EU Immigration Crisis Megathread

[jimmy olsen]

Well, I guess we'll see if the Donald's plan is feasible.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4578486.ece

Bruno Waterfield Brussels

Last updated at 12:01AM, October 7 2015

Hundreds of thousands of failed asylum seekers will be deported from Europe within weeks under secret plans leaked to The Times.

Brussels will threaten to withdraw aid, trade deals and visa arrangements if countries such as Niger and Eritrea refuse to take back their economic migrants. The proposals also envisage EU states detaining thousands of migrants to prevent them from absconding to avoid deportation.

More than 400,000 people who entered the EU in the first half of this year are expected to have their asylum claims rejected, posing a humanitarian and political challenge for EU leaders.

A draft diplomatic text to be discussed tomorrow by EU home office ministers, including Theresa May, warns that countries must send more migrants home. "Increased return rates should act as a deterrent to irregular migration," it says.

Those fleeing Syria, Afghanistan or Libya could be among the deportees if their asylum applications failed. Britain, as a non-Schengen country, would not be bound by the deportation plan but Mrs May is expected to back it, especially if it raises the prospect of migrant camps in Calais being cleared.

The home secretary called yesterday for a new deportation system, including the use of alternative identity documents, known as "laissez passer", to eject failed asylum seekers who do not have their own passports.

The deportation plan marks a tipping point for European leaders who have been divided over how to handle the biggest exodus of migrants since the Second World War, many trying to escape war in the Middle East and poverty in Africa.

Under the "action plan on return", a special unit of the EU border guard agency, Frontex, will be created to help with deportations. Countries that do not enforce international refugee rules by deporting "irregular migrants" would face legal action and fines from the European Commission.

"Member states must systematically issue return decisions, take all necessary steps to enforce them and provide adequate resources, necessary for identifying and returning illegally staying third-country nationals," the document says.

The leaked Brussels document says: "While member states are primarily responsible for carrying out returns, the immediate creation of a dedicated return office within Frontex should enable it to scale-up its support to facilitate, organise and fund return operations."

The plan also calls on EU member states to detain people, to prevent the high rate — up to 60 per cent — of failed asylum seekers absconding before they are deported. "All measures must be taken to ensure irregular migrants' effective return, including use of detention," the document says.

It proposes that the EU uses development aid and visa talks with non-EU countries as a threat to make sure that deported migrants will be accepted back.

Legally binding clauses in EU trade treaties, such as the Cotonou agreement with African countries, including Burkina Faso, Congo, Eritrea, Niger and Zimbabwe, will be enforced to require them to take back their own nationals who have been assessed as economic migrants. "All tools shall be mobilised to increase co-operation on return and readmission," the plan says.

Tony Bunyan, the director of Statewatch, an EU civil liberties watchdog, said that the plan would not work and attacked the use of "EU laissez-passer to return refugees to third countries as reminiscent of the apartheid pass laws".

"Refugees, who have fled from war, persecution and poverty, do not want to return to the country they have come from. The returns policy proposed is not going to work," he said. "It cannot be seriously expected that Turkey would accept the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees."

[Zanza]

I find it likely that this will actually be implemented. Lots to gain for politicians by appearing tough on certain groups of immigrants and virtually nothing to lose as these groups don't have a relevant lobby and basically zero influence on elections. The only possible opposition to this might come from courts.

[Josquius]

Whats with all the Serbs thinking they can still get assylum anyway

It's not just Serbs, AFAIK there are also lots of Bosnians, Albanians and Kosovars trying to get refugee status in Germany. The overwhelming majority of them get rejected.

Why do they think its possible though?
Serbia and Bosnia are apparently pretty fine mid-level countries these days.
Kosovo...it has its problems, particularly with organised crime, but again isn't so bad.

[dps]

Whats with all the Serbs thinking they can still get assylum anyway

It's not just Serbs, AFAIK there are also lots of Bosnians, Albanians and Kosovars trying to get refugee status in Germany. The overwhelming majority of them get rejected.

Why do they think its possible though?

Because in the past some asylum systems has been so often abused by people who were actually just economic immigrants that people assume that they can continue to use the same ruse.

