How will EU policies on refugees change over the coming year?
Open-ended question but esp looking for specific predictions, thoughts on likelihood of any particular policy being implemented, likely proponents and opponents and finally your own personal wishlist. For this thread I recommend letting GGT be GGT in peace.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I think there's enough momentum for a weighed quota system. I personally think they only way to make this crisis a little bit less of a tragedy is setting up centers where people can apply for asylum in those cases where we can expect big numbers of people to come anyway. The present 'fortress Europe' approach clearly isn't working. The attitude of some governments is appalling.Originally Posted by Aimless
Open-ended question but esp looking for specific predictions, thoughts on likelihood of any particular policy being implemented, likely proponents and opponents and finally your own personal wishlist. For this thread I recommend letting GGT be GGT in peace.
Congratulations America
Complicated issue this, I'm surprised its taken this long for a thread to start on it. I kept being tempted to start one but my thoughts are mixed up so my view is going to be a long one. Personally I think the whole system is messed up. I think some nations are trying to do the right thing but in the completely wrong way, while some nations are just trying to turn a blind eye in an impossible way. While other nations are portraying themselves as generous but are anything but.
Ultimately the one thing that absolutely has to be stopped is the vile people traffickers. The problem is the so-called generous German (to name one) policy of welcoming anyone who arrives but without providing safe transport for the migrants to reach Germany is the worst of all scenarios. It is motivating and escalating hundreds of thousands if not millions to make the dangerous journey by themselves and it is a bizarre Darwinian survival of the fittest as to who can make the journey. If you want to be generous and offer to let people in then you should bring them over safely yourself rather than expect people to pay people smugglers first to get across to Europe and then be allowed to stay.
Also I find it shocking that one thing that isn't being discussed in this is the money and support that Turkey especially requires. Quite frankly the migration to Europe is petty and insignificant to the migrations being received by the nations neighbouring Syria etc like Turkey which currently as far as I understand it has 2.5 million refugees. The main thing that the rich western European nations need to be doing is fulfilling their obligations for international aid which is more needed than ever, it should be targeted on support that is desperately needed for the camps in Turkey etc. What is absolutely shocking is that 0.7% of GNI has been the stated target since the 1970s and was reaffirmed as an agreed standard back in 2002 yet now when it is so desperately needed so many nations aren't even coming close. Only Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark and the UK made or exceeded that minimum target in 2013 and only the Netherlands of all those nations that missed it came close at 0.67%. Shockingly Germany and France barely made half of their obligations.
The solution to the crisis is to do many things simultaneously as no individual answer will solve the crisis. My steps involved would be:
1: Long-term: Syria needs to be stabilised. We need to combat ISIS definitely and possibly Assad. It may have reached the point where Assad is the "better devil we know" now though over ISIS, but I don't want to think that.
2: Financially: Support Turkey and other neighbouring nations which have ~90% of the refugees there. Provide the funds that are so desperately needed and which we all agreed to decades ago.
3: Safe Migration into Europe: Stop this idiotic and shocking insistence of people paying people traffickers or getting on boats and/or travelling thousands of miles to reach Europe on their own. If people are welcome then they should be offered Safe Transport from the source.
4: Those who are not offered safe transport must be prevented from entering or turned back. Corollary: those who are not turned back/prevented from entering must be offered safe transport.
Either bring people over or turn them away. An open doors policy but where people make their own treacherous journey is leading to deaths and must end.
EDIT: Apologies that I've only written my personal wishlist and thoughts not answered all your other questions in the OP but I think that's detailed enough for one post.
Last edited by RandBlade; 09-08-2015 at 09:09 PM.
Open-ended, huh? I predict there will more gridlock among the EU as the crisis grows. Greece is tiny and broke, but wasn't able to get the attention (or aid) it needed from inland nations....until thousands of refugees showed up at their border and/or shut down transit systems.
It seems that public policy is only taken seriously after certain photos/videos go viral. People asphyxiating in cargo trucks. Squalor and filth in refugee 'camps'. Overloaded inflatable dinghies sinking in the ocean. 3 yr old dead bodies washing up on shore.
To date, there are some 60 million displaced people. That's astounding. Thousands of them are walking across Europe to escape their war-torn homelands. They can't all stay in Greece or Italy (let alone Turkey or Jordan)....but it's getting pretty hard to figure out where they CAN go, and be welcomed as refugees, when countries like Hungary are putting up barbed-wire fences.
