Merkel is responsible, Germany should take them

[longfingernails]

Merkel has idiotically encouraged millions of illegals to risk their lives getting to Europe, and then promptly shut the door on them. Now sensible countries like Hungary are having to bear the brunt. It's the most idiotic policy I've seen for quite some while.

Germany should pay. Germany should house them. And the EU rules on free movement of people should be torn up. I hope the AfD gets a massive boost at the expense of the CDU/CSU.

I think even someone as wet as Cameron could get Hungary, Croatia, et al to agree on making Germany bear the brunt after the problems caused by hordes of illegals at their borders over the last few days. I am sure the Greeks would be more than happy to oblige too.

I don't think anyone in their right mind can not have sympathy for those fleeing Syria, and I think we have a responsibility to supportthose who've already arrived in Western Europe. However, the "positive migrant effect" will mean these are the young, the fit and often the most educated - just the type of people that will be needed if and when peace returns to Syria. We need to look at ways of helping those fleeing the conflict in a way that does not mean their skills are permanently lost to their country (and also that those who are not able to make the journey to Western Europe receive an appropriate level of support for as long as it takes). This is likely to mean investment in camp infrastructure of some kind to ensure an adequate standard of living- not ideal by any stretch but probably the "least - worst" option.

You are absolutely correct OP, this mess is entirely of Merkel's making.

In among those genuinely fleeing for their lives are economic migrants, terrorists, criminals and rapists. It has been reported that some have removed their finger prints with acid to avoid being identified. Why is that do you think? Is that the action of an innocent person? I don't think so.

A friend sent me this link earlier pamelageller.com/2015/09/document-muslim-migrants-raping-women-and-children-in-camp-in-germany.html/ Do also read the comments at the bottom.

The PM is absolutely right to only take people from the camps - they are the people who are most in need, not the thousands rampaging through Europe with their ipods.

I have not read the whole thread but I need to vent a bit and don't want my own thread.

My Husband Is from Iraq, he is Kurdish from soil rich city of mixed ethnicity which was ethnically cleansed under Saddam. Due to his situation in the time leading up to the war he left and travelled via Europe to the UK. He was in Calais and was lucky enough to have his asylum accepted here, he was refused first time and won on appeal. He had to spend months in dangerous conditions to get here and just over 14 months here waiting for his asylum to be processed. He has a very large family and they are aware of how hard this time was for him yet they all want to make the journey to the UK or Europe.

I (and my husband) am so angry that one of my brother in laws and a nephew have called us from Turkey they are trying to travel to the UK. They will most likely pretend to be from Syria, it is these people who, yes they live in a city that is still not stable there are explosions every few months there still and some tension between the Kurds/Arabs but they are not in immediate danger. It is the large volume of people like these which have caused Europe to feel it has to close the borders which will prevent people in real need being able to flee.

These 2 men have everything in there home country, my nephews father has a number of petrol stations and is wealthy so by extension so is my nephew he is 22 he drives a beautiful car costing 40,000 USD, has a i phone 6 plus, nice clothes, a house built ready for him for when he chooses to marry and live out of the family home. My brother in law has left his wife and 2 children behind, he runs a car lot, earns a good amount of money, has expensive cars, 2 houses and sends his kids to private school. They will give it up for what?

I have made it very clear to my husband I will not agree to financing ANYTHING for these men once they realise they can't afford the same standard of personal possessions they have given up. And we are both very angry about what they are doing.

Sorry for the rant but I am mad.

The PM is absolutely right to only take people from the camps - they are the people who are most in need, not the thousands rampaging through Europe with their iPods.
^^
I do agree we need to take refugees from the camps, I have visited one in Dohok Iraqi Kurdistan when visiting my husbands family in the region to take some clothes/food/personal care items that we purchased there to donate and the conditions are horrible.
I do believe that he should increase the amount he will take by a signifiant amount.

Also I think often the immigrants bring their elderly relatives in who haven't contributed and have health care needs so even more of an ageing population to support and pay for so I don't agree that we need any more young people to arrive to support the elderly.

I mentioned Collier already upthread, but he also talks about this.

"...the demographic argument presupposes that migrants reduce the ratio of dependents to worker: being young, they are in the workforce and so balance the expanding retired indigenous populations. But working migrants have both children and parents. One of the distinctive norms of low-income societies is the number of children that women want; until they adjust to high-income norms, migrants from low-income societies tend to have disproportionately large numbers of children.

