http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/f ... -sea-route

So Ricky, do you still maintain that everything is under control and Germany can handle it ?

Merkel is panicking now, and it would seem that the plan is to dump on Greece. She's attempted to cut a deal with Turkey but Erdogan is unwilling to play ball, so that just leaves the option of kettling all the migrants in Greece and then throwing the Greeks out of Schengen. Needless to say this is a ludicrous idea that can never work, just like all the other ideas that the floundering Commission and Angela Merkel have come up with.

We're now in a position whereby an authoritarian Islamist is holding Europe firmly by the balls and seeking to extract eye-watering bribes, while the the poor benighted Greeks are being treated like lackeys and the far right is on the rise all over Europe. The migrant crisis could well result in Britain voting to leave the EU this year as well, assuming Cameron doesn't find an excuse to delay the referendum. It's a racing certainty that Schengen is going to be 'suspended' at some point this year and may not return. Oh,and it looks increasingly like another banking crisis is on the cards. The latter at least can't be blamed on the migrant crisis, but it's not going to be easy to arrive at a solution when all public goodwill has been squandered.

Ready to admit this has all been a disaster yet ?

sass

Ready to admit this has all been a disaster yet ?

Oh its always been a disaster. ....... for the migrants and refugees.
If you mean its been specifically a disaster for the European countries... Its been difficult. But a disaster? How? Who's dying in Europe that isn't a refugee or migrant? What irreparable damage are European nations suffering?
Eventually things will calm down for the host countries. They always do.
How many migrants and refugees will die because they can't find help?

Well I guess that depends on whether you count mass social unrest, political turmoil, an annual additional welfare bill running into the tens of billions, the creation of enormous counter cultural ghettos in major urban centres, the complete collapse of the immigration system, turning Greece into a dumping ground, the end of free movement in the EU, the inexorable rise of the far right all across Europe, the hardening of hearts among European people, the mass importation of socially conservative young men with resultant consequences for social cohesion and sex crime and the imminent prospect that the EU institutions might not survive all this intact.

Apart from all those things everything is hunky dory. Still, I'm sure it's a small price to pay for the sake of a little virtue signalling.

Tell me, is there any upper limit to what Europe can absorb in your opinion ? How many more millions should we be obliged to accept before you'd be willing to concede that maybe enough is enough ? 1 million ? (that's another 6 months), 2 million ? (this time next year), 10 million...? Or maybe there's no upper limit ? Maybe we can just house everybody on earth, provide them with free accommodation, healthcare, education and money to live off and feel confident that everything is going to be fine because it always works out fine in the end. Come on Ricky, give me a number.

sass

Well I guess that depends on whether you count mass social unrest, political turmoil, an annual additional welfare bill running into the tens of billions, the creation of enormous counter cultural ghettos in major urban centres, the complete collapse of the immigration system, turning Greece into a dumping ground, the end of free movement in the EU, the inexorable rise of the far right all across Europe, the hardening of hearts among European people, the mass importation of socially conservative young men with resultant consequences for social cohesion and sex crime and the imminent prospect that the EU institutions might not survive all this intact

.
Right now, there are nearly 60 million refugees or displaced people worldwide. If all of the world’s refugees were the population of a country, it would be the 24th largest in the world, just after Italy.
Half of the world’s refugees are children, growing up far from home without consistent education, safety or emotional support. (You want to know where the next generation of terrorists is being created?)
Syria’s civil war is the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. Half the country’s pre-war population — more than 11 million people — have been killed or forced to flee their homes.
Now, that's a disaster.
What Europe is going through in trying to accommodate some of them is very difficult. But it isn't the end of the world. For an awful lot of refugees dying while trying to find someplace secure, it is.. That's the disaster, and lets try not to lose focus on where the genuine suffering is...
Throughout history, and especially in Europe,refugees have created crisis for a period, and eventually the crisis abates, and society moves forward. I agree that Europe has taken on much here, and if you really want to point to culprits who aren't sharing part of Europe's burden look to Australia, Japan, Canada and particularly the US. (Canada is taking about 40,000 and the US ...so far 2,500) .
The only real solution will be an end to conflict in the region and we're several years from that ...


Sass

Still, I'm sure it's a small price to pay for the sake of a little virtue signalling

Is that all it is "virtue signalling"?
There isn't a sincere effort to care for strangers in need? Yes, lets belittle that genuine demonstration of humanity...

I don't know what the upper limit is. Perhaps it has been achieved for now... Certainly no one is "obliged" to accept refugees. Unless it feels like the morally right thing to do and that morality is creating the obligation.

