EU Immigration Crisis Megathread

[garbon]

I will never deny my heritage, especially not because of a retard government.

Magyar pride!

[Tamas]

I will never deny my heritage, especially not because of a retard government.

And if refugees and migrants say that?

I don't understand.

[Tamas]

I will never deny my heritage, especially not because of a retard government.

Magyar pride!

[Zanza]

Yes, they look like the socioeconomic group who'll bear the brunt of the "cultural enrichment" a million uneducated Sunni Muslim males will bring to Germany. Merkel has no skin in the game, she'll never have to share a zip code with them.

I find that rather unlikely. Merkel lives in Berlin Mitte, which has 18.3% foreigners and 28.5% with "migratory background" (i.e. parents or grandparents that migrated to Germany after 1950). I can't find any numbers for Bischofswerda, but unless it is the extreme exception from Saxony (2.8% foreigners) in general, it will have much lower numbers. So based on zip code, Merkel almost certainly has more skin in the game than those people. As it happens, this is a general trend: The resistance against immigration is the highest in those areas of Germany where there is least foreigners.

[alfred russel]

I will never deny my heritage, especially not because of a retard government.

And if refugees and migrants say that?

It will be just like it was when the migrant tamas said that on languish? 

[Legbiter]

I find that rather unlikely. Merkel lives in Berlin Mitte, which has 18.3% foreigners and 28.5% with "migratory background" (i.e. parents or grandparents that migrated to Germany after 1950).

I stand corrected. She has skin in the game.

[Martinus]

I will never deny my heritage, especially not because of a retard government.

That's silly. Patriotism must be one of the most pointless irrationalisms left in the world. At least with religion you are hoping for eternal bliss...

[Tamas]

I wouldn't call it patriotism, at least that's not what I meant.

I am a Magyar, for better or worse. It defines my cultural heritage but not the kind of person I am. eg. mongers and the other Brits here are really nice people but there are plenty of asswipes in Britain. They are nice Brits, not nice because they are British.

And even if you want to deny your heritage/ancestry you can't, its a part of you.

Even if you despise your Polishness, all you can be is a Pole who doesn't like to be one.

[Tonitrus]

And even if you want to deny your heritage/ancestry you can't, its a part of you.

Even if you despise your Polishness, all you can be is a Pole who doesn't like to be one.

Hey now, there are plenty throughout history who have found a solution to this dilemma...they are called "Americans". 

[The Brain]

And even if you want to deny your heritage/ancestry you can't, its a part of you.

Even if you despise your Polishness, all you can be is a Pole who doesn't like to be one.

Hey now, there are plenty throughout history who have found a solution to this dilemma...they are called "Americans". 

Not all Americans are Hitler.

[Martinus]

I wouldn't call it patriotism, at least that's not what I meant.

I am a Magyar, for better or worse. It defines my cultural heritage but not the kind of person I am. eg. mongers and the other Brits here are really nice people but there are plenty of asswipes in Britain. They are nice Brits, not nice because they are British.

And even if you want to deny your heritage/ancestry you can't, its a part of you.

Even if you despise your Polishness, all you can be is a Pole who doesn't like to be one.

Ok I understand your point.

[Martinus]

Ok, I gotta say I am really getting tired of my friends and work colleagues posting really really REALLY racist shit on Facebook. Also in "real life" I started to refuse to engage in any talk about refugees and immigration in my social circle. It turns out only my (British) boss and another colleague at work has a roughly same views on the crisis as I do - everybody else seems to fall somewhere between Martim Silva and UKIP. 

I can kinda see now how this nation could have aided and abetted Holocaust.

[The Larch]

The EU governments have finally agreed on the migrant quota plan, with negative votes from a few of the usual suspects:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/eu-governments-divisive-quotas-deal-share-120000-refugees

EU governments push through divisive deal to share 120,000 refugees

Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania vote against decision to impose quotas, as lack of consensus threatens to feed resentment


European governments have pushed through by majority vote a deal to share 120,000 refugees between most of the countries of the EU, in a divisive compromise that sparked fury within parts of central Europe and disappointment among refugee agencies over what they say is a token response to the continent's biggest migration crisis in seven decades.

After a months-long battle that the UN warned was a threat to European unity, the EU's interior ministers finally agreed on Tuesday to the principle of sharing refugees between member states.

But it was a decision fiercely opposed by several countries in central and eastern Europe. In a highly unusual move that betrayed the deep lack of consensus on the issue, the decision was put to a majority ballot in which the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia all voted against creating a mandatory quota.

The decision fed central European governments' resentment of what they perceive as western – and especially German – bullying. In the minutes after the decision, Slovakian and Czech politicians reacted with anger to a decision that they claimed would alter the fabric of European society.

Britain has refused to take part in the scheme, having separately promised to resettle just 4,000 refugees this year, and 20,000 over five years – the first few of whom arrived on Tuesday, the UK government announced without giving further details.

Theresa May, the UK home secretary, declared that "we need, as Europe, to get on with the job", while simultaneously disengaging from any common endeavour. "The UK will not be participating in the [refugee-sharing] scheme."

Uniquely in the EU, Britain has refused to take part in the resettlement of the 120,000 people and has a legal exemption from having to take part. The other two countries with similar optouts, Ireland and Denmark, are offering to participate.

Of the 120,000 to be divided between the remaining EU states, the nine countries of central and eastern Europe are being asked to take only around 10,000, while Germany and France between them will take double that number. But the Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, nevertheless said the vote was unprecedented in EU history and vowed to defy it. "As long as I am prime minister, mandatory quotas will not be implemented on Slovak territory," Fico told the parliament's EU affairs committee.

