European refugee crisis thread

[Thanas]

Yeah, well, I don't even know why this should factor into this. The USA is doing jack shit on this topic and is throwing up so many hurdles to refugees that the odds of being admitted are lower than winning the lottery.

[Broomstick]

Actually, I'm pretty pissed that Syrian refugees are being kept out for purely political reasons.

Honestly, there are other countries in the western hemisphere that could take some in if they aren't already doing so.

What's relevant is that the US doesn't seem to have quite the same problem of multi-generational immigrant exclusion from the larger society.

[ray245]

What's relevant is that the US doesn't seem to have quite the same problem of multi-generational immigrant exclusion from the larger society.

I think belief in being able to intergrate new population is crucial in reducing ethnic/cultural tension. The US had its own problems with intergration, although that seems to be more directed at blacks as opposed to new immigrants (not that it doesn't exist).

Right now, Muslims have this poor reputation of being anti-human rights and being archconservatives. Until (western liberal) Muslims have the ability to challenge this view, this negative sterotype will continue to mark them as being different. ( I will not be surprised if Europe, by being more socially progressive than the US might have caused a much greater issue for people coming from a very conservative environment.)

[Crown]

But you dodged my question; are you willing to characterise Germany as 'not giving a fuck about securing Europe's borders' as you are Italy and Greece since it too hasn't processed all the immigrants arrived there? Or is this something you only wish to tar the Southern European countries with?

So far as I know, Germany is doing its best trying to process the incoming migrants as best it can. Could they do a better job than they are doing now? Probably. They've got roughly a million migrants already there and from what I've read, they could also use a boost to their processing system. Some changes in legislation as well, and more money and resources.

So that's a no then? Cheers, go fuck yourself.

For those of you playing the home game; Edi accuses Greece and Italy of 'not giving a fuck' about securing Europe's borders, and when I asked him on what criteria he's basing this off he replies 'registering refugees'. To which I point out that Germany, the largest, most prosperous and (without playing on stereotypes) most organised nation in the EU has also failed to register all the refugees. Germany is the only nation to have received more refugees than Greece. So asked him if he's willing to tar Germany with the same brush he uses on Greece and Italy. He refused. For 'reasons'.

I'm aware of the Greek situation being intolerable, but seriously, there have been offers of help for you to set up processing centers and systems much like we did and there have been Finnish personnel down south in Greece, on Lesbos for example. And the word from the entry points is that a lot of efforts at setting up and building a better systems and processes for the issue have been met with resistance and recalcitrance from the Greek authorities. So I have zero reason not to slam them harshly.

And again; you miss the point. GERMANY can't handle (i.e. it still hasn't processed them all) the refugees it's taken in. Sweden can't handle them (call to increase police force by 4,100 at least), Finland's President has just released a statement of 'we must stop this, it can't continue' (after taking a "massive" 32,000). Greece was taking in 100,000 refugees per month before the Merkel selfie went viral, and then spiked to 200,000 refugees per month post selfie. If all these other countries can't cope with numbers which are either less that what Greece was seeing or they are seeing more numbers (in the sole case of Germany) but are far better off financially than Greece, then maybe Edi, just fucking maybe, it's not down to Italy and Greece 'not giving a fuck' but more to them being overwhelmed. Think that's a possibility? Like at all?

If you set that shit up correctly, it will by itself reduce the number of comers. The daily numbers coming to Finland dropped by half within two weeks when we set up immediate, no exceptions initial processing. With the current chaotic situation, there will be no shortage of comers because they know there is nothing to deter them from going forward. As soon as you put up any sort of deterrent with teeth, it will cut the number of fortune seekers. That's one of the benefits of the migrants using social media and following the news, information, tips and rumors about the asylum processes, ease of entry etc of different countries.

Again you're speaking if this is something new, it's not. Greece set up fences with Turkey back in 2009 to stop an entry point. Frontex and Greece had reduced that crossing by 95% by 2012. And then in 2013 Italy set up Operation Mare Nostrum for one year at a cost of €114 million. It asked for help as the cost was ramping up beyond its means to sustain and got fuck all help from the rest of Europe. So it cancelled it. In response Frontex tried to take up the slack with Operation Triton with a budget one quarter of that of Mare Nostrum. It wasn't raised to €120 until an emergency summit in 2015.

But in essence all that did was fish people out of the sea and bring them to Europe; because that's the only thing that can be done since it would be against their human rights to tow them back to Libya (as ruled by the ECHR). And despite all this; numbers continued to rise until Greece and Italy couldn't cope anymore.

I'm all for investing a whole hell of a lot more than current amount of money and resources to setting up a robust system to control the borders at Greece. I have zero objection to paying taxes toward that end. Same for Italy's, which is the other large scale point of entry. The earlier the point of reduction, the better it is going to work all down the chain as well as upwards, because the numbers will be more manageable no matter where down the line a particular migrant stops.