"Whether migrants bring their dependent parents to their host country will depend largely on host-country migration policy. In Britain, by 1997 the desire among migrants from low-income countries to bring in dependent relatives was so considerable that only 12 percent of migrants were coming for work. Taking into account both children and parents, there is no presumption that migrants even temporarily reduce the dependency ratio.

"A series of recent research paper by Torben Andersen, a Danish professor of economics, investigates the likely effect of immigration on the sustainability of Scandinavian-type generous welfare systems. His conclusion is that far from helping to maintain them, migration may make them unviable because of the combination of the higher dependency ratios and lower skill levels of migrants."

Hey, I am not saying "Take no migrants at all." Morally speaking, I don't think we can avoid taking some. I just don't think we should sit here kidding ourselves that this represents an economic boom for the UK; it almost certainly doesn't. Taking in migrants from Syria is an act of kindness, but it will probably not benefit the UK--particularly given that a lot of low-skilled jobs are likely to be automated in the next 20 years or so.

Its actually largely the UK and US' fault for destabilizing stable regimes e.g. Syria, Libya, Iraq.

Jesus, I wish people would stop uncritically posting links to far right propaganda :-/

The Pamela Geller of the link quoted by TheSpectator above was banned from the UK by the coalition government because her views were considered so extreme that her presence in the UK was contrary to the public interest.

The only way to ensure that the crisis doesn't continue is to pour money into the refugee camps in the Middle East.

Sorry,
Why does keeping people in a refugee camp that has had the shit bombed out of it solve anything

The Palestinians have been in Refugee camps for 60 years.
Has it helped?
No.

Ta1kinPeace I meant in ths short term (ie give people less incentive to leave). In the longer term obviously other solutions are needed, but the urgent need right now is to reduce refugee flows, for humanitarian reasons. No one can watch videos of the scenes on the Hungarian border or in Lesvos and want that to continue :-/ so the short term goal has to be reducing uncontrolled movement, and seeking ways to settle those people in refugee camps as quickly as possible.

It won't be easy though. And it'll be bloody expensive.

Interesting read.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34270077?SThisFB
This is why we should only accept fully registered asylum seekers.
This place could also accommodate 3 million people and has all the facilities people need but Saudi have not taken 1 person in.
www.amusingplanet.com/2014/08/mina-city-of-tents.html

Mistigri
They have been in the camps for years already : this civil war started 4 years ago.
The refugees from the war in Iraq have been in their camp for over a decade
The Palestinians and Lebanese have been in their camps for decades

Refugee camps are breeding grounds for radicalism.
Sending "aid" in will not solve the problem

Its actually largely the UK and US' fault for destabilizing stable regimes e.g. Syria, Libya, Iraq

I'm getting a bit tired of this. "The UK" isn't a government elected by a minority, as all our recent ones have been. Why am I at "fault" for stuff I totally opposed
? The stuff our governments have done was not in my name - or in the name of many others. It's a bit like that argument about our colonial past - it really was nowt to do wih me - whilst it was goinb on, my ancestors were illiterate farm workers and miners.

My concern is that I do not have the same faith and blind belief that we Europeans are now incapable of going back to our darkest behaviours.
Everywhere in Europe, we have discontent local population, often young, idle, and looking for something to do.
We are bringing vulnerable, recognisable people in a hotbed of far-right expansion, joblessness, shrinking resources, where they are sure to become tomorrow's scapegoats for every problems Europe will have.
Yes, for now, for genuine refugees, it's better to sleep rough in a train station in East-Europe than be in Kobane, or the rest of Syria.
But tomorrow, the new brown shirts will have their picks...

I have to say that I find the 'let them in and let them work' type comments totally bizarre. We send our highly trained troops into war zones and they often come out of them traumatised and struggling to reintegrate back into normal life, how on earth can we expect men, women and children who have been just plunged, unprepared into the life and soul destroying trauma that is their homes being a war zone, to integrate not back into a life that was normal for them, but an alien life, a new country, culture and language without seriously massive input from the host nation? I cannot believe that many of these people will be able to manage all that AND work to 'contribute' to our society. I'm sure that's quite naive and simplistic and maybe, eventually, many years from now, some of them will have managed to do that beautifully, but in the meantime accepting any refugees into our society must surely be seen as as big a commitment to us as a newborn baby is to a family and not just a potential burden/asset? It seems both sides of this argument have lost sight of the human beings being spoken about and is terribly sad.

