
Refugee Crisis Pushes Europe to the Brink - ZoeZoeBee
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/border-closures-spell-refugee-back-up-in-greece-a-1080643.html
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IkmoIkmo
The EU is a major disappointment in 2015 and 2016. Sometimes we forget: it's
the largest economy in the world, home to some of the richest countries, the
biggest political bloc, it's home to 500 million decently educated people, and
a strong set of institutions and infrastructure.

And what is it faced with? An influx of 2-3 million people in about 2-3 years,
a population growth of roughly half a percent spread out over a few years.
Most of them from Syria, a country which 5 years ago was on the whole a
reasonably decent place on par with countries like Moldova which is on track
to join the EU, and close to Bulgaria which already has joined the EU. These
refugees can have a sustainable place in Europe.

Yet Europe's being 'pushed to the brink', not for lack of resources... Europe
has all the resources and the size to deal with what is, in the grand scheme
of things (or in comparison with some actually major challenges in Europe's
history, like say a world war) completely and utterly infinitesimal. But
there's a complete failure of sensible vision and policy, politically Europe
has failed on this topic in a way I wouldn't have predicted if you'd told me
the numbers of the refugee crisis in 2010 and asked me if I thought whether we
could deal with it in a proper manner, I'd have said yes. It looks like we're
being ruled by fear and any political union that may have existed seems to
rapidly disintegrate.

~~~
Zenst
Europe is not the largest economey in the World at all, indeed how do you
define rich when you look at debt you will see many EU countries actualy have
the largest debt inthe World, that is not rich!

Real issue is how the World handles asylum as the current system was designed
for small volumes of people, groups, individuals and not as we have seen,
whole countries.

You could euqaly ask why many Middle Eastern countries who have far less debt
and far more wealth seem to not wish any refugees of the same religion into
there country and yet they are happy to spend it on luxury items.

So please do look at the true financial state of a country and include debt
next time before you make such wide dispersions.

Equaly the whole aslyum system needs a overhall, nobody wants to see people
suffer, let alone millions who happily give money to criminals to enter a
country illegaly after a long and dangerous journey and the whole applicaiton
for asyum should be mroe refined in that aspect.

Indeed the UK has and does take refugee's, not those who break into Europe who
happily paid criminals but those at refugee camps, those unable or unwilling
to pay people smugglers to make such journeys, those disabled who are unable
to travel of there own accord.

THose are what I class as refugee's and they are the ones in need of help more
than all the others and yet they get ignored by the media and rhetoric of
others from all sides, that is not right. After all akin to having lots of
greedy people queue jump you and take all the places after you followed all
the rules to get a place. So with that the whole system is unfair on all sides
and does need improving.

One could say with this volume and hindsight could of built a new country and
towns in area's more suited culturaly and geopgraphicly.

Equally also worth remembering that by absorbing these people en-mass then
erosion of culture and loss of that will happen, on many levels and that is a
loss.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
> Europe is not the largest economey in the World at all, indeed how do you
> define rich when you look at debt you will see many EU countries actualy
> have the largest debt inthe World, that is not rich!

I did not say rich, I said large. It is, objectively, the largest, measured by
GDP. Of course you can look at many measures, feel free to suggest your own,
but currently economists tend to look at GDP and on that basis the EU is the
world's largest economy period.

> Real issue is how the World handles asylum as the current system was
> designed for small volumes of people, groups, individuals and not as we have
> seen, whole countries.

Sort of. The laws and treaties were actually shaped for large volumes of
people, in times much worse than today. For example I mentioned the first
world war, where 1 million Belgians fled north to a country of 6 million. That
was just one of the many refugee groups during that time, but even this small
example completely dwarfs the 2-3 million refugees that currently 'flood' into
the EU which has a size of 500 million people and is orders of magnitude
richer than the Netherlands was during WW1.

And it's not like we've not seen this happen before in more recent times. Take
the Yugoslav wars, 4 million people were displaced, many of them coming to EU
countries in the way Syrians do, today.

So of course, our system does not consistently have free capacity for millions
of new people, e.g. in terms of housing... that makes no economic sense. But
our countries do have the resources to create such capacity and take these
people in, as do our countries have the obligation to on the basis of treaties
which indeed were formed not for small volumes or during easy times, but for
large volumes on the basis of experiences in times much worse than today.

> You could euqaly ask why many Middle Eastern countries who have far less
> debt and far more wealth seem to not wish any refugees of the same religion
> into there country and yet they are happy to spend it on luxury items.

Yes, you could. And the answer is, they're shitty countries with shitty