I also predict that a "quota system" in Europe might inflame the economic fears of the Great Global Recession and Financial meltdown just a few years ago. Germany has a strong economy, and can probably handle refugees better than Greece....but if Germans feel their job opportunities and income potentials are being usurped by migrants or refugees, or that they're carrying a larger burden than the rest of the EU, that sentiment could change pretty fast.
The last thing the EU should want is looking like the US, where our immigration/refugee policies are based federally, but states are still trying to invoke their independence from the federal government. Good luck with being a UNITED Europe, when even the UNITED states hasn't managed that very well.
While not disagreeing with you, I think your focus is too short term. The war in Syria is not going to end any time soon unless we're willing to engage in a bigger scale war which will cause the number of people on the run for war to easily surpass 20 millions (including internal displacement in Syria we've already passed the 10 million). That means we'll have to seriously consider the needs of the refugees beyond the basics of bed, bread and bath. We'll need to consider how to get adults in jobs again, children in school and getting teenagers back into educations that were cut short. If we expect all the millions of refugees just to sit and wait in camps untill the war is over we're just making certain they have no future and neither will the country they will return to.
I think Europe should step up to that challenge and take in significant numbers of refugees. Others should too, but I think Europe should not wait untill they do.
P.S. I have been very critical IRL about the 'open door' policies of Sweden in the past; they were very willing to give asylum to people who made it to their shores, but could be so generous only because there were so preciously few who actually could make the application. At least the Germans have made a little bit of an effort to get those stranded in Hungary within their borders.
Congratulations America
I agree with you Hazir that this is not a short-term problem, which is why my first solution was caveated as being Long Term. It is very long term.
The general principle with refugees is to try and look after them as close to home as possible so they can return to their home and help rebuild their country after the conflict is over. Otherwise if everyone disperses as some form of diaspora across the globe then most won't want to return home afterwards and there won't be much of a nation left behind. If the "strongest" have left because they've had to make a gruelling journey then only the weak will be left behind and the nation will struggle even more.That means Turkey etc will remain with most of the refugees and I agree we need to be helping to create a more sustainable situation than just camps, which is why I think the most effective way to achieve this is via providing our obligated funding in aid to help build more than just camps but the possibility of a future in the medium term.
Europe does need to take people in. The right way to do that is I agree not an "open door" but to bring people over safely and directly. This way:
1: The journey is safe for the people making the journey.
2: The people traffickers are cut out.
3: We make sure from source that the people involved are refugees.
4: Its not just the strongest who can make the journey but potentially the most in need are brought over.
Germany may be putting in a small amount of effort for those stranded in Hungary but they've been left to fend for themselves to get from Turkey (realistically everyone has to get from Syria to Turkey by themselves) to cross the Mediterranean, into Greece, to Macedonia, to Serbia and then to Hungary. If it wasn't for Hungary being uncooperative then they'd have been made to continue by themselves through Hungary, through Austria and only then into so-called generous Germany. This is a journey that needs to be stopped not encouraged.
Europe should take in refugees but they should take them in, not simply wait for them to come. And if nations like Germany insist on having an open door then the nations in Europe with some common sense should tell them they're on their own with that. At the same time I'd love to see someone wave a collecting tin in front of Merkel's face and suggest that if she wants to be generous then the extra ~€14bn per annum in international aid Germany has committed to but isn't spending would be really useful right about now.
As for how this could affect the EU, I don't think the EU is very directly affected right now. This is being tackled by nations not the EU (thankfully since EU policy lately is Germany's policy - and if Germany's foolish policy was EU-wide then just imagine this disaster would be even worse and unstoppable). This problem is only going to get worse not better for as long as Germany signals to the world that all and sundry are welcome but that they won't lift a finger to provide safe passage across the Med. Projections of 800,000 coming over could prove laughably small if everyone thinks they are welcome - there's the potential for many millions of Syrians alone and we know its not just the Syrians who are travelling in this journey now. As well as more drownings in the Med until someone bothers to arrange safe passage, I can definitely picture a possibility of some nations suspending Schengen and re-implementing border controls.
Free movement to live and work across the EU only applies to EU citizens, not visitors and that includes not asylum seekers. If Germany grants millions of refugees asylum then they will only have the right to live and work in Germany only, though without Schengen being lifted they'll essentially have the right to move virtually anywhere on the continent. It takes at present time eight years for a refugee to gain German citizenship.
