EU Immigration Crisis Megathread

[Archy]

Skis climbing gear and Alp guide?  Like the olden days?

[Josquius]

A village in the Kleinwalser Valley in Vorarlberg, Austria is ready to take in 20 or more asylum seekers. The problem is, that place can only be reached by car from Germany (there's two districts in Austria where that is true, and it has a few implications; e.g. in those districts the German instead of the Austrian VAT rules apply).

Non-recognized asylum seekers, however, must not leave the country where their application is handled. Meaning that there's no legal way to get them to this place, because it would mean having to cross the border into Germany (and it gets worse if any of them needs a hospital visit).

For ten months the bureaucrazies (deliberate misspelling) in Germany and Austria try to figure out a way of getting refugees into this village. At the moment it looks like they may try to get people who had they applications for asylum accepted to move there, because they can move freely about the EU. But then again, this place is so remote, it's not exactly attractive to refugees.

Rather than wasting 10 months of man hours couldn't they just pay a thousand euros to hire a helicopter for the afternoon?
Can't be more expensive than a bunch of bureaucrats salaries.

[Eddie Teach]

I doubt they've spent much time during that 10 months actually thinking about the problem.

[Syt]

Meanwhile, the central asylum seeker application place for Austria, Traiskirchen has been closed because it's overcrowded with more than twice its capacity. Refugees are sleeping in tents or outside, and there's hundreds of unaccompanied minors (Vienna has now volunteered to take them in). Sanitary conditions are abysmal, there's limited medical services available, and nothing to do for the refugees (e.g. no activities to keep them busy in some way).

A second place was under construction in a town in Carinthia, in a former home for disabled war veterans. The local FPÖ mayor, with the backing of the population, thinks there's numerous building code violations, so he's put construction on immediate hold until this gets sorted out.

For the time being, police stations will convert some of their holding cells into refugee quarters (that's gonna feel great if you've been prosecuted in your home country) while the search for more Lebensraum for Refugees continues.

[Syt]

http://www.thelocal.at/20150805/hurried-efforts-to-improve-inhumane-refugee-camp

Efforts to improve 'inhumane' camp



Austria's main refugee processing centre has stopped taking in any new asylum seekers from Wednesday as conditions at the severely overcrowded camp currently pose a health risk and the government is worried about an epidemic breaking out.

A health check and initial administrative steps for new asylum seekers will still be carried out at the Traiskirchen centre in Lower Austria, but they will then be sent on to accommodation in Austria's other provinces.

Human rights group Amnesty International is due to inspect the camp on Thursday, and hurried efforts have been made to clear rubbish and improve hygiene facilities.

Last week the UN described conditions at the camp as "dangerous and inhumane". The camp is designed to hold a maximum of 1,800 people but currently houses more than twice as many, around 4,000 refugees.

Nearly half of them do not have a bed and are sleeping in corridors, and under tarpaulins and tents outdoors. Many of the refugees sleeping outside are women and young children.

Austria, a country of 8.5 million people, received more than 28,000 asylum requests in 2014, three times the European average relative to population size.

It expects at least 75,000 asylum seekers to arrive by the end of this year, with a majority coming via Serbia and Hungary - the so-called 'Balkan route'.

Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said that currently around 1,600 beds are needed per week for new asylum seekers, and that the situation at Traiskirchen has become "unsustainable".

She added that the provinces have made "a great effort in recent weeks to create new quarters for refugees fleeing from war, but that more refugees are arriving than we can accommodate in the short term".

She said the government will be supporting the provinces as best as it can by opening up police quarters and cells and setting up new tent camps and containers. The Red Cross has said it can provide an additional 500 beds.

The entire European Union is struggling to cope with a huge influx of refugees, many risking their lives to flee violence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Almost 185,000 applied for asylum in the first quarter alone - a rise of 86 percent according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.

[Syt]

Keep in mind that the current refugee numbers are a fraction of what Austria took in from Hungary (1956), CSSR (1968) or ex-Yugoslavia in the mid-90s (115,000 people fled from Ex-Yugo to Austria, ca. 90,000 Bosnians stayed here).

[Tamas]

I would find it important to label them migrants, not refugees. Not a big difference in how they should be treated, but an important one.

One of the things the forests on the Serbian-Hungarian border are full of, are teared Greek identity papers of refugees. They destroy it so there is no evidence they have already entered EU borders in Greece.

[Warspite]

Someone who traverses a thousand miles on one of the most treacherous routes in the modern world must be pretty motivated. To gather the huge sum of money (by the standards of their home country) to pay to do this must mean they're also pretty entrepreneurial.

Maybe we should be absorbing these hardy, industrious folk into the economy to give lazy, indolent native Europeans a kick up the backside.

[Tamas]

Someone who traverses a thousand miles on one of the most treacherous routes in the modern world must be pretty motivated. To gather the huge sum of money (by the standards of their home country) to pay to do this must mean they're also pretty entrepreneurial.

Maybe we should be absorbing these hardy, industrious folk into the economy to give lazy, indolent native Europeans a kick up the backside.

Yes, although ideally we would try to filter out the ones who would be incapable of integrating into the economy/job market.

[The Brain]

Someone who traverses a thousand miles on one of the most treacherous routes in the modern world must be pretty motivated. To gather the huge sum of money (by the standards of their home country) to pay to do this must mean they're also pretty entrepreneurial.

Maybe we should be absorbing these hardy, industrious folk into the economy to give lazy, indolent native Europeans a kick up the backside.

There are legal channels to immigrate. Giving preferential treatment to people who decline their use seems a bit weird.

[Ancient Demon]

Keep in mind that the current refugee numbers are a fraction of what Austria took in from Hungary (1956), CSSR (1968) or ex-Yugoslavia in the mid-90s (115,000 people fled from Ex-Yugo to Austria, ca. 90,000 Bosnians stayed here).

"Current" refugee numbers are meaningless. This is an ever growing flow with no end in sight.

[Ancient Demon]

There are legal channels to immigrate. Giving preferential treatment to people who decline their use seems a bit weird.

Yes, but to some people here, breaking all the rules to get what you want demonstrates that you've got a good work ethic and should be welcomed. Europe needs more criminals apparently.

[Syt]

 

[garbon]

Hey I'm just glad he is doubling down on the despicable bit so that my assessment holds true.

[Syt]

He's right about one thing, though. More people will come, and in bigger groups as conditions get worse. Of course the troglodyte kneejerk reaction is to throw them all back into the sea (literally), because the refugees are criminal Islamists who steal our women, take our jobs and leech off our welfare. They possibly even talk in the theatre.

Instead there should be serious efforts to
- help change the situation at the point of origin, so that people don't find traveling through deserts, minefields, and war torn regions, or giving their last possessions to trafickers preferable to staying home
- create an EU system geared towards dealing with the numbers of applicants in a humane fashion, so they don't have to sleep under buses to stay out of the rain or in converted jail cells, and that unaccompanied minors don't spend their days watching paint dry
- look at what the new arrivals can contribute to society

Are there bad apples among the asylum seekers? Of course, like in any group of people. But to hold them all guilty till proven innocent is the same as calling all Americans racist for the acts if a few lunatics.