6 ms·

The EU migrant problem is, from my perspective as an EU citizen, the real elephant in the room that everyone talks about but still doesn't quite appreciate the

The EU migrant problem is, from my perspective as an EU citizen, the real elephant in the room that everyone talks about but still doesn't quite appreciate the depth of. We have a union that claims to be be committed to human rights such as the right to seek asylum. That union recently experienced serious political unrest after receiving a bit over a million migrants around 2015 and clearly the political leadership decided that could not happen again. So the problem was offshored to Turkey, and to some extent Greece, and I'm sure to some North African nations in deals I'm not aware of. This is going to be horrific, frankly. Whatever you think of the ethics of the whole business, it's pretty clear that politically, EU leadership is not willing to face another migrant crisis. Unfortunately, the EU also doesn't seem able to do a whole lot about the root causes of the crisis, namely political instability and war south of the EU borders. So what that leaves is the EU turning a blind eye to the problem, trying to get the authoritarian states on our borders to deal with the problem in a deniable fashion instead. It's not going to work in the long run. People move across borders when they need to. Where it's all going, I don't know, but it's going to be a big, big problem for the EU if the conflicts in the Middle East and Africa can not be stabilized.

AinderS 5y ago
> So the problem was offshored to Turkey, and to some extent Greece, and I'm sure to some North African nations in deals I'm not aware of. Surely you mean the problem was offshored to Europe, and now (part of) Europe is onshoring it back to the Middle East? Contrary to popular belief, Europe is not the only place in the world suitable for asylum.
marchingtomars 5y ago
Let those people stay back and fix their own countries. The countries of the EU and The Americas all went through wars-- in some case several wars including civil wars, to get where they are now. I think war is a part of nature-- whether a petri dish, a savannah, or a human "nation". Disputes over resources are a part of nature. Migrants, stay home. If you're really so valuable to an economy, go and stay valuable in your own economy. Oh wait-- Maybe we should drain all of our resources to pay for migrants. And then, yay, some country can come invade our country because we'll be poor too!
raverbashing 5y ago
Well, the basics remain the same Asylum is not a "free migration card" as some NGOs or some people purport it to be. You don't get it just because you were born in a poor country. And as much as some maybe, sheltered (or just idealistic) think borders shouldn't exist, no, they're there for a reason. And the more asylum gets abused the more it will be harder to get.
- rebuilder 5y ago
  The EU is paying Turkey to make sure people do not show up to request asylum in the first place. You think there's someone from the EU making an assessment of how many people in Turkish camps would be legally entitled to asylum, reporting back in a way that determines who gets held in those camps? Please. The EU is already taking steps to hold back migrants, whatever their need for aid.
- stef25 5y ago
  > Asylum is not a "free migration card" as some NGOs or some people purport it to be. You don't get it just because you were born in a poor country. One problem is that if asylum is refused, very few are forcibly repatriated. Most just ending up living in the EU illegally.
Apocryphon 5y ago
Sounds like this mirrors the situation in the United States, where the root causes are political instability and economic devastation in nations of the south, some of which exacerbated by American policies.
- flatiron 5y ago
  The war on drugs is over. Drugs won and the loser was Mexico.
flyinglizard 5y ago
No, people don’t just “move across borders if they need to”. This is what militaries are for, to enforce sovereignty. Saying that is impossible is undermining the notion of statehood.
- mrkurt 5y ago
  There are 11 million people in the US who "moved across borders when they needed to". Is there a country people want to migrate to that successfully keeps them out?
  - flyinglizard 5y ago
    This is a fraction of the actual population which would happily move to the US but is kept away by immigration controls. 11 million on a population of 330 million is 3%.
    - mrkurt 5y ago
      Are you saying it's impossible to keep 3% of the people out?
      - flyinglizard 5y ago
        It’s possible, just not worth the effort.
    - indodima 5y ago
      You think the whole population of Mex wants to "happily move" into gringolandia? Naive and arrogant at the same time.
      - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        I mean there are people from all around the world who would like to move to the U.S, I guess because their situations in their home countries suck enough to warrant it or some cases because they are personally ambitious and the U.S is seen as the place to realize that ambition. Many of them are not allowed to move though because of immigration controls.
blfr 5y ago
> People move across borders when they need to. Both Hungary and Poland have shown that a modern state can largely prevent illegal crossing of its borders. We have the technology. It's not that difficult. Even easier when you have a sea acting as a barrier. When the migration happens on a massive scale regardless, it's usually with tacit or explicit establishment's approval.
- rebuilder 5y ago
  This is a temporary situation with relatively few people involved. Counterexample: the US - Mexico border. Keeping an airtight border is a very expensive task. You can probably be harder to get into than the next country, but in the context of the EU, that's not really a solution, it's just a way to make the problem worse.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    The goal is not to have 100% foolproof solution, but one that makes it not worth a try.
    - rebuilder 5y ago
      People are willing to risk their children drowning in the Mediterranean in order to get into the EU. How much worse can we make it?
