A European Migrant Reckoning: Editorial, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 10, 2016 — Europe’s migration crisis may have reached a turning point.
Europe's Planned Migrant Revolution: Yves Mamou, Gatestone Institute, Nov. 12, 2016— Everyone now knows — even German Chancellor Angela Merkel — that she committed a political mistake in opening the doors of her country to more than a million migrants from the the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Syrian Refugees: the Romance and the Reality: Margaret Wente, Globe & Mail, Oct. 1, 2016 — Jim Munson has one of those refugee stories that warm your heart.
Shame and Refugees: Burak Bekdil, Hürriyet Daily News, Sept. 9, 2016— [Turkish] President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is right: there is something shameful about the refugee crisis. But he is wrong about whose shame it is.
After Snub, Turkey’s President Threatens to Unleash Another Migrant Surge on West: Michael Birnbaum & Brian Murphy, Washington Post, Nov. 25, 2016
Save the Refugees on the Berm: Jason Cone, New York Times, Aug. 10, 2016
Quelle Surprise: France’s Political Right Turn: Konrad Yakabuski, Globe & Mail, Nov. 24, 2016
Europe's Terror Challenges: The Returnee Threat: Abigail R. Esman, IPT News, Oct. 19, 2016
Editorial
Wall Street Journal, Nov. 10, 2016
Europe’s migration crisis may have reached a turning point. With populist and far-right parties on the march across the Continent, mainstream European leaders are starting to listen to voters’ concerns about absorbing more than a million newcomers from the Middle East and Africa. It’s about time.
One sign came Sunday, when the German Interior Ministry called for aggressive interception of refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa. “The elimination of the prospect of reaching the European coast could convince migrants to avoid embarking on the life-threatening and costly journey,” an Interior Ministry official told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
The Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy is one of two major routes used by migrants to reach Europe, and it is by far the more perilous. With revenues down, smugglers are stuffing more would-be migrants aboard unseaworthy boats for a crossing on choppy waters that can take several hours. One in every 44 doesn’t make it.
Even so, some 164,000 crossed through the Libya-Italy route this year. The German proposal could dramatically reduce that number by rerouting intercepted migrants back to African countries such as Egypt and Tunisia. Currently, intercepted boats are towed to the Italian coast. Once rerouted, the migrants would be allowed to apply for asylum through legal channels. This model, which we have long championed, has the benefit of imposing order on a chaotic situation. It also reduces the incentives for the smuggler business model, since the traffickers’ clients—the migrants—will understand that they are wasting their money and risking their lives in vain.
Which brings us to the second migrant route, from Turkey to the Balkans via the Greek islands. About 170,000 have arrived via the so-called Western Balkan Corridor so far this year, and here, too, there are signs that European officials are getting serious. To wit, Austrian Defense Minister Hans Peter Doskozil over the weekend warned that a Brussels deal with Ankara to intercept migrants may not last, and that European governments must be prepared to police EU borders on their own.
Under the current deal, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has agreed to stanch the flow and accept some repatriated migrants in exchange for €6 billion ($6.54 billion) in European funding in addition to visa-free travel to the EU for Turkish citizens down the road and renewed talks on Ankara’s accession to the bloc.
So far the deal has held, but there is no guarantee that Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarian regime will honor it indefinitely. He can always reopen the refugee spigot if he is displeased with Brussels. Hence Mr. Doskozil’s warning. “I have always said that the EU-Turkey deal should only be a stop-gap measure until the EU is in the position to effectively protect its external borders,” he told the Bild newspaper. “The time to organize for that is ever closer.” Amen.
It’s an open question whether either of these proposals will become European policy. That depends in large part on Angela Merkel. The German Chancellor has clashed with other officials in her own government in the past to defend her open-borders invitation, and there is still no sign that she is prepared to cap the total number of migrants she is willing to accept. But if she has anything resembling a political survival instinct, Mrs. Merkel would close the gates before Germany’s election season kicks off next year.