There is literally nothing you can do legally to stop them landing on European shores when they are crossing by sea. They scuttle the boats and by international law Italy and Greece are obliged to rescue them. Turkey wants to be bribed to take them back, and the ECHR ruled against Greece and Italy towing the boats away from Europe years ago. That's the thing that's fucking laughable about your internet tough guy act Edi; this has being going on for years. Italy and Greece were shouldering the load for half a decade before it went to shit in 2015.

Do you have any suggestions on how to mitigate the problem? Because 'fix' is not a word that we can use at this point, it's going to require a lot more from a lot more nations before we can even consider using it.

Nothing is going to 'fix' this while the pull factor to come to Europe exists, and within the context of European and International law. And I hardly think that Greece or Italy should be turned into an open air refugee camps because of this. 10,000 people per day were landing on an island of 3,000 inhabitants at the hight of this last year. The island of Lesbos was processing 19,000 in a single day. "Couldn't give a shit" Edi, "couldn't give a shit" you say? Fuck you.

[Darth Yan]

I've seen this argument made about how refugees are responsible for rapes in finland.
"Oh, and if we're talking about the more established refugees and sexual assault among them, *that* discussion has been on a low boil for a while but came to the general consciousness of pretty much everybody after a young lady was gang raped by 5 youths of Somalian extraction a bit less than a year ago.
And wrt that the sad facts are that the migrant community commits sexual assault at significantly higher rates than the local population. For people of Middle Eastern and North African extraction, it's about 13 times the baseline even after you normalise for sex and age and other confounders. Basically ~5% of the population commits 1/3 of all sexual assaults, the emphasis being on the more severe end of the spectrum (34% of rapes, 41% of aggravated rapes). (And these are Finnish Ministry of Justice numbers, not just something someone pulled out of their arse.)

How true are these statistics. It seems absurd to me and while I don't doubt there are muslims who rape in finland it seems bullshit for 1/20th f the pop to commit 41% of aggravated rapes or 34% of all rapes"


Seems like twaddle to me but was hoping someone could give more info

[Broomstick]

Speaking as a woman who's been around for a half century: my experience is that the majority of men are decent, law-abiding (in regards to sexual crimes) citizens. 1 in 20 being the problem doesn't seem that skewed to me

[Thanas]

Russia and Syria have started a massive offensive towards Aleppo, thereby causing tens of thousands to flee.

[Grumman]

How true are these statistics. It seems absurd to me and while I don't doubt there are muslims who rape in finland it seems bullshit for 1/20th f the pop to commit 41% of aggravated rapes or 34% of all rapes"

70 Finnish Muslims left the country to go join a cult founded on sexual slavery. I don't think it's that unlikely that they may have been committing 150-200 rapes a year before they left.

[Darth Yan]

I think they're saying the 1/20 are all immigrants, therefore the argument is that immigrants are all rapist. EDI said that the baseline is still more likely to be immigrants and if that is true i sincerely doubt it's due to something as "they're mooslums of course they rape" or "they're culture allows it

[Edi]

Are you done yet, Crown? Because even if you disagree with a lot of what I have said, there is absolutely no point or use even talking to you as long as you try to actively twist it out of context.

If I'm wrong about what Greece has been doing, then that's on me, but every news source I look up at short notice references a European Commission report related to Greek border control problems and similar things. So am I supposed to just ignore that? Especially since those things have been discussed for months.

As fas as Germany is concerned, sure, they have fucked up on their migrant processing system too, and Merkel should have kept her mouth shut instead of exacerbating the problems the way she did.

Oh, and if you have a problem with Finland having only taken in 32,000 migrants so far, that's almost on par with the numbers Germany has taken when compared to population size. But perhaps you can give us a number that you think is appropriate then, as you seem to feel we are not doing enough.

The entire issue in the larger picture will never be resolved without reworking the current international law framework related to refugees. It was made in a different era and trying to slavishly adhere to it in the face of real world evidence of just how unworkable it is is nothing short of stupidity. Whether it gets reworked before or after everyone starts ignoring it completely is a different matter.

[Edi]

I think they're saying the 1/20 are all immigrants, therefore the argument is that immigrants are all rapist. EDI said that the baseline is still more likely to be immigrants and if that is true i sincerely doubt it's due to something as "they're mooslums of course they rape" or "they're culture allows it

If Guardian is using the full set of data from the Finnish Ministry of Justice, it includes all foreign groups, not just the Syrian/Iraqi/Afghani/North Africans. Even so, the comparative numbers for the Middle Eastern and North African groups were somewhere along 10 times higher than for native Finns and that was after correcting for sociodemograhical factors. Without that correction, the number is 17 times.