      - KptMarchewa 5y ago
        They only do that because they believe they can succeed. Widespread propaganda could resolve that.
- abrowne 5y ago
  But Hungary and Poland aren't a destination goal for the vast majority of migrants, so they only have to make the route through their countries worse or harder than alternative routes. That's not comparable to the EU as a whole.
- 5y ago
RivieraKid 5y ago
The EU has to protect its borders, there's no other option. Not doing so is a political suicide. People here don't want to share their wealth with immigrants and they don't want their mostly homogenous societies being changed by an influx of people with different behavior, culture, religion, language, etc. But I think there will be an interesting twist - aging of the population. This feels like an abstract problem, but it will become very real.
- rebuilder 5y ago
  The problem is the scale. How many people can you realistically lock up in camps, especially considering those camps are leverage for the dictators you’re making deals with to operate them? Either the root causes get fixed or things start breaking, badly.
  - RivieraKid 5y ago
    I don't think it's a problem. On land, you can use drones, walls and fences. On the sea, don't allow boats get into your territory. In addition, there are many "soft" measures. Cooperation with countries like Lybia and Turkey. Help to alleviate the problems they are running from. Announce that anyone who crosses illegaly will not receive an asylum. Etc.
  - dmix 5y ago
    At the same time if you do nothing then you turn a sprinkle into a roaring river which is equally as hard and expensive to deal with.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    The sheer number of people who keep moving after reaching France, Germany etc to try and get the UK, purely because they like the UK more, shows that choice and relatively small differences in final living conditions can have a dramatic effect.
- enriquto 5y ago
  > The EU has to protect its borders, there's no other option. As an European, I agree. At the very least, I think that we have the right to protect our borders. However, this is not an isolated thing that can be morally decided independently of the rest of our foreign policy. We have provoked and participated in many wars in neighboring countries to defend our "economic interests". We are supporting authoritarian dictatorships in Africa so that European enterprises exploiting their natural resources have an easier job. Heck, when a neighboring country (Libya) threatened a bit our cheap oil supply (that is, our supply of their oil) we got all angry and violent and provoked a war there to change the regime. Most of the immigrants in question come from countries that we have messed with. We certainly have the right to close our borders to them, but to do so we must first stop destroying and exploiting their countries.
hogFeast 5y ago
So you are saying the solution is for the EU to take an active role in the government of the Middle East and Africa? Perhaps through establishing some kind of colony? I am sure I have heard of this before. The US invested hundreds of billions in attempting to secure the Middle East...that win them a lot of friends down there? The problem isn't political instability or war. Both things have existed in the past, even within Europe, and there has been no migrant crisis. European nations have always taken huge numbers of asylum seekers, the doors are still open but it has to happen legally and in a controlled way...Europe is a democracy after all. And be clear, there are lots of economic migrants too...some from Sudan, some from Syria but the majority are economic migrants (I am in the UK, admittedly the stuff you see here is particularly extreme but you have asylum seekers taking over LGBT support groups or getting confirmed so they don't get sent back...it is crazy). That is why the article talks about climate change a lot (nutty right-wingers were saying this would be the justification years ago...funny how things work out, it is now apparently an argument made by very serious people...it is bizarre because Africa has one of the greatest endowments of arable land anywhere, so why these people are seeking to move to a region with less arable land and no route for migrants to acquire land is...beyond me)...although I am not sure what someone seeing his brother making money in Spain has to do with climate change, Elon Musk is making tons of money in the US so can I claim asylum there? Right now, you have activist groups assisting human traffickers, we have no idea who is coming here or why, we have people who are suffering in our own countries (youth unemployment is often lower in the places these people are coming from)...the only solution is to do what governments are doing. Be totally clear too, the only people who differ on this point are people who believe that borders should not exist. That is fine, but this minority view should not be imposed on the public through undemocratic means (the amount of money here is huge: human traffickers are making hundreds of thousands per day, activist groups are collecting wheelbarrows of cash from donors...a lot of people are getting very rich, very fast). This isn't something that the public is going to yield on. In the UK, an asylum seeker who was cosplaying as a Christian killed an MP. Sweden, bombings through the roof, shooting through the roof. France, attacks on churches and priests constantly. There is a reason why this is happening...these people are not legitimate asylum seekers, there are no controls, they are here to take and not contribute (and btw, both sides of my family were migrants, I know asylum seekers that came to the UK from Uganda, I have friends who are coming here from HK now...the mentality in some parts of the UK is already totally different to the groups that we welcomed in the past, the UK is still tolerant but look at Europe...you are seeing that this is creating real opposition to all forms of migration, it is very worrying, it is having the opposite effect that the "open borders" crowd think, they are creating the thing they say they are fighting).