[Syt]

Austria has a peculiar problem. 20% of people in investigative custody are human traffickers, and the police is running out of cells.

[The Larch]

Whats with all the Serbs thinking they can still get assylum anyway

It's not just Serbs, AFAIK there are also lots of Bosnians, Albanians and Kosovars trying to get refugee status in Germany. The overwhelming majority of them get rejected.

Why do they think its possible though?
Serbia and Bosnia are apparently pretty fine mid-level countries these days.
Kosovo...it has its problems, particularly with organised crime, but again isn't so bad.

The "it doesn't hurt to try" argument, I guess. When you really want to leave, you try every possible avenue. That or maybe the fact that it's a known mechanism employed by others from the region during the wars of the past. Anyway, they have rejection rates in the 90% ballpark.

[Syt]

An Asian perspective.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-34460325

Is this manga cartoon of a six-year-old Syrian girl racist?



"I want to live a safe and clean life, eat gourmet food, go out, wear pretty things, and live a luxurious life... all at the expense of someone else," reads the text on the illustration above. "I have an idea. I'll become a refugee."

The image and caption were posted by a right-wing Japanese artist last month. Now, more than 10,000 people have signed a Change.org petition in Japanese urging Facebook to take it down. The petition, posted by an account calling itself the "Don't Allow Racism Group", claims that several people have reported the illustration and demands that "Facebook must recognize an illustration insulting Syrian refugees as racism."

Although the Japan Times reported that Facebook did not take the picture down, saying it did not go against community guidelines, the artist herself removed the picture. But she remains defiant about her motivations for posting it in the first place. Toshiko Hasumi told BBC Trending that she believed the people signing the petition were left-wing activists. "I draw many political mangas [Japanese comics] which are not favourable to them," she said. "This is why they targeted me."

Japan has pledged to contribute $810m to help Syrian and Iraqi refugees, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has refused to take in any of those displaced by the conflict in those countries. Japan accepted only 11 of 5,000 potential asylum seekers last year. Japan is one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in the world, and immigration is hugely controversial despite the country's declining and ageing population.

One group of immigrants that is sizeable in Japan is Koreans, and Toshiko, who identifies herself as a conservative, posts her cartoons on a Facebook page that includes anti-Korean messages, including material that casts doubt on the stories of "comfort women" - Koreans and women of other nationalities who were forced to become sex slaves for Japanese forces during World War Two. She claimed that her drawing and the associated captions "did not mention any specific race or nationals" - however she admits taking inspiration from a picture of a 6-year-old-girl in a refugee camp in Lebanon, taken by Jonathan Hyams, a photographer working for the charity Save the Children:



Toshiko took the drawing down from her Facebook page on Wednesday, citing a request made by Hyams, who earlier tweeted: "Shocked+deeply saddened anyone would choose to use an image of an innocent child to express such perverse prejudice".

Save the Children said it was "saddened" by the cartoon. "To use this image out of context and in a way that is hugely disrespectful to [the girl], her family and all refugees is not acceptable, and we are satisfied that the image has now been removed," the charity said in a statement.

But despite removing the photo, Toshiko was unapologetic creating it: "I don't want European nations to be victimised and hard working people should not suffer by those fake immigrants," she told Trending. She admitted trying to be provocative by using an image of a young girl.

"The simple reason I used a girl is, if I drew an old man it wouldn't have gained attention," Toshiko said. "I am not denying that there are real miserable refugees. I am just denying those 'fake refugees' pretending like victims who are acting for their own benefit by exploiting the media attention on the real poor refugees."

[Malthus]

It's just wierd that they would use a little girl's pic for that message.  Yeah, "provocative" as in "making you look like a total ass".

What's next, a pic of a starving African child with the message 'when I grow up, I want to deal drugs and rape white women'?

[Syt]

"making you look like a total ass".

I think you meant to type, "edgy." (But yeah, I agree)

[Syt]

http://news.yahoo.com/bavaria-wants-send-refugees-back-austria-merkel-says-165617068.html

Bavaria wants to send refugees back to Austria, Merkel says no

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German state of Bavaria plans "emergency measures" of its own - including sending refugees back to Austria - to stem the flow of migrants, state premier Horst Seehofer told Bild daily, raising pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel over the crisis.