All in all, last year 26.9 percent of reported rapes were committed by immigrants. However, that does not speak to how many rapes are not reported (estimates are that only 10-15% are reported) and the threshold to report rapes committed by strangers is a lot lower than with rapes committed by someone the victim already knows.

[cosmicalstorm]

The Swedish migration prognosis for 2016 came yesterday: They expect 160.000 asylum-seekers. About 20.000 of them so called "lonecoming children".

Representatives of the two largest parties talked about this as an absolute impossibility on tv yesterday.
My takeaway is that Sweden will completely shut it's borders this year. Absolutely No doubt about it.
Possibly within weeks.

Since the Green party which rules with the Social Democrats has stated that they cannot be a part of any more restrictions on migration the Goverment might fall, but they might backpedal on that promise to keep power.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, when other Euro countries realize they can't dump all the refugees on Sweden they will in turn shut their borders.

Furthermore the fundamental right to apply for asylum might be removed altogheter in Sweden, but I'm a bit more unsure about that.

[Broomstick]

I wasn't aware of some massive plan to dump all refugees on just Sweden - did I miss something, or is that more scare-mongering hyperbole?

[Thanas]

He is probably alluding to the fact that only Germany, Austria (no longer) and Sweden took refugees in any meaningful manner. The feeling that the other nations just don't care and are perfectly happy to dump the problems at the feet of those three nations is a common one.

[K. A. Pital]

I wasn't aware of some massive plan to dump all refugees on just Sweden - did I miss something, or is that more scare-mongering hyperbole?

There is no plan: the refugees are granted the right of free passage by most EU / non-EU nations who feel they don't want to take on that burden; eventually they try to end up in Germany or Sweden, but it looks like the "welcome all" won't be extended for much longer. That will exacerbate the crisis in places like Turkey, Macedonia, Greece etc. as the road further North-West won't be able to take in as many refugees as before. Essentially the moment a "final destination" state shuts the borders, other nations will have to deal with increased immigration pressure. Given that these nations are smaller and usually much poorer, they will (1) beg for money, like Turkey, when there's no real option to seal the border entirely (2) seal the borders, like Hungary. Eventually either the EU borders will be shut (the so-called "proper immigration controls" on the external border) or a domino reaction of Schengen suspensions and increased police duty on the internal borders will shut the states one by one. If Germany and Sweden follow, say, France and start approving only ~25% of applications or intensify the border screenings, keeping most applicants out, this will cause the bordering states to act as well. After all, you grant the refugees "free passage" expecting them to never end up in your nation, but as soon as that becomes meaningless, you will have to take care of the people who are now in your nation and have no option to go further.

[cosmicalstorm]

Syria is heating up right before spring, Aleppo is going to be bombed with cluster munitions by the Russian. Turkey and Saudi are talking about sending in ground-troops but that might be bluffing.

Either way there are going to be plenty more refugees coming and the Euro area is tightening up. I wonder where the largest problems will arise from this, Greece? Turkey? Balkans?

I'm not enjoying it develop very much, but the borders will be closed and it's going to get real ugly. The idea that 4 million refugees will be allowed inside the EU this year is simply ridiculous, there is 0 % political will for that.

Regarding sexual assaults:
I have picked up more rumors on Twitter in Sweden regarding the practice of shitting inside bathhouses, masturbating in public and literally running after young girls. It has been going on in central Stockholm.

The reason public baths have been something of a hotspot for this appears to be that free bath-memberships are handed out to, migrants in general and lonecoming children in particular.
These are rumors but I can also point to stuff in the local press, I'm sure some part of the rumors are malicious racist propaganda with no basis in reality, but there are too many rumors coupled with printed press reports for me to write this of as a non issue.

Speculation on some forums I frequent now is that members only baths will be opening soon, some are already open, and bathing will turn into quite an expensive habit, at least if you are a woman.