leaders. Nobody defends them. But I don't live there, I don't vote there, I
have no influence there. I live in Europe and I have a small vote, a small
voice, and little influence and that's why I talk about what we're doing. One
way or another this issue must be addressed, let's not be kids and yell 'but
they're doing nothing, either'. That's inhumane. Imagine a child is drowning
in a pool and there's 10 people who can save him, some of whom are not clothed
like you are and won't get their clothes wet, some of them who are better
swimmers, some of them who were already in the pool having fun anyway... But
they don't save the kid. Do you stand there and yell at them to do something?
Or do you save the kid and get angry at them?

> Equaly the whole aslyum system needs a overhall

I think everyone agrees with you. There's nobody from any political
perspective who thinks things are going well right now.

> Indeed the UK has and does take refugee's, not those who break into Europe
> who happily paid criminals but those at refugee camps, those unable or
> unwilling to pay people smugglers to make such journeys, those disabled who
> are unable to travel of there own accord.

Don't talk to me about the UK, they're almost as bad as those middle eastern
countries you refer to. Which excludes by the way, say Jordan, which has 600
thousand, not Turkey which has 2-3 million, not Lebanon which has 1 million,
on a population of 4.5 million! Don't ignore them. But the UK is almost as bad
as e.g. Saudi Arabia (one of the wests' favourite partners in the middle east,
don't know why). The UK granted 13 thousand people asylum in 2015, that's
offensive and morally wrong.

Also don't talk to me about illegal this and criminal that. When you know a
tsunami is about to hit your city and you need to get away, do you steal a car
and drive out the city or sit there and die? Of course you take the car, and
it'd be illegal, and nobody with a brain should give a shit. But pundits use
that to dehumanise refugees and act like they're criminal and exploitative,
when in reality they're fleeing for their lives and need help, often taking
huge risks with their own lives to get to safety. And guess why this crime is
needed? Because countries are not taking their responsibility, countries like
the UK which take in 13 thousand people, that sort of behaviour calls for
breaking the law. If millions are fleeing and one of the top 20 most powerful
countries in the world takes in a tiny fraction of a percent of them legally,
that's when people resort to crime to get to safety.

> Equally also worth remembering that by absorbing these people en-mass then
> erosion of culture and loss of that will happen, on many levels and that is
> a loss.

I don't feel threatened by 3 million human beings joining a diverse union of
500 million people. What kind of 'en masse' are you talking about? Of course
there are risks, there will be issues, there is friction, OF COURSE. And my
question is, SO WHAT? Do we leave these millions to rot? The answer is no.
Further, if we do not let them in, they'll still come, but now we don't know
who or where they are, and then you have problems with a group of people who
can't work, can't get education, can't get decent housing.

------
acd
US invades Iraq to find mass destruction weapons that does not exist. The real
attackers from September 11, 15 of the 19 were citizens of Saudi Arabia.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_attacks)

ISIS is formed from a US IRAQ military prison.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Bucca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Bucca)
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-
in...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story)

We have created a stronger enemy than we started with.

Europe deals with above.

------
tetraverse
Has this refugee crisis anything to do with the US decision to destabilize the
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regime?

------
eliteraspberrie
This is such a self-inflicted problem.

Europe could decide to open their borders, and they would be fine. The US
deals with much larger migrations every year. Or they could decide to close
the borders, and they would be fine too.

Instead they do some schizophrenic dance in between. Some borders open, some
closed. Broadcast to the world that people are welcome, and greet them with
fences...

Decide and do. Stop talking about how it makes you feel.

~~~
aikah
> The US deals with much larger migrations every year

Are you suggesting that the "much larger migration" in US is provided free
food, free housing, free counselling, free healthcare, free judiciary
assistance, are taken care of by american public workers to guide them in
their asylum application process ?

Yes it is a self-inflicted problem ( the west trying to decide who should rule
in Syria, just like in Libya and just like in Libya it backfired replacing
order by chaos). But confusing the situation in US with illegals that
obviously don't show up at the nearest refugee center as soon as they cross
the mexican border with millions of people coming in Europe as refugees
seeking asylum and all the percs is not having spent 1 minute trying to
understand the situation.

> Broadcast to the world that people are welcome

As far as I know the only country who did this was Germany which is also,
rightfully, the country that received the most refugees since they invited
illegals to come there. So things work as intended.

What other countries between Turkey and Germany are asking is that Germany
starts picking the refugees it wants at the Greek border, instead of relying
on smuggler gangs to bring them to Germany.

