danivon wrote:THAT IS THE ONE WITH THE FALSE PASSPORT!

Read the image you posted. His name is in quotes, because they don't know what it really is (not properly identified). He is suspected of having travelled to Greece using false papers, but Serbia have a guy on the same passport info.

Right, so the point is this: fake Syrian passports are very easy to obtain. I saw a UK reporter who said he bought one for $2000.

How are these "refugees" supposed to be vetted? Syria is not a coherent country at the moment. Are "we" (the West) just supposed to believe anyone with a Syrian passport is not a jihadi, a criminal, a pedophile, etc.?

sass

Ok, Ricky, so in that case please explain why all Iraqis, Eritreans and Afghans should be allowed to enter Europe. You still haven't done that.

I didn't say all of them. Only those who are claiming refugee status and qualify...

sass

Perhaps after you've done that you could explain to us how the hell we're supposed to be able to "know who the refugees are and to let those with genuine need and who fit the profile of refugees to find help" when there are thousands of people a day crossing over, fake Syrian passports in great abundance and the immigration service is on its knees through overwork. Throughout this thread you seem to be suggesting that we can magic the problems away. We can't, the problems are an inherent feature of the policy

The world has a great deal of experience in dealing with refugee problems. Its not magic. There is a well known process. See below...
Admittedly the situation is very bad, and it will take effort and courage (political mostly) to stick to the moral path.
http://www.unhcr.org/3d58e13b4.html

http://www.unhcr-centraleurope.org/en/w ... fugee.html

I always wonder about people who marvel at the "greatest generation" and the way that they demonstrated the moral fibre and courage of the generation that fought WWII and healed the damage done by the War . That includes dealing with ten million refugees in Europe.
Why is it that a smaller problem, in a richer, more able society should stump this generation?
The greatest generation didn't line up all the dangers and problems and costs and say, "no we can't do this"... They did what had to be done.
Perhaps the lessons of turning away refugees before the War, and what happened to them, was still
clear in their memories.
There is moral certitude in helping those who are refugees.
The only doubt is whether people are willing to endure in order to help. (Danger, cost)
I have never said that we can magic the problems away. It is a modern problem, as I said before, The magic these days is that the general populace often wants a solution to a problem, without having to pay any cost.
Fight the war against ISIS but don't risk casualties or blow back seems to be the latest.
Turning back genuine refugees is not an option for a civilized nation. ( I could say Christian, or Islamic nation as well.)

fate

How are these "refugees" supposed to be vetted?

The US and Europe together spend tens of billions of dollars on security and intelligence. You don't think that somewhere they have a technology and a system to uncover passport frauds?

rickyp wrote:fate

How are these "refugees" supposed to be vetted?

The US and Europe together spend tens of billions of dollars on security and intelligence. You don't think that somewhere they have a technology and a system to uncover passport frauds?

No.http://www.mediaite.com/tv/daily-mail-r ... ed-expert/

Beyond that, a passport does not reveal criminal history nor does it tell us anything about possible intent to commit mass murder.

Ricky, are you prepared to entertain for a moment the notion that I have a great deal of hard-won professional expertise when it comes to the administrative challenges of coping with mass migration whereas you know absolutely jack shit about it ? Everything I predicted at the beginning of this thread has come to pass so far, just sayin...

I'm not going to take any lectures from you on how easily this could all be resolved with a little bit of 'moral courage'. You have no understanding of the issues involved and aren't willing to listen to anything said by those who do. I'm also not willing to accept that the moral thing to do is whatever the hell Rickyp decides it is thanks all the same. You've still to actually make that moral case and it can't simply be assumed.

sass

I'm not going to take any lectures from you on how easily this could all be resolved with a little bit of 'moral courage

'

I've never said it would be easy. Quote me saying that. I've accepted that there are difficulties and dangers.
I've said that despite the cost, and the danger it should be done.

sass

I'm also not willing to accept that the moral thing to do is whatever the hell Rickyp decides it is thanks all the same.

Is it the moral thing to do to turn away the refugees? Why?