In other words, Globalization is a complicated concept, with lots of "unintended" consequences along the way?
I'm old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis, and the Viet Nam war....which led to millions of people coming to the US as refugees. My parents and grandparents knew the same thing during WWI and WWII. In fact, my whole family tree knew what it meant to be an emigrant/immigrant.
It bothers me that today's generations don't.
Am warmed and fuzzied by Germany's response to all this.
Asylum seekers greeted with applause and open arms by the Germans.
Germany will willingly take 500,000 per year.
And Cameron grudgingly mutters UK will take 20,000 over the next five. Pathetic.
Bollocks. There is a mammoth difference between saying "we will welcome 500,000 refugees" and bringing those refugees over yourself from Turkey to Germany ... and saying get to Munich by yourselves and you're welcome but screw you you're on your own until then, and we sort of guess that 500,000 may come. If they start doing the former they'll be generous.
Cameron is actually bringing the refugees over from Turkey etc direct to the UK safely and securely, while honouring our OECD obligations on international aid. Merkel is saying screw you unless you can get here by yourselves and we won't honour our obligations either. This isn't generosity it is laziness. All Merkel is doing is taking the path of least resistance - doing absolutely nothing to actually help while simultaneously doing nothing to maintain security. It is pathetic.
Heh. Disagree with that entirely.
Merkel is to be admired here, as is the widespread warmth of the Germans themselves. Vast swathes of refugees aggressively pushed across Europe through Hungary, moved on with indifference in Austria, and welcomed in Germany.
Cameron reacted far too slowly, only grudgingly moving long after repeated media images of dead children washed up on beaches put added pressure on him.
And only shipping a few of them here from camps when there are hundreds of thousands displaced in Europe already? Laughable. It's a drop in the ocean in this tide of desperate people.
As Bild rightly put it, the UK is the slacker of Europe is this crisis.
Last edited by Timbuk2; 09-10-2015 at 05:56 AM.
Absolutely not is Merkel to be admired. The very first thing you need to do if people are desperate to come over and you want to let them in is to bring them over or offer them legal passage. Germany have not done either.
Or how about providing your obligated funding? Merkel has not done that either.
Merkel has not done anything at all, except refuse to turn around those who are making it, resulting in more wanting to. What has she actually done that is so admirable? Given people legal passage? No. Given people safe passage? No. Given basic committed funding for those in need? No, she has spent €14 billion per annum less than she was supposed to on international aid. It's a disgrace. All she has done is say that if you risk drowning in the Med by paying people smugglers to get into Europe then she'll let you stay in Germany (but won't other nations "share the load" when its because of her idiocy that record numbers want to come) resulting in people drowning in the Med because of her inactions. You want to admire that? The reason dead children are showing up is because of Merkel's callous indifference to basic safety.
All Merkel is doing is taking the laziest route out. She's refusing to help with spending what she was committed to doing. She's refusing to offer safe passage. She's refusing to offer visas for legal passage. But she's also refusing to enforce security. Just ignoring the situation completely and having people wave flags at a football stadium or at a train station as the migrants arrive because you've not done anything at all is not an answer.
As for taking people from the millions in camps when there are hundreds of thousands in Europe already ... of course! What possible purpose would it serve to take a single person who is in Europe already, are they endangered? No. Are they facing the risk of people smugglers? No. Are they at risk of drowning in the Med? No. The ones who need removing are the ones in the camps it would be idiotic in the extreme to prioritise people ALREADY SAFE IN EUROPE over those who are not. If we're going to take anyone in give me a good reason why we should ignore the millions left behind rather than the fraction of that who are already in European safety?
Last edited by RandBlade; 09-10-2015 at 06:10 AM.
If anyone doesn't think Germany's crazy actions are not making the crisis look at what is happening in reality. A German minister has said today that Germany have received 37k refugees in the first 8 days of September. These numbers are growing all the time but if we were to annualise that (not increase it) then that's a rate of 1.7 million migrants just into Germany in a year. Now if Germany wants to offer safe transport and visas to let them in then that would be generous, but as Germany is still adopting a callous "f**k you come over at the risk of your own life" mentality that means millions paying people smugglers etc to cross the Med. All because so-called generous Germany can't pull their finger out of their arse and get off the fence.
Either help people cross, or turn them around. Waiting for people to cross is asking for people to die.