The Czech government had earlier warned that any attempt to impose such a scheme would be unworkable and could end in "big ridicule" for governments and EU authorities. The country's interior minister continued this theme after the vote, tweeting: "We will soon realise that the emperor has no clothes. Common sense lost today."

The victors of the vote applauded the move, with the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, calling it a "testament to the capacity of Europe to take responsibility and progress".

But, speaking to Reuters, a diplomat from one of the countries opposed to the plan described the atmosphere around the council table as terrible, adding: "This is a bad day for Europe."

Hungary said it accepted the decision, but questioned how workable it would be in practice. Zoltán Kovács, the Hungarian government spokesman, said: "We believe it will be impossible to keep people assigned to, say, Slovakia if they want to go to Germany. How do you keep people in one country if they want to go join their relatives who live in another EU country or want the more favourable social welfare benefits in that country?"

Refugee advocates have also questioned the ability of new quotas to meaningfully deal with a wave of migration that already quadruples the numbers covered by the deal. UN officials praised Europe's politicians for finally having the political courage to agree to the principle of sharing the refugee burden. Peter Sutherland, the UN's special representative for international migration, said: "The principle is so important and reflects such a change of thinking that in itself this is a very significant development."

But Sutherland and his colleagues also warned that the number of refugees the EU has agreed to share among its members is far too small given the scale of the crisis. Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said: "The relocation plan in itself will not be sufficient to solve the crisis. It's just 120,000 over two years. Considering that as of today almost 480,000 people have arrived [in Europe this year by boat], and 84% are coming from refugee-producing countries, this is clearly something that is not enough. The EU states will have to revise these figures and increase the numbers."

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development forecast on Tuesday that the numbers entering the EU this year would exceed 1 million, with more than 400,000 staying long-term in the end.

But the issue of the 120,000 became a signature contest because, along with a previous agreement to share another 40,000, it was the first time that an attempt had been made to agree refugee quotas across the EU.

National ambassadors from the 28 EU states spent the last three days drafting a 39-page deal for the governments, but key issues remained open amid deep divisions between Berlin and Brussels on the one hand and the newer EU member states of central Europe which are reluctant to take in refugees.

A summit of EU leaders on migration is being held on Wednesday in Brussels at the behest of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. The leaders did not want their summit to be hijacked by an unseemly squabble over quotas and ordered the interior ministers to strike a deal.

A little more than half are to be moved to the rest of the EU from Greece and Italy. The remaining 54,000, initially planned to relieve Hungary, whose government takes the hardest anti-immigration line in the EU and refuses to accept the help, will be reserved for other needy countries on the Balkan migratory route, such as Croatia and Slovenia. If the 54,000 are not resettled within 18 months, more refugees can be moved from Greece and Italy.

EU governments have been battling over the policy since May as the numbers arriving have risen drastically, resulting in Hungary building razorwire fences on its southern borders and passing laws this week authorising the army to use teargas and rubber bullets against refugees. It is engaged in a war of words with Germany, Croatia, Romania, Austria, and the European commission.

Germany unilaterally opened its doors to Syrians last month, before backtracking and reasserting national border controls in the middle of Europe's free-travel Schengen area. On Tuesday the German rail operator, Deutsche Bahn, announced it was halting traffic to Austria and Hungary until 4 October.

Apart from the fight over quotas, much of Tuesday's negotiations focused on how to keep refugees and migrants out through quicker deportation procedures, the faster screening and fingerprinting of people arriving on the EU's southern borders, and helping neighbouring countries in the Balkans and the Middle East, notably Turkey, to stop people heading for the EU.

The latter prevention and pre-emption strategies will also preoccupy Wednesday's summit. The policies presuppose substantial increases in staffing and resources for EU police and border agencies and the ceding of national authority over borders to the same EU agencies, none of which is proceeding very quickly.

The UNHCR said the EU policies being fought over were already past their sell-by date, with the figure of 120,000, for example, equalling the sum of those currently arriving in the EU in less than three weeks.

While the vote to have obligatory European sharing of refugees will be applauded by NGOs and EU integrationists as a badly needed tonic for common policy-making, it remains to be seen how the decision to force a vote on one of the most toxic issues in European politics will play out.

On Monday evening, the Croatian president, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, accused Merkel of causing the chaos in central Europe through her policy flip-flops, first declaring that Germany's doors were open to Syrians and waiving rules about seeking asylum in the first EU country they enter and then, when the stampede for Germany got under way, reversing that and instituting national border controls with Austria.

Grabar-Kitarović said Merkel had taken her foot off the brake, sending many speeding to Germany, then stepped back on the brake, causing a massive traffic jam in nearby countries.

The Polish government, which dropped its opposition to quotas in the vote, is also likely to be kicked out of office next month, replaced by rightwing nationalists who are much tougher on immigration and have been delivering alarmist statements about sharia law in parts of the EU.

The vote in Brussels was met with derision by Ukip. "There is now no escaping the fact that immigration will be decided by Brussels," Ukip MEP Jane Collins said. "What we have witnessed today is four countries who wish to control who settles in their country being outvoted by foreign governments. Brussels have taken another giant step into territory which should be the sole right of national governments to decide upon."

The migration crisis is the biggest issue to divide eastern and western Europe since the splits over the Iraq war in 2003. But that was before the former Soviet bloc countries were in the EU.

Elsewhere in Europe, while there is admiration for Merkel's generous asylum policies, there is little appetite to emulate them and, following Berlin's role in July in dictating the terms of Greece's new eurozone bailout, a wariness that in every big European crisis the rest are having to dance to Germany's tune.

[Martinus]

Polish morons are saying our government "betrayed Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia". Wtf. I hate being from Eastern Europe. This is why we can never have nice things.

[The Brain]

How do you share them out? Refugees don't want to go to any old country.