With about 10,000 refugees arriving in Germany every day, Bavaria is the main entry point for those fleeing war or poverty in the Middle East and beyond.

Seehofer says more than 225,000 refugees have arrived in his southern state in less than five weeks and that authorities are stretched beyond the limit to house and care for them all.

Although in the same conservative parliamentary bloc, he is at loggerheads with Merkel on handling the refugee crisis as he insists that limits on numbers allowed into Germany are needed. So far she has refused.

His Bavarian cabinet will meet on Friday to agree on emergency measures, although legally the state is not in a position to send back refugees as this would be a matter for the federal government in Berlin.

"It is about integration, education and education," Seehofer told Bild about Friday's meeting.

"On top of that will come specific self-defensive measures to limit migration, such as sending back people to the border with Austria and the immediate transfer of newly-arrived asylum seekers within Germany."

Austria has warned that it would have to respond if Bavaria resorted to measures along the border that led to a build up of refugees.

Merkel has made clear she will not introduce a refugee cap. "There will not be an entry stop," she told ARD television late on Wednesday.

Her Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners have also dismissed the idea of limits. Vice Chancellor and SPD chief Sigmar Gabriel said it was unrealistic to close the borders.

"We do not have a drawbridge we can lift," he said, adding refugees are fleeing Syria due to the dramatic situation there.

"Closing the borders - someone would have to tell us how that's supposed to work. Are we going to have the army there, with bayonets at the ready? Nobody would do that," he said, adding the causes of flight, hunger and misery had to be fought.

The refugee crisis is taking its toll on the popularity of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and also their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), which Seehofer leads.

If ever there was an opportunity to get rid of Bavaria, it's now.

[Zanza]

Maybe we can do a Abschluss?

[Syt]

Maybe we can do a Abschluss?

http://www.der-postillon.com/2015/06/urkunde-aus-dem-16-jahrhundert.html

[PJL]

Austro-Bavaria certainly sound better than Austro-Hungary.

[Duque de Bragança]

Glad to see that Bavaria is moving closer to East Germany. Reunification works!   

[Martim Silva]

As a person of a certain age whose country was... "not all that modern" even 40 years ago, I can tell you that western men have little to no idea of what males from certain civilizations are told to think.

In Portugal's case, when I was young, we were expected to try get all the women we could, willingly or not, and never to take 'no' for an answer. This including chasing them in the streets in broad daylight. On the reverse side of the coin, we were to defend our female relatives/love interests from the other males, and to use violence whenever required, which could be quite often.

(Even at all levels at school, as you might guess, the inter-class breaks were pretty much 95% violence, but this was seen - and was - as rather normal by the teachers; boys were supposed to spend their time punching and hitting each other)

With people of the same mindset coming at a rate of 10,000 a day to Germany, things are going badly fast.

Is Germany really going to let its women (and asylum-seeking women, for that matter) get brutally raped by the sea of Asylum seekers? All for the sake of 'Political Correctness'? Relive the dark days of Soviet mass rapes? Shouldn't these mass rapes NEVER AGAIN happen on German soil?

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6527/migrants-rape-germany

The individual links for the cases mentioned are inside the piece I link to.


Dozens of cases of rape and attempted rape — cases in which police are specifically looking for foreign perpetrators (German police often refer to them as Südländer, or "southerners") — remain unresolved. Following is a partial list just for August 2015:

On August 3, a "North African" raped a seven-year-old girl in broad daylight in a park in Chemnitz, a city in eastern Germany. On August 1, a male "southerner" attempted to rape a 27-year-old woman in downtown Stuttgart.

On August 6, police revealed that a 13-year-old Muslim girl was raped by another asylum seeker at a refugee facility in Detmold, a city in west-central Germany. The girl and her mother reportedly fled their homeland to escape a culture of sexual violence; as it turns out, the man who raped the girl is from their country.

On August 10, five men of "Turkish origin" attempted to rape a girl in Mönchengladbach. Also on August 10, a male "southerner" raped a 15-year-old girl in Rinteln. On August 8, a male "southerner" attempted to rape a 20-year-old woman in Siegen.