First of all you can't extrapolate the total numbers for the year from the extreme numbers of last week. For starters most people don't want to go to Germany, or Europe, at all. Where they want to go to is back home, and that's why they prefer to stay as close to their homes as they can. Which explains why most Syrians are displaced inside Syria and why the majority of those who fled the country are sticking to camps just accross the border in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. What we get is a relative trickle of people during the summer months when it's more or less possible to make it from where they are to EU territory. Soon the winds in the Mediterrenean will be too high, the mountain passes too cold for anybody considering to set off for Europe. Germany is expecting 800k applications this year, half of which will be rejected off-hand.
What Angela Merkel has done in this situation was the only feasible reaction to a situation that had gotten out of hand. The official policy under Dublin rules was simply no longer tenable; the notion that Germany would send people back to any of the three borderstates of the Schengen area (Hungary, Greece or Italy) had become laughable. The only thing that would be achieved by sticking to the rules (supposedly to not attract more people) would have been that you would keep people who you (the Germans) knew were bonafide refugees would have been kept in uncertainty about their status for months or years waiting for an extradition that could not take place for practicle and political reason. Telling Hungary, Greece and Italy that they 'in principle' should take back everybody would have boomeranged right back in her face. There's nothing wrong to discern in the decision Merkel took.
There is something wrong on a much more fundamental level and that is that again a problem individual countries can't solve also is prevented from being picked up by the EU. I think that just like with the euro the realities on the ground are going to force countries to accept truths they don't want to see. Those truths being that their national sovereignty no longer is what it used to be. Just like the Greeks can't budget the way they want, the eastern states and the UK will not control their borders as they want. This realisation may lead to the UK voting in favour of an exit next year, but so be it. The EU is either a Union or not at all.
Congratulations America
Agreed with Hazir. As a general principle, Rand is of course correct. What Merkel did creates all the wrong incentives. But the reality is that those first group of refugees were going to undertake that journey no matter what. What other solution was there for dealing with them, Rand? Keep them all in Hungary? Wait until they start using force to get through? Or until they starve?
Hope is the denial of reality
Whilst we all appreciate ISIS's fantastic media policy that does an excellent job of publicising their crimes against humanity, Assad does far more in the creation of refugees. Barrel bombs. Plenty of pictures out there of neighbourhoods that refugees have fled from.
It's a shame. If we drew the line for action at 'a dictator killing his own people' rather than waiting for a picture of a child, faced down in water on a beach, things might have been different.
Like Saddam Hussein killing his own people in Iraq so we took action thanks to the courage of Blair and Bush. I agree.
Except that nothing is so clear cut in Syria. Unlike Saddam Assad has Russian troups fighting on his side. I think the risk of hitting them plays prominently in the plans that people in DC and elsewhere may have. Also, from that whole Saddam situation you might have gleaned that removing a horrible dictator doesn't necessarily bring a democracy under the rule of law. Or even a moderately safe country.
Congratulations America
I know it was a tongue-in-cheek post based on ABABTU calling Blair a war criminal in another thread.
Apologies I haven't responded to yours and Loki's replies yet, busy IRL so only doing quick replies. Will read and respond properly lately.
I agree that we can't extrapolate all year but the numbers are continuing to rise due to the actions (and inactions) involved here. We were talking about tens of thousands a few months ago, now hundreds of thousands - and I do think it is as likely to rise as fall at the moment. We could see millions in a year (though not I agree on a consistent rate). Its as likely that next week more will cross than last week than less. Also as this escalates we're not just talking about Syrians as many from other nations are now joining in pretending to be Syrians.
No it was not the only feasible reaction. I have given two other actions she could have taken, but will reiterate them.What Angela Merkel has done in this situation was the only feasible reaction to a situation that had gotten out of hand.
1: Give international aid to support the refugees in Turkey etc - she is falling short by over $14bn per annum at the moment.
2: Give transport and visas to those who are to be brought over rather than waiting for people to arrive.
Tell me which of those actions are infeasible and why? If its infeasible to spend 0.7% of GNI on international aid then why are the UK, Sweden etc doing so and why is the Netherlands nearly doing so? Also why did Germany commit to doing so if it is infeasible?
If its infeasible to offer safe transport to people then why is it?
