governate, Hasakah governate, Deir ez Zor) had 20% of the population prior to the conflict.

So its safe that most of them were not fleeing ISIS but the battles between the rebel groups and Assad's military.

As for the refugees in Turkey they're mostly from north western Syria, which was mostly under "FSA" control in 2011-2013, and the government only really began to reconquer it in early 2014

[ingemann]

Mostly I think you'll find that the refugees have been fleeing from the war in general, as is generally the case. The sheer murderous psychopathy of ISIS adds an extra couple of push factors (anyone denying this/that this is a factor wrt those currently leaving needs to be pushed off a cliff), but it isn't as though there weren't good reasons to get the hell out before...

The problem with that analyse is the belief that ISIS is worse for the average Sunni Arab than FSA, they're not, when ISIS took power in much of eastern Syria, they did so with much popular support among the local Sunni Arabs because they replaced a mix of local warlords, regional councils and bandits with a state like structure, which was relative uncorrupt and had very low taxes (loot paid for ISIS early on). So ISIS have only really become unpopular among the general Sunni Arab population the last few months, of course they had alienated some tribes. So no ISIS is not really a factor for why people flee, with the exception of religious minorities, (some) Kurds and other rebels who flee a area when ISIS take over. You could make a better claim that the reconquest of ISIS areas by Kurds, Assyrians, Yadizi and loyalist/pro-Kurdish Arab tribes, is the main cause of people fleeing from ISIS areas, because funny enough people who have been betrayed by their neighbours tend to take revenge, when they return in a position of powers. Of course that leave the question is that really the kind of refugees you wish to welcome, people who have helped ISIS murdering their neighbour and made their neighbours daugthers into sex slaves?

[ingemann]

"Massive ISIS rally in Germany leaves citizens dumb founded" http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cfb_1449062774#SMfvAeurP7WOlM2p.99

I don't speak Arabic, but they are certainly waving the ISIS flag.

I would like more information (date and city please), so I can read up on this.

[ingemann]

Have they been given basement building lessons, yet?

Sometimes a joke just stop being funny, and turn into racist bullying.

[ingemann]

That feel when many Polish people would have probably greater problems with accepting few of those points compared with any refugee/imigrant from Levant.

I deal with both Polish and "Levantine" immigrants, and the Polish immigrants may think whatever they think about SSM, but they don't say it and they don't attack gay people, and neither are the especially overrepresented in the statistics for spousal or child abuse. The women shelters have a significant overrepresentation of women with immigrant background (especially from the Middle East). So yes a lot of Poles may not agree with some of the points brought up on the Austrian posters, but they mostly behave accept that it's rules of the game when they migrate to west European countries.

[ingemann]

In the lighter news

In Denmark a network of useful idiots humanitarians helps smuggle refugees to Sweden, one of the persons behind it are Annika Holm Nielsen (who are member of the Red Greens and ran as candidate to parliament last election and received 551 votes). They're widely celebrated by both the far right and far left, but for entirely differents reasons.

[ingemann]

In the lighter news

In Denmark a network of useful idiots humanitarians helps smuggle refugees to Sweden, one of the persons behind it are Annika Holm Nielsen (who are member of the Red Greens and ran as candidate to parliament last election and received 551 votes). They're widely celebrated by both the far right and far left, but for entirely differents reasons.

Amazing. Gotta love Denmark. If only the Dutch far left would be getting these people out of the country instead of helping them in... But why, exactly, do they do this? Because they consider Sweden more humanitarian than Denmark?

They do, but that's not the reason they do it. They think that people have a right to live where they want (through in all fairness they may just be idiots), and these migrants want to live in Sweden, so they think the only right thing to do is help them on their way. Ironic DPP are quite hostile to this (DPP for complex reasons care a whole lot more about Sweden than most Danish parties, with the Social Democrats being the main other exception), it's the groups to the right of DPP who celebrate these useful idiots, and of course all us who just find the whole "the far left humanitarians smuggle refugees out of the country" hilarious.

[ingemann]

In the lighter news

In Denmark a network of useful idiots humanitarians helps smuggle refugees to Sweden, one of the persons behind it are Annika Holm Nielsen (who are member of the Red Greens and ran as candidate to parliament last election and received 551 votes). They're widely celebrated by both the far right and far left, but for entirely differents reasons.

Interesting that they don't subscribe to Tony's idea of getting as many in as possible in order to rack up votes for their preferred political party.

Well they're useless idiots, they're not entirely delusional. First of all that idea suffer from a few points, only citizens can vote, Denmark have Jus sanguinis not Jus soli (like France and USA) citizenship. This mean that people need to be well integrated enough to be able to take a test to get citizenship (and people with criminal records are limited in taking the test). So already there it will take decades before these people will influence elections (outside local ones, which are open to inhabitants of the Danish state). Next there's the fact the Muslims who do have citizenship only around 30% votes. So while Denmark have 250-270k Muslims (around 4% of the population), they make up something like 0,5-0,8% of the voters. Of course some groups are better represented (Pakistani and Turk/Kurd), but the number of Arabic (and Somali) Muslims who votes are lower than the average.