The county's HVB-home for unaccompanied refugees live, has since last fall bought hundreds of card that offers free admission to the city's public swimming pools.
- There is a big problem. Some do not know how to behave in an indoor swimming pool, others, unfortunately, can not even swim, says Sara Franzen Shilwan, director of Eriksdal.
By Ulrika
Notify Article
We found Sara Franzen Shilwan in the eye of the storm, her office the Eriksdal in Stockholm. In recent weeks police reports of increased numbers of sexual harassment and molestation have been tough, both for her and for other staff.
Their work has been the media focus due to the increased number of sexual molestation. Meanwhile, also for public policy in the swimming pool worsened, especially during evenings and weekends.
AD:
In addition, it is well swimming hall staff, police, as a civilian working in the swimming pool since the beginning of the year, also noted that the number of teenage girls visit the swimming pool in the last month decreased so much that it shows.
- Probably, it is because they are afraid of being molested. We received call after call from worried parents who want us to ensure their daughters' safety. It is a sad development. We will do everything in our power to stop it, continues Sara Franzen Shilwan.
According to her, as well as the police, the responsibility for the situation largely back at the HVB-home leaving unaccompanied refugee children in the swimming pool unsupervised.
- We can express simply not enough to keep the order or supervision as we want, says Sara Franzen Shilwan, and describes the fuss and commotion caused by constant rule violations, unwillingness or inability to listen to the admonitions and conflicts that arise due to language problems.
- It happens that we reject even obvious "Swedish" Kill gang, but not to the same extent as the bunch we have problems now, young guys who do not speak Swedish. So it is and we have to come to terms with, she continues.
Photo: Jonas Lindkvist Photo: Jonas Lindkvist
She describes that in principle every night and weekend, groups of unaccompanied to the bath, mostly evenings and weekends, and they will, no responsible adults.
All unaccompanied is entitled to an action grants and many of them choose as Stockholm's swimming and gym membership. They can then use both in organized form and during their leisure time.
- We are no statistics, but we know that hundreds of cards have been sold to HVB homes. There are places that come here with the staff that keeps track and then it works fine.
- But when many come unaccompanied by adults, it does not. We must ensure collaboration and consensus, she says and gives an example of how it can go to:
Just a few days ago, 15 people, a staff and an interpreter from the lodging and wanted to buy cards. When Sara Franzen Shilwan through the interpreter asked each one of them who could not swim, it was found that five of them could not.
- The employee at the accommodation, which was a very young person, was surprised. Although the hen was responsible hen had not even thought about it. So we can not have that.
She is convinced that those suspected of sexual molestation know that they do wrong, but that there are also cultural differences and codes that enable normal latches release.
- It is obvious that many unaccompanied have to get much more information about what applies, what women that exists and the consequences it may have for them and those exposed when they do not respect the applicable rules, she says.
Photo: Jonas Lindkvist Sara Franzen Shilwan. Photo: Jonas Lindkvist
So far underestimated in this context is, according to Sara Franzen Shilwan, the fact that it is often going a kind of "kill- and girls games" in the bathhouse where teens gather to meet and have fun.
- Even girls can voluntarily participate in and suddenly make someone something that is over the limit. It is not always easy to deal with it, neither for boys or girls.
- If this with clear boundaries must all talk - parents, school, community. There are no related specifically unaccompanied refugees.
That situation stirs up very strong emotions, there is no doubt, both among professionals and the public who contact to the swimming pool.
- It is sensitive because many young people with immigrant backgrounds are affected. We obviously want to defend the vast majority of unaccompanied by performing well. The problem is that there are those who misbehave to get all the lights on and that they take all the space, says Sara Franzen Shilwan.
But she thinks it is good that the problems will be illuminated and discussed.
- This problem is not a "quick fix" to solve, we must be long-term. Unfortunately, we also know that the number of unreported cases regarding sexual molestation are large, says Sara Franzen Shilwan.

http://www.dn.se/sthlm/vi-ar-nedringda- ... foraldrar/

Iraqi migrant rapes a 10-year-old boy at a swimming pool in Vienna and tells police it was a 'sexual emergency' because he hadn't had sex in months

- Migrant, 20, arrived in Austria via Balkans in September and was taxi driver
-Raped boy in cubicle of Resienbad pool - then had fun on the diving board
-Told police he knew it was wrong - but he had not had sex for four months
-Said that he was not 'always sick' as he has a wife and a child back in Iraq

By James Dunn For Mailonline

Published: 08:52 GMT, 6 February 2016 | Updated: 13:36 GMT, 6 February 201
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z3zObQXzcZ
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

The Cologne carnival got ten more sexual attacks that last year, but that might not have anything to do with migrants though some of those arrested were Afghans.
Google translate:
Spiegel

The Cologne police registered 23 pickpocketing, 143 injuries and six robbery offenses. Moreover, according to Cologne conductive Superintendent Michael Temme 22 sexual offenses were reported. This is 13 more than last year. Temme led this increase attributed in part to the growing willingness of victims to press charges; police welcome this increased willingness to report.

The offenses range according to police sexual insult to rape. According Temme two offenses were serious. In the first case the victim was a Belgian television reporter. "This journalist has been groped under the eyes of the current camera and sexually harassed," Temme said.

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/weiberfa ... 75802.html

From Bild

Cologne - What really happened in the Cologne Carnival Night? The morning after "Weiberfastnacht" had (also FIG) reported the arrest of a 17-year-old asylum seeker media. He is said to have a woman (22) raped and beaten unconscious. In the evening, the police issued a new press release on the case.