Sure there were alternatives. This isn't the first time there's been a boat crisis like this, Australia had one a few years ago and ended it by a policy of anyone who came over was transported back to an off-shore processing centre and if they were genuine refugees then they could be safely transported back to Australia.The official policy under Dublin rules was simply no longer tenable; the notion that Germany would send people back to any of the three borderstates of the Schengen area (Hungary, Greece or Italy) had become laughable. The only thing that would be achieved by sticking to the rules (supposedly to not attract more people) would have been that you would keep people who you (the Germans) knew were bonafide refugees would have been kept in uncertainty about their status for months or years waiting for an extradition that could not take place for practicle and political reason. Telling Hungary, Greece and Italy that they 'in principle' should take back everybody would have boomeranged right back in her face. There's nothing wrong to discern in the decision Merkel took.
Considering that Germany alone has an approx $14bn shortfall in aid, France alone has an approx $8bn shortfall in aid per annum and so on I'd imagine the EU-wide shortfall is at least $30bn. What do you think Turkey would have said (considering it has millions of these migrants there and at the time we were dealing with tens of thousands) if Germany etc had offered to Turkey to provide it $30bn per annum (3.6% of its GDP) during this crisis to provide support for the millions of migrants there, to create an off-shore processing centre and for us to safely bring over those who were processed that we would take? Any migrants who made the journey by boat etc would be deported back to Turkey for processing. I think Turkey would have agreed to that in exchange for tens of billions per annum of aid.
The dangerous boat crossings would have been slowed and stopped if they'd known they'd paid people smugglers a fortune just to be returned to Turkey rather than escalating dramatically as they'd been given a blanket green light. And that's just one alternative proposal.
Another proposal would be to get a safe land transport over. Its worth remembering that Turkey has a land connection to Greece, but people are crossing the Med dangerously as they're by-passing Istanbul etc. If a safe corridor of transport was created then there'd be no reason to traverse the Med.
I fail to see how the EU is relevant here. What do you think the EU is going to do that nations aren't or couldn't?There is something wrong on a much more fundamental level and that is that again a problem individual countries can't solve also is prevented from being picked up by the EU. I think that just like with the euro the realities on the ground are going to force countries to accept truths they don't want to see. Those truths being that their national sovereignty no longer is what it used to be. Just like the Greeks can't budget the way they want, the eastern states and the UK will not control their borders as they want. This realisation may lead to the UK voting in favour of an exit next year, but so be it. The EU is either a Union or not at all.
As for the UK we're not affected thankfully as we have an opt-out from Germany's insanity so are processing people properly and safely bringing them over instead. I've been arguing about this online with UKIP voters who are arguing the same as you that this is a reason for the UK to vote to leave, why would something we're not affected by be a reason to vote to leave? Next argument is that once Germany lets them settle they have the right to move to the UK - which is not true. Only European citizens have freedom of movement across Europe, only if they're granted citizenship can they move to the UK - which in Germany for a refugee means living there eight years, having learnt the German language and having a steady home and a steady job. I have no problem with people like that moving over here, though since they'll be settled down in Germany most won't want to.
Last edited by RandBlade; 09-11-2015 at 05:46 PM.
Now, I may be unaware of some peculiarity in the geography of Australia, but I doubt very very much that Australia has a mere 3 km between its territory and the closest big port of departure from where refugees/immigrants try to get to Australia. To navigate the sea between Bodrum and Kos it could suffice to use an inflatable toy boat if the sea is quiet (what kills people is not the intrinsic danger or the journey but the extra money smugglers try to make by putting too many people on their boats, which very often go out to sea overloaded with people who can't swim). That makes me think that the Australian solution has nothing to offer to Europe.
Also, you keep repeating this 'developement aid' money as if it's a magic wand that could make the refugee problem go away. It isn't. Amongst the people on the move there are people who got on the move to improve their lives. They are comparable to the people who want to move north to the USA. And maybe we could keep a number of them by heavily investing in Africa. But given that Mexicans won't stay in Mexico, which already is lightyears ahead of where these Africans come from I wonder how much money you are actually willig to throw at that. It seems to me to lift significant parts of Africa to the level of even middle-income status will cost more than we, or certainly I, would be willing to bare.
That brings us to refugees; a whole other category. Their country is at war and their lives are at risk. That gives them the right to seek for a safe place. We can reasonably put some rules in place to regulate that, but the fact of the matter is that they have the right and will keep it unless we decide to go Arab and cancel all obligations. And there we've got a bit of a conundrum in the making. Because in theory the 4 million refugees who left Syria can decide to make themselves our problem at any moment of their choosing. We try to stop them from doing that by declaring ourselves to be behind 'refuge in the region' or stopping the shopping around for asylum (Dublin) and we've tried to do that like the little engine that could. Except, 'we' have the tendency - some more than others - to not want to share this problem.