I also think (and this is just a suspicion from my side) for many of these people, deep down there's a cynical awareness how many money and troubles Denmark saves by sending these people to Sweden. These people are not complete idiots, and while we told ourselves first that all these people was well educated, there's enough evidence that these people rarely have useful skill to work in Denmark, there's also enough evidence that other refugees/immigrants we have gotten from this region give a significant deficit for at least 2 generations. So this is a easy way to play humanitarian, while at the same time exporting the problem to Sweden.

[ingemann]

It seems the Muslim immigrant gropers and abusers are refusing to take their hands off German women

This isn't racist at all!

It's discrimination based on judicial status (asylum seeker) and gender (male), but not racial. There's no ban for Arabs with Austrian residence.

[ingemann]

I wonder if the NY Times headline on the event read:
15 year old Refugee Arrested for Difference of Opinion


Or do they only do that for Muslims that stab certain nationalities?

The victim was of Christian Lebanese descent.

[ingemann]

The problem is the major victims of sexual assault are refugee women themselves, and I fail to see how that can be stopped by closing borders to protect the nation-state safe space.

So we should protect Middle Eastern women from rape by letting all the rapists emigrate to Europe?

But more seriously, the sexual abuses of illegal immigrants on their trips toward their emigration targets are rampant, here a solution could be to stop those emigration waves by sending people retur to refugee camps in the local areas. This would ensure that we didn't see the abuses of illegal immigrants as they tried to reach their targets. Of course we would still need to let some in, but these could be selected in the refugee camps near their land of origin.

Supporting that people can get asylum by arriving at the countries border, when it's several thousands kilometers away from the conflict zone, only support the abuse illegal immigrants are treated with on their travels.

[ingemann]

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/02/20/young-boy-repeatedly-raped-after-he-was-billeted-with-older-migrant-males/

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I found this story to be interesting not because it was a general horror history, but because it show another more general problem. When we ignore that adults masquerades as child refugees, we end up endangering real children who are placed in the same institutions as adults. 

[ingemann]

It says a lot about the current state of the European Union that an influx of ~1-1.5 million refugees, by all accounts a rather tiny proportion of the European population, has created a traumatic political crisis that's devouring the system. The United States managed to handle the Vietnamese and the Cuban refugees wave, which were on a somewhat similar scale relative to the proportion of the population, with relative ease in the past. Similarly, refugee crises in the past were handled admirably by Europe, of interest to this thread ought to be Greece's response to the influx of Albanian migrants in the 90s, the response to Somali refugees etc.

First of all both the Vietnamese and Cubans arrived in smaller number over a longer periode than the amount of refugees Germany alone received in 2015. Sweden have received more refugee than USA did in the Mariel boatlift, and it's a country with 1/30 of the American population. It's why we see the significant political crisis in those two countries over this, and moreso in Sweden than Germany.

Also right now USA take in 70 000 refugees annual. Which is why the American moral high ground on this point is built on hot air. In fact the numbers of Cuban and Vietnamese refugees USA have taken in are 300 000 and 800 000. As comparison Denmark received 7500 refugees in 2013 and 14700 in 2014 of which around half get asylum (3900 and 6100). Denmark have 1/60 the population of USA. When you make than calculation, it means that as percent of the population Denmark took around 25% more refugees (compared to populatio  size) in one year (before the refugee crisis) than USA have taken in Cubans over 50 years or 45% of the amount of Vietnamese USA have taken in.

...and here' the fun part Denmark are nowhere near Germany, Sweden or Austria in the amount of refugees these countries have taken.

Of course compared to the past Europe doesn't take many refugees. But it's because our treatment of those refugees in the past was cheaper and their future was clearer.. As example Denmark took in 250 000 Germany refugees in 1945 from Prussia (mostly women and children). They was placed in camps until they could be repatriated (which they mostly was by 1950).
Germany of course took in many more refugees, of course those refugees happened to be mostly Germans.

If we could place the refugees in permanent camps and be sure they could be repatriated in a few years (or at least leave Europe). Most European countries could take many more, but that's not what we're asked

[ingemann]

Of course they don't want to go to Portugal, Poland etc.

Portugal and Co. are not offering them the generous welfare goodies that for example Vienna offers this Afghan family of 11 - who are getting 6.000€ a month in welfare payments and who now want the state to pay them for a 10th child via IVF:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3554065/Afghan-couple-want-IVF-Austria-tenth-child.html

Exactly and you can't evenly spread out the migrants while you have visa free travel between EU countries. Unless you want to have visa free travel but ONLY for non-migrants. I don't think the left would like this. They propose it now because they know it would never happen, Poland and Slovakia and Hungary would block it. But if it actually did happen, they would complain about it making migrants second class. It's a Moderate Hero position that no one actually likes. The real choice is still between, opening the EU and letting everyone in Africa and the Middle East move to Berlin and Vienna or closing the EU.