In the morning, the case had shown, according to police so: The young Afghan (17) have shown the later victims "pornographic material", the woman then with a headbutt K.O. beaten. When she had regained consciousness, he was lying on it. At this time, the police spoke of a rape.
background


groped at his chest before the cameras Belgian journalist

During a live broadcast in Cologne, the Belgian journalist Esmeralda Labye (42) was groped by two men.

Later investigators relativized this view. A communication from the Cologne police of 17:22 states: "On the night of Friday (February 5th) is a young woman in the center of Cologne victim of a sexual offense." He continued: "A stranger spoke to the woman and beat her low. Then she lost consciousness for a short time. The facts known to date of initial suspicion of an (attempted) there is rape. "

The word "attempt" put the investigators in parentheses because the analysis of evidence is not yet complete. The 17-year-old suspect, who lives near the crime scene in a home, was first arrested (the description of the victim fit) - but was not until late Friday night in custody. Whether a warrant is sought to be decided on Saturday.

http://www.bild.de/regional/koeln/verge ... .bild.html

Journalist 'groped' in front of live camera in Cologne
http://www.thelocal.de/20160205/journal ... television

[Crown]

Are you done yet, Crown? Because even if you disagree with a lot of what I have said, there is absolutely no point or use even talking to you as long as you try to actively twist it out of context.

Have a cry Edi.

If I'm wrong about what Greece has been doing, then that's on me, but every news source I look up at short notice references a European Commission report related to Greek border control problems and similar things. So am I supposed to just ignore that? Especially since those things have been discussed for months.

That's because the 'Greece is failing' meme sells well to sheeple in Northern Europe, it's easy to frame and they generally don't give it much thought. Like you didn't when you said "Greece and Italy didn't give a shit about securing Europe's borders" except for the fact that Greece and Italy have been doing exactly that for 7 odd years now.

As fas as Germany is concerned, sure, they have fucked up on their migrant processing system too, and Merkel should have kept her mouth shut instead of exacerbating the problems the way she did.

Are you this dense? Do you honestly not comprehend that there is a difference between having to process 32,000 people over the course of a whole year versus 200,000 people per month? You understand that you can't just magic police, civil servants, immigration officers, social workers, aid workers, housing and border security with a wave of the hand?

Now, in the case of Greece try doing all that, while having to deal with 200,000 arrivals per month in territory where the native population becomes outnumbered and while your budget is line item controlled in Brussels.

Oh, and if you have a problem with Finland having only taken in 32,000 migrants so far, that's almost on par with the numbers Germany has taken when compared to population size. But perhaps you can give us a number that you think is appropriate then, as you seem to feel we are not doing enough.

Holy shit, you are this dense. The quip of Finland only having to deal with X amount of people was in order to represent the complete disparity in numbers between what Finland saw last year, and what Greece saw. I said it in the last post, and I'll say it again; you had 10,000 people arrive in one week on an island that has a population of 3,000. Do you understand what an island is Edi?

The entire issue in the larger picture will never be resolved without reworking the current international law framework related to refugees. It was made in a different era and trying to slavishly adhere to it in the face of real world evidence of just how unworkable it is is nothing short of stupidity. Whether it gets reworked before or after everyone starts ignoring it completely is a different matter.

Agreed.

Anyway, on a lighter note;

Disappointed With Europe, Thousands of Iraqi Migrants Return Home

BAGHDAD — Night after night, Mohammed al-Jabiry tossed and turned in his bed at a refugee center in Finland, comparing life in Europe with life in Baghdad. After many sleepless nights, he decided to come home.

“In Iraq, I can find a girl to marry,” Mr. Jabiry, 23, reasoned. “And my mom is here.”

There were little things, too, that drove him to return, like the high price of cigarettes and the chillier weather. “In Europe, I was isolated,” he said. “Life in Europe was not what we were expecting.”

Last year, beckoned by news reports of easy passage to Europe through Turkey, tens of thousands of Iraqis joined Syrians, Africans and Afghans in the great migrant wave to the Continent. Now, thousands of Iraqis are coming home.

Many say they arrived in Europe with unrealistic expectations for quick success. Some also say the warm reception they received from Europeans last summer gave way to suspicion after the Paris terrorist attacks carried out by the Islamic State in November.

Many Iraqis have stayed in Europe, of course, especially those who were displaced from lands controlled by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. And others are still risking everything to cross the seas to get there. Last week, the bodies of five Iraqis who drowned in the Aegean Sea were returned to Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

The returnees largely reflect another segment of migration: those who left Baghdad for economic reasons, or merely out of curiosity after seeing so many reports of migrants arriving joyously on the shores of Europe.

When Mr. Jabiry left last summer, he said, “I was thinking, ‘I have no job here, and I never finished school.’ I thought of a better future there — that I would find a better job, that I could continue my studies, earn more money.”