AinderS 5y ago

> So the problem was offshored to Turkey, and to some extent Greece, and I'm sure to some North African nations in deals I'm not aware of. Surely you mean the problem was offshored to Europe, and now (part of) Europe is onshoring it back to the Middle East? Contrary to popular belief, Europe is not the only place in the world suitable for asylum.

marchingtomars 5y ago

Let those people stay back and fix their own countries. The countries of the EU and The Americas all went through wars-- in some case several wars including civil wars, to get where they are now. I think war is a part of nature-- whether a petri dish, a savannah, or a human "nation". Disputes over resources are a part of nature. Migrants, stay home. If you're really so valuable to an economy, go and stay valuable in your own economy. Oh wait-- Maybe we should drain all of our resources to pay for migrants. And then, yay, some country can come invade our country because we'll be poor too!

raverbashing 5y ago

Well, the basics remain the same Asylum is not a "free migration card" as some NGOs or some people purport it to be. You don't get it just because you were born in a poor country. And as much as some maybe, sheltered (or just idealistic) think borders shouldn't exist, no, they're there for a reason. And the more asylum gets abused the more it will be harder to get.

rebuilder 5y ago
The EU is paying Turkey to make sure people do not show up to request asylum in the first place. You think there's someone from the EU making an assessment of how many people in Turkish camps would be legally entitled to asylum, reporting back in a way that determines who gets held in those camps? Please. The EU is already taking steps to hold back migrants, whatever their need for aid.
stef25 5y ago
> Asylum is not a "free migration card" as some NGOs or some people purport it to be. You don't get it just because you were born in a poor country. One problem is that if asylum is refused, very few are forcibly repatriated. Most just ending up living in the EU illegally.

Apocryphon 5y ago

Sounds like this mirrors the situation in the United States, where the root causes are political instability and economic devastation in nations of the south, some of which exacerbated by American policies.

flatiron 5y ago
The war on drugs is over. Drugs won and the loser was Mexico.

flyinglizard 5y ago

No, people don’t just “move across borders if they need to”. This is what militaries are for, to enforce sovereignty. Saying that is impossible is undermining the notion of statehood.

mrkurt 5y ago
There are 11 million people in the US who "moved across borders when they needed to". Is there a country people want to migrate to that successfully keeps them out?
- flyinglizard 5y ago
  This is a fraction of the actual population which would happily move to the US but is kept away by immigration controls. 11 million on a population of 330 million is 3%.
  - mrkurt 5y ago
    Are you saying it's impossible to keep 3% of the people out?
    - flyinglizard 5y ago
      It’s possible, just not worth the effort.
  - indodima 5y ago
    You think the whole population of Mex wants to "happily move" into gringolandia? Naive and arrogant at the same time.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      I mean there are people from all around the world who would like to move to the U.S, I guess because their situations in their home countries suck enough to warrant it or some cases because they are personally ambitious and the U.S is seen as the place to realize that ambition. Many of them are not allowed to move though because of immigration controls.

blfr 5y ago

> People move across borders when they need to. Both Hungary and Poland have shown that a modern state can largely prevent illegal crossing of its borders. We have the technology. It's not that difficult. Even easier when you have a sea acting as a barrier. When the migration happens on a massive scale regardless, it's usually with tacit or explicit establishment's approval.

rebuilder 5y ago
This is a temporary situation with relatively few people involved. Counterexample: the US - Mexico border. Keeping an airtight border is a very expensive task. You can probably be harder to get into than the next country, but in the context of the EU, that's not really a solution, it's just a way to make the problem worse.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  The goal is not to have 100% foolproof solution, but one that makes it not worth a try.
  - rebuilder 5y ago
    People are willing to risk their children drowning in the Mediterranean in order to get into the EU. How much worse can we make it?
    - KptMarchewa 5y ago
      They only do that because they believe they can succeed. Widespread propaganda could resolve that.
abrowne 5y ago
But Hungary and Poland aren't a destination goal for the vast majority of migrants, so they only have to make the route through their countries worse or harder than alternative routes. That's not comparable to the EU as a whole.
5y ago

