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Of course people do want to move on and go farther. It's just that then they are no longer in immediate threat of death or persecution (if they ever were) and
by ptaipale 10y ago
Of course people do want to move on and go farther.
It's just that then they are no longer in immediate threat of death or persecution (if they ever were) and thus not covered by the refugee conventions.
To counter this, the people smugglers teach (sell) stories to be told to the authorities in receiving countries.
Again, if I were among the migrants, I might very well do the same. Move on, try to adapt, do whatever is needed to be allowed to go on. I've talked to many migrants (mostly young men or boys) and they've almost all been reasonable kids with interesting though sad stories. But they were not being threatened for their lives by the nasty Swedes behind Torneå river whence they came from.
One boy who I invited for a cup of tea after a football training, for instance, was 17. He was born in Afghanistan but moved with his family to Iran at the age of 4. He lived there for almost 10 years, as a second class person (non-citizen, no right to go to school, no proper health care, despised by the locals). Then they moved on to Turkey, then to Greece (which was not nice at all, people were kept in detention), then through Balkans to Austria where he spent a year. Then migration through Germany, Denmark, Sweden. Now he's moved on again, looking for his place in the world.
Not an easy life,but it's hard to say what we really could do to the whole of Afghan diaspora who lives like this. Welcoming everyone isn't going to work, even if I want to be friendly and reasonable to anyone I meet.
- vidarh 10y ago> It's just that then they are no longer in immediate threat of death or persecution (if they ever were) and thus not covered by the refugee conventions. I think we mostly agree. Though they would still (assuming they were at one point in immediate threat of death or persecution) be covered by the refugee conventions. It's just that they have no immediate right of asylum or refugee status in countries they subsequently travel to. This is an important distinction. Someone coming out of Syria that then goes through multiple countries, is a refugee. They don't cease to be a refugee if they travel on to, say, Germany. But the refugee treaties regulates which states are legally obliged to consider an asylum application and which may choose to just tell them "no, you have to go back and apply somewhere else". The problem, is that these treaties does not take into account human nature, nor do they take into account the tremendous burden they impose on the immediate neighbours of countries like Syria. And so they will not work, and it is not realistic to assume they will work without huge investments in actually making it undesirable to continue on by giving people a reasonable shot at something better closer.
- ptaipale 10y agoBtw, in US terminology, none of the people migrating to Europe are refugees. Only quota refugees are refugees there; spontaneous asylum applicants are not.