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> Just so we're on the same page, could you give me a definition of what a fake refugee is The more common term is "fraudulent asylum seeker". It's defined as

> Just so we're on the same page, could you give me a definition of what a fake refugee is The more common term is "fraudulent asylum seeker". It's defined as anyone that fabricates something about their background in order to qualify for refugee status. This could be any number of things, but the most common are: * lying about persecution. For instance saying the government wants to kill you, when in reality there is no such threat. * lying about country of origin. Like saying one is fleeing Syria when in reality they are economic migrants from peaceful countries. https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/07/the-men-who-pretend-to-be-syrian-refugees-greece/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/07/the-men-who-pretend-to-... * lying about age. Some countries have more permissive rules for minors, so adults lie and say they are children. Poland studied this, and found about 40% had lied about their age: https://www.polsatnews.pl/wiadomosc/2019-09-18/niemieccy-eksperci-zbadali-nieletnich-imigrantow-40-proc-z-nich-okazalo-sie-doroslymi-mezczyznami/?ref=kafle https://www.polsatnews.pl/wiadomosc/2019-09-18/niemieccy-eks... The fact that some governments aren't bothering to try and detect asylum fraud means there's no available data. But that doesn't mean it's not happening. It's like a company that has no sexual harassment reporting mechanism claiming no harassment happens because it has never had any reports of harassment.

purerandomness 3y ago
Perfect, now we have a common definition. So let's see: > Poland studied this, and found about 40% had lied about their age in the refugee wave 2007-2018. You might not be able to read Polish, so I'll help you understand this article. It refers to a German investigation (your link is just a Polish news outlet citing the German investigation) done by the University Hospital of Münster. They found that 234 cases [1] (that's the 40%) in 12 years, of all cases that were reevaluated had lied about their age in order to get better chances at asylum approval. However, they only included cases for re-evaluation that were already looking suspicious. It's not "40% of migrants lie about their age". The "study" was not published or at least isn't online. So let's see what happened. The Merkel administration had to deal with a surge of asylum seekers. Some of them claimed false ages to get a better chance in the approval process. Some courts and Jugendämter in Germany noticed that. People at UKM in Münster re-analysed some suspicious looking cases, and talked about methods for improvement of age determination. Wouldn't you agree that the system worked? A problem was diagnosed, and measures were introduced to solve the problem. Now, the AfD's trick is to not tell their voters what's happened since then: The numbers for people seeking asylum went downhill after 2016, so the problem didn't exist anymore, at all [2]. What we're dealing with now are mostly war refugees from Ukraine. Now, AfD's trick is now to convince people that the amount of fake refugees in itself is problematic, without giving specific numbers, and without telling how it's problematic, and why. They make it seem as if it's a real problem that exists, and as if it's being ignored (it's not, as we see by the scientists trying to solve it) [1] https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2019-09/studie-minderjaehrige-gefluechtete-gutachten-alterspruefung https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2019-09/studie-minderjaehri... [2] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/76095/umfrage/asylantraege-insgesamt-in-deutschland-seit-1995/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/76095/umfrage...
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  I can turn around and ask the same of you: what's your evidence that asylum systems aren't being abused by fraud? What percentage of refugees entered with no documentation? How many have had a through background check, verifying any claims of persecution? If >50% of refugees are entering without documentation, there is zero way one can credibly claim that fraud is rare. Like I said, evidence is limited because governments aren't bothering to study the validity of asylum claims. You vaguely allude to action:"some courts" tried to look for fraud, and ministers "talked about methods for improvement". Of course people are dissatisfied with this response. Scrutiny shouldn't be limited to just some courts, and better verification shouldn't merely be talked about it should actually be done. > Now, AfD's trick is now to convince people that the amount of fake refugees in itself is problematic, without giving specific numbers Of course, there's no way to give a specific number unless there's more rigorous attempts at fraud detection. Again, this is like a company has no mechanism to report harassment, and the points to the absence of harassment reports to insist there's no harassment. This is a trick, too: claim a phenomenon does not exist, when there's been little effort to study it.
  - purerandomness 3y ago
    > what's your evidence that asylum systems aren't being abused by fraud? So what are we talking about here? What's your evidence that aspartame doesn't cause cancer? What's your evidence that God doesn't exist? What's your evidence that X doesn't cause Y? See, the problem isn't that there are asylum seekers who abuse the system. Nobody disagrees with you. It's the extraordinary claim that it's a current and massive phenomenon (A) that is causeing big trouble (B) and that it's not being worked on (C), and that AfD has a solution for it (D) that no other party has (E). Remember, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Here, we have claims A, B, C, D, and E that each need extraordinary evidence. We have zero data, and the problem is long gone. Should we spend resources, time and money into investigating a phantom problem that probably doesn't exist? 20% say yes. I think it's phenomenal that a party can divert attention from actual, real problems into decoy problems and blow them out of proportion to gain power. That's the actual danger to democracy we're talking about.