What I do think is that this is only the first of more migrant crisis to come. The climate is changing and with it more and more parts of the world will be incapable of sustaining the current populations. we're already seeing another crisis of drought in Somalia and Ethiopia.
Coping with millions of people fleeing for their lives is going to be a repeated experience for the decades ahead of us as this occurs. Maybe we a should be learning from the current crisis ? I don't think the answer is walls.

Throughout history, and especially in Europe,refugees have created crisis for a period, and eventually the crisis abates, and society moves forward.

I'm afraid this panglossion outlook doesn't really square with the facts. The only example you have, which you keep on repeating, is the one about the ethnic Germans moving at the end of WW2. That's flawed for ll the reasons that have been stated earlier in the thread and doesn't need to be talked about again. Shall we look at a few other examples ? Has the crisis in Lebanon abated several decades after the Palestinian refugees decamped there ? I'd say not. It led to a ruinous civil war and since then Lebanon has been a deeply divided society. How's DR Congo getting on in the wake of the Hutu refugees who fled there ? I'm not seeing any sign of everything returning to normal there, instead chaos has become the new normal. Moving further back... how well did the Roman Empire cope with mass population movements ? Pretty badly if we're honest, it caused their society to collapse and brought about the Dark Ages.

I should also point out that we've never before seen anything that remotely compares to this. The ethnic Germans who were kicked out of eastern Europe were not moving to a modern welfare state. That's a critical point which you're not acknowledging. The welfare state is reliant on a social contract between the citizens where everybody feels that their entitlements are paid for by their contributions, at least to some degree. When we take in millions of newcomers who have never made any contribution and are largely unemployable so never will make any contribution then not only does that place an enormous strain on public services, it also undermines the contributory principle and fatally wounds the social consent upon which the welfare state is built. Previous waves of migration have not posed this kind of a threat, because the modern welfare state didn't exist back then.

Coping with millions of people fleeing for their lives is going to be a repeated experience for the decades ahead of us as this occurs. Maybe we a should be learning from the current crisis ? I don't think the answer is walls.

So what lesson should we be drawing ? I agree that desperate people are going to keep right on coming. Your solution appears to be to let them come and rely on the 'it always works out fine' principle to work its magic. Lucky you live in Canada and won't have to be on the receiving end of your own policy prescription...

Sassenach wrote:

Throughout history, and especially in Europe,refugees have created crisis for a period, and eventually the crisis abates, and society moves forward.

I'm afraid this panglossion . . .

You win. The rest is just window-dressing. It's quite a window, but it was over at "panglossion."

sass

The only example you have, which you keep on repeating, is the one about the ethnic Germans moving at the end of WW2

.
Just the ethnic Germans? I referred to the Germans in reference to the current German commitment. Just repeated expulsions and migrations of refugees of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and southern Europe were larger than the current problem.
But the whole scale of refugees and expulsions in WWII was gigantic. Far larger than whats going on today. It took a few years for that situation to begin to normalize. I don't think it can be said to have been finally settled till the mid fifties...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War ... _expulsion

Sass

I'm afraid this panglossion outlook doesn't really square with the facts

Well, the facts are that the refugees are a burden. But to characterize it a disaster more consequences will have to occur than the trouble so far. Germans aren't dying as a result of the refugee problem. The German culture hasn't been suddenly turned Arabic... And the Bundesliga is still the Bundesliga...
Lets see how things are in two years...
I don't know why you expect there's any immediate painless remedy to a problem this big.

Sass

Your solution appears to be to let them come and rely on the 'it always works out fine' principle to work its magic.

The ultimate solution is to find a way for them to return home.... Should Europe send in a million strong army to occupy Syria and most of Iraq? For how long? How much would that cost?
But until the solution that allows them to go home arrives, the alternatives seem to be helping them, or keeping them out forcibly and watching while they die. You for that?

Sass

Lucky you live in Canada and won't have to be on the receiving end of your own policy prescription...

I suppose. Although Canada is being reasonably generous in taking 40,000 this year. (That would be like the US taking 400,000, and they are committed to 2,500. ). And the program is trying to integrate them quickly into society. We see examples on the news every night of children beginning school, homes being occupied and families starting English or French training and accreditation of skills.
.... 20.6% of our population are immigrants born elsewhere, so maybe the process isn't seen as difficult because of this reality... Or maybe its because 250,000 immigrants have been coming here each year for decades.. Its part of the culture to accommodate new comers.
I also suppose the dislocation in societies that aren't multicultural is probably greater than what we have... But then the minorities are probably more greatly compelled to assimilate in a society that has an overwhelming cultural core than a mosaic.


Hey Fate, your the Christian. What would Christ council be done with the refugees?
You can quote Scripture if that helps.

rickyp wrote:Hey Fate, your the Christian. What would Christ council be done with the refugees?
You can quote Scripture if that helps.

He would counsel individuals to help them.