He added: “I was crying the first day I arrived in Finland. Crying of happiness.”

As the days stretched into months — time he said he mostly spent working out at the gym, or aimlessly hanging out with other Iraqis in the refugee center — he realized it would be a long time before he could get a job or a home of his own.

Last summer, Facebook was filled with posts about making the trip. Now, some Iraqis in Europe are turning to social media to warn their countrymen away. One video posted recently shows an Iraqi man complaining of the food in Europe and saying, “I’m just waiting for my flight to Baghdad, and I will be back soon. I would advise everyone not to take the risk and come to Europe.”

The International Organization for Migration said it helped almost 3,500 Iraqis return home last year — just a portion of the overall number coming back, as many do so with the assistance of local governments or Iraqi Embassies in European countries.

“Since early 2016, requests for more assistance are increasing,” said Thomas Weiss, the organization’s chief of mission in Iraq.

The Iraqi government recently sent a delegation to Europe to organize the return of Iraqis, and it may send chartered airplanes to bring them back.

“There are large numbers of Iraqi migrants who want to return from Europe,” said Satar Nawrooz, the spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement. “Some want to return for personal reasons, others because their applications for residency have been refused or because of the expensive living conditions. We are not able to count them all because a lot return on their own expense and not that of the ministry.”

Many of those returning to Iraq are also broke, having sold most of their belongings to pay smugglers to get them out of Turkey, on a dangerous sea voyage, to Greece.

“Our dream was to leave the country,” said Haitham Abdulatif, 48, who sold his Mercedes for $8,000 to pay for the trip he took with his 10-year-old daughter. “It was the talk everywhere — on TV, on social media.”

Mr. Abdulatif was an officer in Saddam Hussein’s army, but after the invasion by the United States in 2003, and the subsequent policy of de-Baathification, he was left without a pension. Then he was caught up in tragedy, like most Iraqis: Three brothers were killed during the sectarian civil war. But he has an aunt and cousin who live in the United States, and their stories motivated him to think of life elsewhere.

“They would always describe to me how living outside the country was different from living in Iraq,” he said. “They are comfortable. They are safe. There are job opportunities.”

He arrived in Belgium with this in mind: “I was expecting them to give me a house, a good job, so I could have a better life. This is what I was dreaming about.”

The reality, he said, was much different. He quickly spent the $8,000 he brought, mostly paying smugglers, and found himself almost broke. He hated the food (milk and toast for breakfast, he said, and cheese sandwiches for lunch). And obtaining residency and finding a decent job would take months, he said. Finally, he went to the authorities and said, “I want to go to Iraq.”

“They were surprised,” he said. “But I told them I’d rather die in my country than die outside in a strange country.”

Many Iraqis, too, did not count on the difficulty of landing in a liberal, European society from a conservative Arab culture.

“I felt like I couldn’t live in an open society,” said Aqeed Hassan, 26, who plays the clarinet and, back in Baghdad after going to Finland, is trying to get a job in a military band. “My wife has her head covered, and I didn’t feel like they liked Arabs.”

Still, Mr. Jabiry said that at first he was treated warmly, though also as a curiosity.

“In the early days when we arrived, the people were impressed with us,” he said. “They were taking pictures of us, inviting us into their homes. They liked our brown skin and our dark hair.”

After the attacks in Paris, though, many Europeans began to regard the migrants as a security threat.

“They turned their faces away from us,” he said. “I felt like the Finnish people really didn’t want us anymore.”

He said he was not pushed to leave by the Finnish authorities, but he did notice signs that went up in the refugee center where he lived saying that Finland would pay for plane tickets to go home.

Some Iraqis who returned had fond memories of their brush with European culture, and few regrets for trying a new life.

“It was very green and clean,” Mr. Abdulatif said. “It was beautiful. Even the people’s morals — they all respected us. Everyone said ‘bonjour’ to me every morning.

“It was 99.9 percent different from Baghdad. People here all talk in a sectarian way: He’s Sunni, he’s Shiite, he’s Kurdish.”

He added: “I now consider the journey as something that was fun. I don’t regret it.”

If people weren't actually dying to make the journey, I swear I would have burst out laughing when reading that article.

[Broomstick]

Yeah, well, some people discovered that moving to another country isn't easy and you have to work for a good life, you don't just get it handed to you.

But hey, maybe the experience in a part of the world where people aren't killing each other over religious doctrine and seeing a different way to live might have a positive effect down the road. We can only hope.

[jwl]

Did I hear someone use the word "sheeple" on this forum? That's a word I usually associate with conspiracy theorists, I would advise against using it.

On the question of Greece and Italy doing more to process refugees/prevent them getting in:
Could they do more? Yes.
And they obliged to do more? No, of course not. They can take as much or as little refugees as they feel comfortable with, and can process them however they feel like.