We shouldn't make them worse than they are. Because those limitations already exist.

The Schengen Agreement is in fact only for "nationals". So if you have gotten asylum in for example Portugal you don't have a right to go to Germany. Also the Schengen Agreement only allow the free movement of labour. So if you're a Portuguese national you can't just move to Sweden and receive welfare payment. You can move to Sweden and work and it's only after you have worked in a country you have right to welfare in the country in question.

[ingemann]

It says a lot about the current state of the European Union that an influx of ~1-1.5 million refugees, by all accounts a rather tiny proportion of the European population, has created a traumatic political crisis that's devouring the system. The United States managed to handle the Vietnamese and the Cuban refugees wave, which were on a somewhat similar scale relative to the proportion of the population, with relative ease in the past. Similarly, refugee crises in the past were handled admirably by Europe, of interest to this thread ought to be Greece's response to the influx of Albanian migrants in the 90s, the response to Somali refugees etc.

First of all both the Vietnamese and Cubans arrived in smaller number over a longer periode than the amount of refugees Germany alone received in 2015. Sweden have received more refugee than USA did in the Mariel boatlift, and it's a country with 1/30 of the American population. It's why we see the significant political crisis in those two countries over this, and moreso in Sweden than Germany.

Also right now USA take in 70 000 refugees annual. Which is why the American moral high ground on this point is built on hot air. In fact the numbers of Cuban and Vietnamese refugees USA have taken in are 300 000 and 800 000. As comparison Denmark received 7500 refugees in 2013 and 14700 in 2014 of which around half get asylum (3900 and 6100). Denmark have 1/60 the population of USA. When you make than calculation, it means that as percent of the population Denmark took around 25% more refugees (compared to populatio  size) in one year (before the refugee crisis) than USA have taken in Cubans over 50 years or 45% of the amount of Vietnamese USA have taken in.

...and here' the fun part Denmark are nowhere near Germany, Sweden or Austria in the amount of refugees these countries have taken.

Of course compared to the past Europe doesn't take many refugees. But it's because our treatment of those refugees in the past was cheaper and their future was clearer.. As example Denmark took in 250 000 Germany refugees in 1945 from Prussia (mostly women and children). They was placed in camps until they could be repatriated (which they mostly was by 1950).
Germany of course took in many more refugees, of course those refugees happened to be mostly Germans.

If we could place the refugees in permanent camps and be sure they could be repatriated in a few years (or at least leave Europe). Most European countries could take many more, but that's not what we're asked

Well, yes, that's my point. It's very unreasonable to expect Germany or Sweden or Austria to handle the amount of refugees that they've been receiving. However, the European Union was an attempt to, well, forge some sort of consensus on these matters and, as such, is clearly not functional nor purposeful if it cannot handle this kind of a "crisis" and distribute/share refugees in an equitable fashion. After all, it is a kind of state and there cannot be a common labor market with something approaching open borders without common agreement on refugee issues. That's all that I'm saying. I have no moral high ground, of course,  I'm just pointing out the obvious here, I suppose.

However, it is equally foolish to expect Saudi Arabia or Qatar to be able to handle the number of refugees that many far-right idiots expect them to handle. For one, I do not understand why the so-called advocates of "Western values" want to push refugees into the clutches of despicable states ruled by barbaric despots. Secondly, it would almost certainly be a disaster: why would pushing refugees into slum-like camps in Saudi Arabia or Qatar or the UAE where they'd be treated as third-class citizens and probably pushed into slave-labor result in anything good? In all likelihood, that would create further instability in the Middle East and could plunge the region into chaos, especially if the imams/clerics decided to break with the House of Saud, which could happen with recent economic proposals of the upstart princes. That would be no good at all!

"Western values" are just a buzz words which really means a lot of different things to different people. So let me translate.

It means; "we're not interested in making our societies worse to help a bunch of people, who we don't really have any reason to like".

If these refugees came across as more likable, the opposition to let these in would be a lot smaller. There was not the same opposition to take in refugees under the Cold War, and the reason we see opposition now and specific with Muslims, is because decades of interaction with these people have lead to contempt and disgust.

[ingemann]

So, do you think that crisis is over or is it only temporary relief ? The number of new arrivals has been quite low in the last months,  which gave enough time to Greece and others to evacuate the makeshift camps.

I doubt it will turns as ugly again, but no it's not over, we need to reach a permanent European agreement in how we deal with refugees, whether that's quotas, a ban on asylum to people who enter EU illegal or a mix of the two doesn't matter, but we need a European solution.