The NT is utterly silent concerning how governments should handle refugees.

But the whole scale of refugees and expulsions in WWII was gigantic. Far larger than whats going on today. It took a few years for that situation to begin to normalize. I don't think it can be said to have been finally settled till the mid fifties...

There was a finite limit to the number of potential refugees after WW2. What's the limit on poor people in Africa and Asia ?

I don't know why you expect there's any immediate painless remedy to a problem this big.

I'm not saying there's a painless remedy, I'm saying that a blanket welcome has proven to be a disastrous policy with huge potential downsides which are only just beginning.

The ultimate solution is to find a way for them to return home....

They're never going home. I don't know how many times I have to explain to you how this works before you'll start to acknowledge the fact. Removing undocumented migrants is a VERY difficult task. It requires jumping through dozens of legal and administrative hoops even to arrive at the point of putting ONE migrant on a plane and sending them back. Most European countries are removing a few thousand a year at best, and most of the ones they do remove are those who applied for leave with a valid passport that we're able to impound, which doesn't apply to any of the million+ migrants who have flooded through the Balkans so far. Even if we were to somehow find a way to stop any and all migrants from coming through beginning right this minute it would take decades to filter through all the claims and then successfully remove them again, and by that time they'll have been here so long that they'll qualify for a grant of leave on human rights grounds.

If there's one thing above all else that you need to get through your skull to help you understand this issue it's the fact that this migration is PERMANENT. Once they arrive then the odds against them ever being removed again are vanishingly small. The migrants know this. They don't talk about taking shelter in a safe country until they can go home again, they were already in a safe country in Turkey. Listen to the interviewed and you'll see that they're all talking about starting a new life in Europe. They have no intention of ever going home and our convoluted legal system ensures that we have very little prospect of ever enforcing it. You need to get real Ricky.

But until the solution that allows them to go home arrives, the alternatives seem to be helping them, or keeping them out forcibly and watching while they die. You for that?

This is a false dilemma. The alternative is not to watch them die but to prevent them from leaving Turkey, which is a safe country. But as it happens, yes, I am for that. They made the choice to leave a safe country in order to take a chance on our porous borders. If we make our borders less porous then far fewer of them will make that choice and many fewer lives will be lost.

sass

They're never going home

.

You quote chapter and verse on how difficult it is to expel refugees who don't want to go.
But many will return by them selves. Because that's where their families are. Because that's where they remember life fondly before the wars...
Examples? The United States and illegal Mexican immigrants...
Net Loss of 140,000 from 2009 to 2014; Family Reunification Top Reason for Returnine
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/m ... o-the-u-s/

sass

This is a false dilemma. The alternative is not to watch them die but to prevent them from leaving Turkey, which is a safe country

Ah, lets put all the weight on Turkey shall we?
And why would anyone want to stay in a refugee camp with poor living conditions, inadequate food, no schools for children, little chance to establish a career or a business...
The dilemma is not false. The notion that its "everyone else's problem" is...
If Turkey can't manage and acts in their self interest only , why wouldn't they expel refugees to the west?
It is in the interests of European nations to help as many as they can, and provide as much help as they can because it creates order out of chaos. The chaos you feel is an inadequate (understandably inadequate I believe) response to an under estimated disaster.
But the disaster isn't for Europe. Its for the migrants and refugees.

Sass

If we make our borders less porous then far fewer of them will make that choice and many fewer lives will be lost.

The more desperate they become the greater the risk they will chance. And the more that will die...

Fate

He would counsel individuals to help them

And when those individuals become part of the government, and are guided primarily by their religion, how do they take their moral guidance and apply it to government policy to reflect their morality?
How do you take the Christian morality out of a government populated almost exclusively inhabited by individuals professing that their religion shapes their every action?
Answer: A huge heaping helping of hypocrisy. (Aided by the most narrow of scriptural interpretations possible...)

sass

What's the limit on poor people in Africa and Asia ?

And millions of them will become economic refugees as climate changes...
And yet, there are many who don't want to take action to mitigate climate change...

Sass, the world is about to be swamped by migrant populations in the coming decades.
So much for my panglossian view... I think that the current refugee problem pales with whats to come.

rickyp wrote:Fate

He would counsel individuals to help them

And when those individuals become part of the government, and are guided primarily by their religion, how do they take their moral guidance and apply it to government policy to reflect their morality?
How do you take the Christian morality out of a government populated almost exclusively inhabited by individuals professing that their religion shapes their every action?
Answer: A huge heaping helping of hypocrisy. (Aided by the most narrow of scriptural interpretations possible...)

What tripe.

Would you apply the same standard to abortion? Same-sex marriage? Divorce? Idolatry?

No. "Separation of Church and State!"