On August 12, a male "southerner" attempted to rape a 17-year-old woman in Hannover. Also on August 12, a male "southerner" exposed himself to a 31-year-old woman in Kassel. Police say a similar incident occurred in the same area on August 11.

On August 13, police arrested two Iraqi asylum seekers, aged 23 and 19, for raping an 18-year-old German woman behind a schoolyard in Hamm, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia.

On August 23, a "dark skinned" man attempted to rape a 35-year-old woman in Dortmund. On August 17, three male "southerners" attempted to rape a 42-year-old woman in Ansbach. On August 16, a male "southerner" raped a woman in Hanau.

On August 26, a 34-year-old asylum seeker attempted to rape a 34-year-old woman in the laundry room of a refugee facility in Stralsund, a city near the Baltic Sea.

On August 28, a 22-year-old Eritrean asylum seeker was sentenced to one year and eight months in prison for attempting to rape a 30-year-old Iraqi-Kurdish woman at a refugee shelter in the Bavarian town of Höchstädt. The reduced sentence was thanks to the efforts of the defense attorney, who persuaded the judge that the defendant's situation at the shelter was hopeless: "For a year now he sits around and thinks about — about nothingness."

But before:

Over the weekend of June 12-14, a 15-year-old girl housed at a refugee shelter in Habenhausen, a district in the northern city of Bremen, was repeatedly raped by two other asylum seekers. The facility has been has been described as a "house of horrors" due to the spiraling violence perpetrated by rival gangs of youth from Africa and Kosovo. A total of 247 asylum seekers are staying at the shelter, which has a capacity for 180 and a cafeteria with seating for 53.

Meanwhile, the raping of German women by asylum seekers is becoming commonplace. Following are a few select cases just from 2015:

On September 11, a 16-year-old girl was raped by an unidentified "dark-skinned man speaking broken German" close to a refugee shelter in the Bavarian town of Mering. The attack occurred while the girl was walking home from the train station.

On July 26, a 14-year-old boy was sexually assaulted inside the bathroom of a regional train in Heilbronn, a city in southwestern Germany. Police are looking for a "dark skinned" man between the ages of 30 and 40 who has an "Arab appearance." Also on July 26, a 21-year-old Tunisian asylum seeker raped a 20-year-old woman in the Dornwaldsiedlung district of Karlsruhe. Police kept the crime secret until August 14, when a local paper went public with the story.

On June 9, two Somali asylum seekers, aged 20 and 18, were sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for raping a 21-year-old German woman in Bad Kreuznach, a town in Rhineland-Palatinate, on December 13, 2014.

On June 5, a 30-year-old Somali asylum seeker called "Ali S" was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for attempting to rape a 20-year-old woman in Munich. Ali had previously served a seven-year sentence for rape, and had been out of prison for only five months before he attacked again. In an effort to protect the identity of Ali S, a Munich newspaper referred to him by the more politically correct "Joseph T."

On May 22, a 30-year-old Moroccan man was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for attempting to rape a 55-year-old woman in Dresden. On May 20, a 25-year-old Senegalese asylum seeker was arrested after he attempted to rape a 21-year-old German woman at the Stachus, a large square in central Munich.

On April 16, a 21-year-old asylum seeker from Iraq was sentenced to three years and ten months in prison for raping a 17-year-old girl at festival in the Bavarian town of Straubing in August 2014. On April 7, a 29-year-old asylum seeker was arrested for the attempted rape of a 14-year-old girl in the town of Alzenau.

On March 17, two Afghan asylum seekers aged 19 and 20 were sentenced to five years in prison for the "particularly abhorrent" rape of a 21-year-old German woman in Kirchheim, a town near Stuttgart, on August 17, 2014.

On February 11, a 28-year-old asylum seeker from Eritrea was sentenced to four years in prison for raping a 25-year-old German woman in Stralsund, along the Baltic Sea, in October 2014.

On February 1, a 27-year-old asylum seeker from Somalia was arrested after attempting to rape women in the Bavarian town of Reisbach.

On January 16, a 24-year-old Moroccan immigrant raped a 29-year-old woman in Dresden.