purerandomness 3y ago

Perfect, now we have a common definition. So let's see: > Poland studied this, and found about 40% had lied about their age in the refugee wave 2007-2018. You might not be able to read Polish, so I'll help you understand this article. It refers to a German investigation (your link is just a Polish news outlet citing the German investigation) done by the University Hospital of Münster. They found that 234 cases [1] (that's the 40%) in 12 years, of all cases that were reevaluated had lied about their age in order to get better chances at asylum approval. However, they only included cases for re-evaluation that were already looking suspicious. It's not "40% of migrants lie about their age". The "study" was not published or at least isn't online. So let's see what happened. The Merkel administration had to deal with a surge of asylum seekers. Some of them claimed false ages to get a better chance in the approval process. Some courts and Jugendämter in Germany noticed that. People at UKM in Münster re-analysed some suspicious looking cases, and talked about methods for improvement of age determination. Wouldn't you agree that the system worked? A problem was diagnosed, and measures were introduced to solve the problem. Now, the AfD's trick is to not tell their voters what's happened since then: The numbers for people seeking asylum went downhill after 2016, so the problem didn't exist anymore, at all [2]. What we're dealing with now are mostly war refugees from Ukraine. Now, AfD's trick is now to convince people that the amount of fake refugees in itself is problematic, without giving specific numbers, and without telling how it's problematic, and why. They make it seem as if it's a real problem that exists, and as if it's being ignored (it's not, as we see by the scientists trying to solve it) [1] https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2019-09/studie-minderjaehrige-gefluechtete-gutachten-alterspruefung https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2019-09/studie-minderjaehri... [2] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/76095/umfrage/asylantraege-insgesamt-in-deutschland-seit-1995/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/76095/umfrage...

Manuel_D 3y ago
I can turn around and ask the same of you: what's your evidence that asylum systems aren't being abused by fraud? What percentage of refugees entered with no documentation? How many have had a through background check, verifying any claims of persecution? If >50% of refugees are entering without documentation, there is zero way one can credibly claim that fraud is rare. Like I said, evidence is limited because governments aren't bothering to study the validity of asylum claims. You vaguely allude to action:"some courts" tried to look for fraud, and ministers "talked about methods for improvement". Of course people are dissatisfied with this response. Scrutiny shouldn't be limited to just some courts, and better verification shouldn't merely be talked about it should actually be done. > Now, AfD's trick is now to convince people that the amount of fake refugees in itself is problematic, without giving specific numbers Of course, there's no way to give a specific number unless there's more rigorous attempts at fraud detection. Again, this is like a company has no mechanism to report harassment, and the points to the absence of harassment reports to insist there's no harassment. This is a trick, too: claim a phenomenon does not exist, when there's been little effort to study it.
- purerandomness 3y ago
  > what's your evidence that asylum systems aren't being abused by fraud? So what are we talking about here? What's your evidence that aspartame doesn't cause cancer? What's your evidence that God doesn't exist? What's your evidence that X doesn't cause Y? See, the problem isn't that there are asylum seekers who abuse the system. Nobody disagrees with you. It's the extraordinary claim that it's a current and massive phenomenon (A) that is causeing big trouble (B) and that it's not being worked on (C), and that AfD has a solution for it (D) that no other party has (E). Remember, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Here, we have claims A, B, C, D, and E that each need extraordinary evidence. We have zero data, and the problem is long gone. Should we spend resources, time and money into investigating a phantom problem that probably doesn't exist? 20% say yes. I think it's phenomenal that a party can divert attention from actual, real problems into decoy problems and blow them out of proportion to gain power. That's the actual danger to democracy we're talking about.