You know nothing about the Bible. Stop trying to use it. It's criminal.

Doctor Fate wrote:

rickyp wrote:Fate

He would counsel individuals to help them

And when those individuals become part of the government, and are guided primarily by their religion, how do they take their moral guidance and apply it to government policy to reflect their morality?
How do you take the Christian morality out of a government populated almost exclusively inhabited by individuals professing that their religion shapes their every action?
Answer: A huge heaping helping of hypocrisy. (Aided by the most narrow of scriptural interpretations possible...)

What tripe.

Would you apply the same standard to abortion? Same-sex marriage? Divorce? Idolatry?

No. "Separation of Church and State!"

You know nothing about the Bible. Stop trying to use it. It's criminal.

And offensive.

You quote chapter and verse on how difficult it is to expel refugees who don't want to go.
But many will return by them selves. Because that's where their families are. Because that's where they remember life fondly before the wars...

The only solution you ever offer is wishful thinking. This is bullshit Ricky. We haven't seen massive numbers of Pakistanis, Indians, West Indians, Afghans, Algerians, Turks, Ghanaians, Nigerians or Somalis return home in the years since they arrived en masse in Europe. Quite the opposite in fact. What we've seen is them sending out a call to all their family and friends to join them in the land of milk and honey. There's absolutely no precedent for mass voluntary returns out of all the other mass migrations into Europe, and that's really not surprising. Why the hell would you want to return to Nigeria or Somalia ? Why would you want to go back to Syria and eke out an existence in the rubble ? What possible reason could you have to do that when it means giving up a comfortable existence and access to a modern welfare state ? It's not going to happen and you know it.

Can we have a little honesty please ?

Ah, lets put all the weight on Turkey shall we?
And why would anyone want to stay in a refugee camp with poor living conditions, inadequate food, no schools for children, little chance to establish a career or a business...

Let's just go back and recall why this came up. What happened was that you attempted to employ the moral guilt trip argument by turning it into a hypothetical choice between admitting everybody into Europe or watching them all die. You were attempting to take the moral high ground. I pointed out that they're not all dying in Turkey, which is indisputable, which makes your moral argument into a thinly concealed strawman. So what do you come back with...?

why would anyone want to stay in a refugee camp with poor living conditions, inadequate food, no schools for children, little chance to establish a career or a business...

Given the context, are you now saying that we in Europe have a moral responsibility to provide food, shelter, education and the opportunities to have a career and start a business ?? So we're not just talking about keeping them alive it seems. Funny how all of those things look an awful lot like the kind of things that come with permanent settlement in the West. Careers and businesses eh ? I thought you were saying that they'd all just up sticks and return home as soon as it's safe. Can't see that happening once they've got their careers and businesses to think about, not to mention the problem of having to take their children out of school... Have I just caught you admitting that the migration is going to be permanent ?

The mere fact that somebody is poor does not impose an obligation upon the people of Europe to give them everything they desire. I simply don't accept that we have any moral duty to help anybody who wants to go looking for a better life. Any help we provide needs to be on our own terms. By all means let's lavishly fund the NGOs who provide the camps to make sure conditions are improved, but spare me the faux morality that seeks to pretend the only way we can help people in need is to overload our own welfare state beyond all repair.

The more desperate they become the greater the risk they will chance. And the more that will die...

You don't understand the dynamic here. The reason they take the risk now is because it's widely known that Europe is a soft touch and so the reward amply justifies the risk. That's all there is to it. Nobody who boards a boat in Turkey is facing an imminent threat to their lives, they're just looking for a better one elsewhere. When Merkel announced that everybody was welcome it swept through Africa and the ME like wildfire. All of a sudden the potential reward at the end of the journey was there for all to see, which skewed the risk/reward calculus so much that hundreds of thousands of young men set off immediately to grab it. We need a different message to start circulating, one that says it isn't worth making the trip. If we don't manage that soon then many millions more will be on the move and many thousands of them will perish.

Sass, the world is about to be swamped by migrant populations in the coming decades.
So much for my panglossian view... I think that the current refugee problem pales with whats to come.

All the more reason to regain control of our borders now. We can't accommodate the entire third world Ricky. If we continue to allow the precedent that has now been set to become the new normal then there won't be a Europe that anybody might recognise a few decades hence. Or, more realistically, some form of fascism will emerge in Europe to take the harsh measures that our liberal elites have forced upon us. Now that would be a real disaster, for migrants and native Europeans both, but especially so for the migrants. It's closer than you think, you're just too blinded by dogma to realise.

The solution is quite simple: move them all to Canada. It has lots of open space and (at least) some people who feel an obligation to feed, clothe, shelter, educate, and find jobs for every man, woman, and child on the planet.

You're welcome.