But I digress. The “right-wing freakout” is unjustified if the bomber merely posed as a new arrival by carrying someone else’s (fake) passport. He didn’t. He really was a new arrival. Those are his fingerprints on the passport that was used to enter Greece in October as a refugee. What does it matter whether his ruse, that he was there to resettle after fleeing persecution and not to murder people, involved a fake passport rather than a real one? One of the core arguments all along against the EU opening its borders to huge numbers of refugees is that the sheer volume was bound to make it impossible to tell the real refugees from the posers, be they migrants looking for better work or jihadis looking to kill some French concertgoers.

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/11/16/wsj-syrian-passport-of-paris-jihadi-was-a-fake/

Fingerprints on the passport matching the terrorist taken in October used to enter Greece. That was the update I was wondering if you had found. Hope this helps. (please don't say that the fingerprints are fake also)

fate

Beyond that, a passport does not reveal criminal history nor does it tell us anything about possible intent to commit mass murder

Your story says the passport fooled a "forgery expert". Who was that expert?
The original story it quotes does not say this ... It just says the reporter managed to buy a passport by the way..
I don't doubt that there is potential for some of the refugees to be ISIL agents.
And it may even be possible that one or two sneak through a vetting process.
However, since most of the terror attacks in Europe have been by European citizens, holding French or Belgian passports, that's where the greatest threat obviously lies.
Keeping out thousand of families with young children in order to secure Europe is just nuts.
http://www.worldvision.org/news-stories ... gee-crisis

According to the UN over half of all Syrian refugees are under the age of 18.
https://www.mercycorps.org/articles/ira ... ria-crisis

rickyp wrote:fate

Beyond that, a passport does not reveal criminal history nor does it tell us anything about possible intent to commit mass murder

Your story says the passport fooled a "forgery expert". Who was that expert?
The original story it quotes does not say this ... It just says the reporter managed to buy a passport by the way..
I don't doubt that there is potential for some of the refugees to be ISIL agents.
And it may even be possible that one or two sneak through a vetting process.
However, since most of the terror attacks in Europe have been by European citizens, holding French or Belgian passports, that's where the greatest threat obviously lies.
Keeping out thousand of families with young children in order to secure Europe is just nuts.
http://www.worldvision.org/news-stories ... gee-crisis

According to the UN over half of all Syrian refugees are under the age of 18.
https://www.mercycorps.org/articles/ira ... ria-crisis

Read the original story here. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... urope.html

Of course, that link was in my original link. If you read that, you'll see a reporter was able to get a stolen blank Syrian passport filled in by a forger. The German police could not detect that it was not genuine--because it is genuine. Further, these blank passports are available because Syrain rebel forces target government buildings so as to obtain this kind of paperwork (also in the Daily Mail article).

Let's ship all the Syrian refugees to Canada. It's win/win.

Now let me posit an alternate world scenario: Canada has a civil war. Hundreds of thousands of refugees flee south. What would the US do? We'd take them. It would be easy because they understand our culture and it's not dissimilar.

For the most part, the Syrians should be kept near by. We should restore order to their country and repatriate them.

Sassenach wrote:

Everything I predicted at the beginning of this thread has come to pass so far, just sayin...

Outside of providing lengthy detailed footnotes to the original predictions, what exactly have you predicted?

I only remember the one about no one replying to the thread but that was 12 pages ago so I may have missed something.

And it may even be possible that one or two sneak through a vetting process.

What vetting process would that be ? You are aware of the complete collapse of all immigration controls in the Balkans right ? Oh, silly question.

Keeping out thousand of families with young children in order to secure Europe is just nuts.

The vast majority of the 'refugees' making their way through Europe are young men. Women and children make up a tiny proportion of the total, not that you'd be able to discern this fact from the TV coverage.

Educate yourself Ricky. All of your assumptions about what's going on are totally wrong.

Outside of providing lengthy detailed footnotes to the original predictions, what exactly have you predicted?

Well, off the top of my head...

I predicted that this would lead to a flood of migrants from all corners of the globe.

I predicted that the Germans would be completely unable to cope with the influx.