[Simon_Jester]

In the case of the Greeks, they can't do as much as they feel comfortable with. The number of refugees passing through Greece per year is something like ten or twenty percent of the entire Greek population. And as you may recall, Greece is suffering from huge budgetary problems and is massively in debt to foreign nations, and those foreigners exert considerable control over Greece's government finances.

For these reasons, Greece is not free to do everything it might like to do to restrain refugees.

Italy is probably better off, I imagine, but the point is that there are limits on what can be done. These are countries which still haven't recovered from the 2008 recession, one of which is effectively bankrupt, and which are being flooded by literally millions of refugees. The money to deal with such issues on such a scale may simply not exist.

That's because the 'Greece is failing' meme sells well to sheeple in Northern Europe, it's easy to frame and they generally don't give it much thought. Like you didn't when you said "Greece and Italy didn't give a shit about securing Europe's borders" except for the fact that Greece and Italy have been doing exactly that for 7 odd years now.

Are you this dense? Do you honestly not comprehend that there is a difference between having to process 32,000 people over the course of a whole year versus 200,000 people per month? You understand that you can't just magic police, civil servants, immigration officers, social workers, aid workers, housing and border security with a wave of the hand?

Now, in the case of Greece try doing all that, while having to deal with 200,000 arrivals per month in territory where the native population becomes outnumbered and while your budget is line item controlled in Brussels.

Greece has about twice the population and therefore twice the manpower in principle... but has about the same GDP as Finland, while dealing with, hm, thirty to sixty times as many immigrants.

Given that Greece and its government have massive economic and financial problems that I assume haven't magically disappeared while all this was going on...*

It would actually seem to be in the interests of other European countries to hire Greeks to join the border security forces (military or otherwise), to reinforce the Greeks' own efforts.

A Greek border control official will probably work for less money than a Finnish or German one, so hiring a hundred Greeks to stop fortune-seeking fake-refugees is cheaper than hiring a hundred Germans or Finns to do so. And doing that would probably be more effective- tracking people as they cross the first border would be easier than trying to retroactively monitor and control them after they've already crossed two or three more borders and spread out across half of Europe.

So basically, subsidizing the Greeks to secure their own border sounds to me like a cost-effective way to indirectly secure the borders of places like Sweden and Germany (though not Finland, since most of their immigrants probably come through Russia). At least, assuming most of the money allotted is actually spent on border control, and there are ways to monitor that I would imagine.
__________________________________

*Come to think of it, Crown, I seem to remember you saying something like a year ago, when people were telling you that Greece should 'just cut its military budget' in order to help service debt payments, that it needed its military to control refugees.

If people weren't actually dying to make the journey, I swear I would have burst out laughing when reading that article.

It does have a certain irony about it?

[Crown]

Someone has leaked the November meeting between the EU Commission and the President of the European Council with Erdogan and it's been posted on Reddit and you can view the whole documents here.

But here's some of the juicy bits;

Erdogan asked whether the proposal would be for 3bn or 6bn. When Juncker confirmed the 3bn, Erdogan said that Turkey didn’t need the EU’s money anyway. “We can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria anytime and we can put the refugees on buses”. […]
Junker noted that the Commission had never received a formal request for money from Turkey. Moreover, when you say that you have spent 8bn on refugees, that’s during four years, and we…
Erdogan interrupts saying that this money was only that had been spent on camps. We have a humanitarian approach.
[…]
Erdogan interrupts, saying this is about Schengen, again a European project.
[…]
Erdogan asks rhetorically: “So how will you deal with refugees if you don’t get a deal? Kill the refugees?”
Tusk says that the EU can make itself less attractive to refugees, but that’s not the solution we want.
Erdogan says that the EU will be confronted with more than a dead boy on the shores of Turkey. There will be 10.000 or 15.000. How will you deal with that? […]
Junker says that if Schengen is gone, then Turkey can have no visa-free deal with the EU. […] Please note that we postponed the progress report until after the Turkish elections. And we got criticised for that delay. […] We need clarity. Within two weeks. We have agreed to open new chapters.
Erdogan says that the delay of the progress report did not help AKP to win the elections. Anyway, the report was an insult. Who prepared the report? How can you come up with this? […]
Junker said that the delay of the progress report was done on Erdogan’s request. Why else would we be willing to get criticised for it? I thought you want to be reconciled with the EU. Now I feel deceived […]
Erdogan asks Juncker to name one delivery, one delivery, so far?
Junker notes that resources are being amassed, that there is readiness to move on accession, that visa liberalisations will be sped up, while noting that these decisions are not easy for the EU to take.
Erdogan insists that the EU hasn’t done anything for Turkey. […] We have waited for 53 years. You have been mocking us.
Junker interjects that during these 53 years, Turkey hasn’t always been a democracy for example.
[…]
Junker comes back to the need to have a deal done in 15 days. We are working hard and we have treated you like a prince in Brussels.
Erdogan says “like a prince? Of course, I’m not representing a third world country.”
Junker notes that the EU never has 28+1 summits, but for Turkey we are ready.
Erdogan says “Of course, I would have done the same… But don’t smear it in my face”. (Turning to PEC) “I represent 80mn people. Talk like that from Juncker is disrespectful.” […] The EU doesn’t want to have Turkey in the EU I think. […] And Juncker thinks his report won the elections?… You just want us to keep all the refugees.
Tusk underlines the need to be pragmatic. […] Regarding money, Germany alone has spent some 6 bn euro on refugees only this year. And the EU is spending some 50 bn euro all together on refugees.