So we were quite happy to let the Lebanese, Jordanians and Turks do the hospitality thing with us wringing our hands from a safe distance. I don't know if we were giving any money, but I presume, some money trickled through the UN channels. Given that Lebanon and Jordan are far away enough for us to not worry too much about them that left us with Turkey. Some nasty people could say that Turkey should sleep in the bed it made when it simply opened the borders for pretty much everybody in the Middle East so they were overrun by a million of Syrians before anybody had finished spelling 'civil war'. And we have this wonderful carrot dangling in front of their faces of 'visa free travel'. Which we promised them if only they would oblige themselves to not let anybody through without fingerprinting them and would take back anybody we decided we didn't like after all.
What did that give us over the last 3 years? I can tell you what I saw of that first hand. Huge numbers of Syrians in Turkey who were burning through whatever money they had, not being able to find jobs, decent housing, schooling or health care. Both for themselves or their families. A potential reservoir of almost 2 million people, not being able to return to Syria, not being able to make a living for themselves and not getting enough aid to stay alive very often. Virtually all of them desperate not to get registered in Turkey because they knew Turkey might then turn into a trap from which they could not escape any longer.
In that situation you suggested selection centers so that we could fly people that were eligible safe and fast to our shores. I don't know exactly how that works in reality since we don't have such a system yet. But I do know that the family of Aylan couldn't get accepted into the Canadian program for lack of the right documents. We may do better, but I am sceptical.
As water always seeks the lowest point, thousands of people saw the moment approaching they would no longer be able to pay the smugglers and would be forced to live in destitution in a country that's not very friendly to poor people at the best of times and they started walking, floating towards the north. By the thousands. On average they pay €2.500 a head to make the trip into the desirable countries. On their way they found countries with systems being totally incapable to do what they were supposed to do (give these people asylum and everything that comes with that) and realizing both this and the fact that there were greener pastures only a trainride away, those thousands of refugees refused to stop untill they were really in a safe place.
And that's the situation you think to rescue us from by sending money somewhere ?
Last edited by Hazir; 09-11-2015 at 07:58 PM.
Congratulations America
No individual solution will make the problem go away but offering a green light and saying that anyone who makes it can stay will encourage everyone who wants to, to come. Which is why numbers have dramatically increased since Germany said come if you want to - but we're not going to help you come safely.
Do you think avoiding approx. $30,000,000,000 of aid that could be helping the millions of refugees in Turkey etc is making the problem better or worse?
The green light was given for people who were already in Europe anyway. No solution in the Middle East would have meant anything for them at all.
And what do we achieve with giving that kind of money to Turkey? You realise you actually have to know what you want to achieve with that money before you send it. You think it's a very smart policy to create some sort of make believe economy in the south-east of Turkey for Syrian refugees who would then have a life significantly better than huge swathes of poor Kurds around them who happen to have the bad luck of carrying a Turkish ID card?
Congratulations America
When over 90% of the refugees are living in squalor there and elsewhere? Yes.
I'd really like to see how even the best refugee camp in the world compares to living in a decent city, let alone a place like Hamburg or Berlin.
Hope is the denial of reality
Not very good I'm sure which is why if the leader of a nation with Hamburg and Berlin says come over if you want to (though we won't give safe passage) it doesn't take a genius to figure out what will happen next, does it?
I'd like to point out that even before Merkel said anything like that, Syrians in 2014 had 90+% of asylum applications approved so pretty much anyone from there was welcome all the time. So I'm not sure how much difference her words made.
Also 'only' a third of refugees take a boat, not the majority.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Exactly. You simply can't create a viable city out of nothing, we're not playing SimCity 2015.
Congratulations America
There is a big difference in the way that she absolved Hungary from its obligations temporarily. Politically it's a huge coup appearantly; even the US is shifting. Angela Merkel has shown herself to be a leader. I have little doubt that some time next week the last opposition to the quota system will fold.
Congratulations America
Well, yes, and the situation was obviously becoming untenable. But Rand was talking about immigration into the EU, and the dangerous crossing, but pretty much everyone who came to the EU was already allowed to stay.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
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