I predicted that the result of the above would be that the Germans and other nations would have to completely abandon any pretence of carrying out proper checks and effectively operate a mass rubber stamp exercise.

I predicted that it would be hugely unpopular with indigenous populations and would result in a political backlash.

I predicted that it would generate a black market in fake Syrian documentation.

I predicted that it would probably bring about the collapse of the Schengen agreement.

I predicted that it would cause a sharp spike in the popularity of the far right.

The last of those is the only one that hasn't been categorically proven correct so far, but give it time. We haven't had many elections in the last 6 months so it's difficult to evaluate. It's notable that a fairly hard right party just won the Polish election though, and the French regional elections are coming up soon, where Marine le Pen is tipped to top the polls.

I don't claim to be some kind of predictive genius btw, all of these things were blindingly obvious even at the time for those with the will to acknowledge what was staring them in the face.

Fingerprints on the passport matching the terrorist taken in October used to enter Greece.

In Germany, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in Berlin that a Syrian passport found with one of the Paris attackers may have been a false flag intended to make Europeans fearful of refugees. The passport showed registrations in Greece, Serbia and Croatia, which he described as "unusual."

He said the multiple registrations by a person using the passport were "evidence that this was a trail that was intentionally laid, but it can't be ruled out at the moment that this was an IS terrorist who came to France ... via Germany as a refugee."

Fate, I was going to point out to you that although the Syrian books might be real, most passports have electronic information contained within them that is much harder to forge... However I can't find out whether this is true of Syrian passports....

sass

The vast majority of the 'refugees' making their way through Europe are young men. Women and children make up a tiny proportion of the total, not that you'd be able to discern this fact from the TV coverage.

Educate yourself Ricky. All of your assumptions about what's going on are totally wrong

I quoted the UN source that says that over 50% of the refugees were under the age of 18. (I linked it)
Your source is what you've seen on television? I'll take the UN.

I wonder if you'd care to respond to my question about the morality of turning back refugees in need?
You can take pride in being right about the problems that the refugees are causing.
So what?
Is it moral to turn them back?

Fate, I was going to point out to you that although the Syrian books might be real, most passports have electronic information contained within them that is much harder to forge... However I can't find out whether this is true of Syrian passports....

I've seen a few Syrian passports in my time. None of them had encoded biometric details, although I guess you can't rule out the possibility that some of the more recently issued ones might have them. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with this though. The Bulgarian police intercepted a consignment of 10000 fake Syrian passports only a few days ago. They're all over the place.

There seems to be a lot of missing the point going on here. The man found in Paris carrying the fake Syrian passport was fingerprinted in Greece having first been rescued from a sinking boat in the Aegean. That proves beyond any doubt that ISIS terrorists have been entering Europe through the refugee channels. What more do we need to know ?

I quoted the UN source that says that over 50% of the refugees were under the age of 18. (I linked it)
Your source is what you've seen on television? I'll take the UN.

The UN figures refer to the refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan for the most part. What I'm talking about is the flood of people currently making their way through the Balkans or living in temporary accommodation in Germany, most of whom are not even Syrian.

I wonder if you'd care to respond to my question about the morality of turning back refugees in need?
You can take pride in being right about the problems that the refugees are causing.
So what?
Is it moral to turn them back?

It's a misleading question which doesn't bear any relation to the facts on the ground. We're not talking about refugees in need here. The refugees in need were those who fled Syria and landed in safe countries on the border. By all means we should be providing much more support to these people to improve the lives they're forced to lead in the refugee camps. Those moving through Europe are those with the gumption and more importantly the financial resources to pay criminal gangs to smuggle them into Europe, provide them with phony documentation etc. Most of these are young men looking for the opportunity to either work or claim benefits in the EU. 80% of them have not come from Syria and even of those who have, most had already been living quite safely in Turkey for some time before deciding to make the trip. A very good case in point is the father of Aylan Kurdi, who had been living in Turkey for 3 years and even had a job there but who decided to risk his family's lives because he wanted to come to Europe for dental treatment.

So as an initial answer to your question I reject the entire premise of it. You really need to become acquainted with the facts.