The Kosovans who arrived in their tens of thousands seem to have managed it

The Kosovans who arrived in their tens of thousands seem to have managed it

I wouldn't know - they remain in their enclaves, shop in their shops & send their money home....

Our local ones don't : they work with the Poles and Hungarians.
But yes, they do send money home.

Family remittances world wide add up to billions of pounds every year : without them there would be more refugees.

The young men come here, work, pay tax and leave their frail relatives - who would use the NHS and care homes - behind.

I do think Merkel has helped make the crisis worse by her open borders statement, refugees who are now stuck at closed off borders have said in front of cameras that they are angry as they saw Merkel on tv saying that they would be welcome so they headed in the directions of Germany only to get as far as Austria and find the borders closed again. That's clear evidence that Merkel's actions has inflamed the situation.

Ironically, I think the Hungarian government would be smarter to change its mind and agree to take a quota of refugees/migrants and ask for EU funding to help with costs. Then, six months or a year later when they have processed the asylum requests and granted them to a portion of the people, thereby making their status legal with all the rights of EU membership including freedom to travel and reside within the EU, the Hungarian government can sit back and watch as every last one of the now legal immigrants leaves Hungary to go to the countries they really want to be in, namely Germany, Sweden and the UK. I doubt a single refugee/migrant would want to stay in economically depressed Hungary and want to learn to speak Hungarian in a very unwelcoming society. One way or another these refugees are all going to head to Germany, Sweden and the UK, it just might take them a year longer via the country that accepted them as part of a quota. This is why I think the demands for countries to accept quotas is actually rather redundant.

I think the Hungarian government would be smarter to change its mind and agree to take a quota of refugees/migrants

The Hungarians have said that they have been trying to enforce the rules, which is to register the migrants as soon as they arrive on European soil,. The fence is there to prevent them entering Europe until they are registered. It is the migrants who are refusing to be registered until they get where they want to be. It doesn't look like they have any intention of taking any notice of the quotas in any case.

I'm not denying that there may be other, less honourable motives behind Hungary's fence, but at the moment they are the only ones who are trying to follow the EU's own regulations - in stark contrast to Angela Merkel, who then accuses all the other countries of not being united!

THe Hungarian Prime Minister is a nasty piece of work and he'll find all of his EU funding cut off, along with his international investment if he does not get with it

He seems nasty yes but then again get with what? What's the plan EU?

He wants EU money to help his country but does not want to play by EU rules about democracy

It's interesting that a some days after Aylan Kurdi's death a boatload of 34 people including children died crossing to Kos and it received very little publicity. Of course it didn't, because it wasn't convenient for Germany to admit it's knee jerk 'let them all in' policy was likely to lead to more deaths rather than less.

Incidentally the UN has been very vocal criticising the UK for not doing enough. But apparently (as reported by ITV News) part of the reason so many are fleeing to Europe is because the conditions in the camps around Syria are deteriorating so much they have no choice. And who is responsible for those camps? The UN.

Personally I feel what is needed is a massive investment in the conditions in the camps around Syria, so they don't feel they need to flee to be safe, warm and sheltered and find work or an education for their children. It is a hard dangerous and difficult journey. The best thing for all concerned would be that they didn't have to make it. We need to spend money on making things better there, so they don't have to flee and they have a strong, healthy educated population who are capable of making things better.

Kanye
Personally I feel what is needed is a massive investment in the conditions in the camps around Syria
Why?
Why is spending even more years in a refugee camp unable to earn a living the answer?
Have you SEEN what ISIS have done to the areas of Camp they control ?

Some of the camps in Jordan and Lebanon have been there for 70 years
but there is no industry, no agriculture, no employment
why on earth would you want to stay there with your children?

And due to climate change and politics, there is no water.

But no-one is following the current EU rules so confusion reigns.

Kind of hard to take anyone seriously who thinks exponentially increasing the population for eternity is a plausible solution to pension funding. I expect this is the sort of person who jumped at the chance to join the "give and take" scheme.