RivieraKid 5y ago

The EU has to protect its borders, there's no other option. Not doing so is a political suicide. People here don't want to share their wealth with immigrants and they don't want their mostly homogenous societies being changed by an influx of people with different behavior, culture, religion, language, etc. But I think there will be an interesting twist - aging of the population. This feels like an abstract problem, but it will become very real.

rebuilder 5y ago
The problem is the scale. How many people can you realistically lock up in camps, especially considering those camps are leverage for the dictators you’re making deals with to operate them? Either the root causes get fixed or things start breaking, badly.
- RivieraKid 5y ago
  I don't think it's a problem. On land, you can use drones, walls and fences. On the sea, don't allow boats get into your territory. In addition, there are many "soft" measures. Cooperation with countries like Lybia and Turkey. Help to alleviate the problems they are running from. Announce that anyone who crosses illegaly will not receive an asylum. Etc.
- dmix 5y ago
  At the same time if you do nothing then you turn a sprinkle into a roaring river which is equally as hard and expensive to deal with.
- native_samples 5y ago
  The sheer number of people who keep moving after reaching France, Germany etc to try and get the UK, purely because they like the UK more, shows that choice and relatively small differences in final living conditions can have a dramatic effect.
enriquto 5y ago
> The EU has to protect its borders, there's no other option. As an European, I agree. At the very least, I think that we have the right to protect our borders. However, this is not an isolated thing that can be morally decided independently of the rest of our foreign policy. We have provoked and participated in many wars in neighboring countries to defend our "economic interests". We are supporting authoritarian dictatorships in Africa so that European enterprises exploiting their natural resources have an easier job. Heck, when a neighboring country (Libya) threatened a bit our cheap oil supply (that is, our supply of their oil) we got all angry and violent and provoked a war there to change the regime. Most of the immigrants in question come from countries that we have messed with. We certainly have the right to close our borders to them, but to do so we must first stop destroying and exploiting their countries.

hogFeast 5y ago

So you are saying the solution is for the EU to take an active role in the government of the Middle East and Africa? Perhaps through establishing some kind of colony? I am sure I have heard of this before. The US invested hundreds of billions in attempting to secure the Middle East...that win them a lot of friends down there? The problem isn't political instability or war. Both things have existed in the past, even within Europe, and there has been no migrant crisis. European nations have always taken huge numbers of asylum seekers, the doors are still open but it has to happen legally and in a controlled way...Europe is a democracy after all. And be clear, there are lots of economic migrants too...some from Sudan, some from Syria but the majority are economic migrants (I am in the UK, admittedly the stuff you see here is particularly extreme but you have asylum seekers taking over LGBT support groups or getting confirmed so they don't get sent back...it is crazy). That is why the article talks about climate change a lot (nutty right-wingers were saying this would be the justification years ago...funny how things work out, it is now apparently an argument made by very serious people...it is bizarre because Africa has one of the greatest endowments of arable land anywhere, so why these people are seeking to move to a region with less arable land and no route for migrants to acquire land is...beyond me)...although I am not sure what someone seeing his brother making money in Spain has to do with climate change, Elon Musk is making tons of money in the US so can I claim asylum there? Right now, you have activist groups assisting human traffickers, we have no idea who is coming here or why, we have people who are suffering in our own countries (youth unemployment is often lower in the places these people are coming from)...the only solution is to do what governments are doing. Be totally clear too, the only people who differ on this point are people who believe that borders should not exist. That is fine, but this minority view should not be imposed on the public through undemocratic means (the amount of money here is huge: human traffickers are making hundreds of thousands per day, activist groups are collecting wheelbarrows of cash from donors...a lot of people are getting very rich, very fast). This isn't something that the public is going to yield on. In the UK, an asylum seeker who was cosplaying as a Christian killed an MP. Sweden, bombings through the roof, shooting through the roof. France, attacks on churches and priests constantly. There is a reason why this is happening...these people are not legitimate asylum seekers, there are no controls, they are here to take and not contribute (and btw, both sides of my family were migrants, I know asylum seekers that came to the UK from Uganda, I have friends who are coming here from HK now...the mentality in some parts of the UK is already totally different to the groups that we welcomed in the past, the UK is still tolerant but look at Europe...you are seeing that this is creating real opposition to all forms of migration, it is very worrying, it is having the opposite effect that the "open borders" crowd think, they are creating the thing they say they are fighting).