Horse trading is the only phrase that springs to mind reading that.

[Edi]

Simon, most of our immigrants actually came through Sweden via the central European route, starting from Greece. Only minor influx through Russia, and that only later and with the collusion of FSB, mostly consisting of Syrians, Afghans and others who had already lived for years in Russia.

[Simon_Jester]

Ah. Somehow I had gotten the impression that it was otherwise from reading your posts; I apologize for the misunderstanding.

That said, the basic problem remains that the Greeks actually are absorbing roughly 30-60 times more immigrants than Finland is, and their nation is only twice as populous as Finland, and is in worse economic condition.

I have no special love for Greece. But I cannot imagine how a nation that indebted, with its finances in that level of disarray, and with its relatively limited resources of manpower and wealth, could actually control such a large migration.

Even trying to kill the refugees might not work, because there are so many that if even 5% or so of the annual migration total started resisting, they'd outnumber the Greek army.

[Edi]

Yes, I understand the numbers. I am not expecting Greece to take care of it all just by themselves, but the current system that is in place, with every country doing something and none of it coordinated is just pissing around while the house burns. I've been advocating more coordination, more sharing or resources and investing into the infrastructure of how to deal with this issue from the start and I don't have a very high opinion of the way places like Poland, France, the UK or some of the central European countries have been doing fuckall to work toward a solution that wouldn't leave just a handful of countries dealing with it.

As far as the hypothetical of killing refugees, it would be easiest done by simply sinking every raft trying a sea crossing somewhere in the middle of the passage. The water and the waves would take care of the rest. With regard to resistance, a disorganized, unarmed rabble that is hurt, tired, cold and starving will never be able to stand up to a cohesive army unit even 10% of its own size if that unit is acting coldly with coordination and without hesitation. It is not a question of lack of capability. It is a question of Europe not wanting to go down that path, which is just as well.

However, what needs to change is the entire framework of how this thing functions. The Geneva convention on refugees and most of the foundation of current international law related to refugees would have to be scrapped and rewritten to reflect the reality, which means being very, very restrictive compared to the current situation and dealing harshly with refugees who commit serious crimes. Regardless if the remedies would result in such offenders being killed.

As far as dealing with human smugglers, anyone caught organizing the current problems and profiteering from it should be dealt with even more harshly. For the kind of people who left those refugees to suffocate on the side of an Austrian highway or who cram rustbucket boats too full and shove them off adrift at sea, summary execution is almost too good for them.

[madd0ct0r]

25000 Iraqi refugees to leave Syria, at least partly to return to Iraq:

Despite the clear risks, up to 25,000 Syrian refugees left the Kurdistan region of Iraq last year. Most returned home or, from there, continued on to Europe in search of a better life – many citing hardship in exile.

"In December 2015, 86 per cent of refugees who went back to Syria were those who were living out of camps, in urban settings. Rent is high, it is difficult to find work and people are running out of money," said Mustafa El Hegagi, a UNHCR repatriation officer who works at the Iraq border.

United Nations officials estimate that many more Syrian refugees will leave Iraq for Syria, or to other countries in 2016. But, due to the security situation on the other side of the border, UNHCR maintains a non-return policy to Syria.

"We acknowledge that refugees may be leaving Iraq because of a lack of assistance," says UNHCR protection officer Ana Scattone Ferreira. "UNHCR, donors and the humanitarian community are working hard to overcome funding gaps, but the deteriorating economic situation in the KR-I has been a major push factor for Syrian returns. In light of this, it is our duty to make sure that refugees are returning voluntarily and that they are well-informed and aware of the risks and consequences."

Nazo is not sure how safe it is going to be, but she is happy to be making the journey back to Amouda. She flashes a wide smile saying, "I am looking forward it. There isn't anything more precious than your own home."

By Catherine Robinson in Peshkabour, Iraq

http://www.unhcr.org/56b85b3d6.html