EUROPE'S PLANNED MIGRANT REVOLUTION
Yves Mamou
Gatestone Institute, Nov. 12, 2016
Everyone now knows — even German Chancellor Angela Merkel — that she committed a political mistake in opening the doors of her country to more than a million migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. It was, politically, a triple mistake:
Merkel may have thought that humanitarian motives (the war in Syria and Iraq, the refugee problem) could help Germany openly pursue a migration policy that was initially launched and conducted in the shadows. Merkel mainly helped to accelerate the defense mechanisms against the transformation of German society and culture into a "multicultural" space — the "multi" being a segregated, Islamic way of life. The anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now a big player on the German political scene. Merkel raised anxiety all over Europe about the migrant problem. She might even have encouraged the United Kingdom to Brexit and pushed central European countries such as Hungary to the point of seceding from the European Union.
For many years, Germany was the country in Europe most open to immigration. According to Eurostat, the official data body of the European Union, between 2005 to 2014, Germany welcomed more than 6 million people. Not all six million people came from Middle East. The vast majority of them, however, were not from Europe. Clandestine immigration is not, of course, included in these figures.
Other countries also participated in a migrant race. In the same time frame, 2005-2014, three million people immigrated to France, or around 300,000 people a year. In Spain, the process was more chaotic: more than 700,000 migrants in 2005; 840,000 in 2006; almost a million in 2007 and then a slow decrease to 300,000 a year up to 2014.
The "refugee crisis," in fact, helped to make apparent what was latent: that behind humanitarian reasons, a huge official immigration policy in Europe was proceeding apace. For economic reasons, Europe had openly decided years ago to encourage a new population to enter, supposedly to compensate for the dramatic projected shrinking of Europe's native population.
According to population projections made by Eurostat in 2013, without migrants, Europe's population would decline from 507.3 million in 2015 to 399.2 million by 2080. In roughly 65 years, a hundred million people (20%) would disappear. Country by country, the figures seemed even…more terrifying. By 2080, in Germany, 80 million people today would become 50 million. In Spain, 46.4 million people would become 30 million. In Italy, 60 million would decline to 39 million. Some countries would be more stable: by 2080, France, with 66 million in 2015 would grow to 68.7 million, and England, with 67 million in 2015, would shrink only to approximately 65 million.
Is migration in itself a "bad" thing? Of course not. Migration from low-income countries to higher-income countries is almost a law of nature. As long as the number of births and deaths remains larger than the number of migrants, the result is considered beneficial. But when migration becomes the major contributor to population growth, the situation changes and what should be a simple evolution becomes a revolution.
It is a triple revolution: Because the number of migrants is huge. The 2015 United Nations World Population Prospects report states: "Between 2015 and 2050, total births in the group of high-income countries are projected to exceed deaths by 20 million, while the net gain in migrants is projected to be 91 million. Thus, in the medium variant, net migration is projected to account for 82 per cent of population growth in the high-income countries."
Because of the culture of the migrants. Most of them belong to a Muslim and Arabic (or Turkish) culture, which was in an old and historical conflict with the (still?) dominant Christian culture of Europe. And mainly, because this Muslim migration process happens at a historic moment of a radicalization of the world's Muslim population.
Because each European state is in position of weakness. In the process of building the European Union, national states stopped considering themselves as the indispensable integrator tool of different regional cultures inside a national frame. On the contrary, to prevent the return of large-scale chauvinistic wars such as World War I and World War II, all European nation-states engaged in the EU process and decided to program their own disappearance by transferring more and more power to a bureaucratic, unelected and untransparent executive Commission in Brussels. Not surprisingly, alongside Islamist troubles in all European countries, weak European states have now to cope with the strong resurgence of secessionist and regionalist movements, such as Corsica in France, Catalonia in Spain, and Scotland and Wales in United Kingdom.
Why did France, Germany and many other countries of the European Union opt for massive immigration, without saying it and without letting voters debate it? Perhaps because they thought a new population of taxpayers could help save their healthcare and retirement systems. To avoid the bankruptcy of social security and the social troubles of "dissatisfied retirees," the EU took the risk of transforming more or less homogenous nation-states into multicultural societies.
Politicians and economists seem blind to multicultural conflicts. They seem not even to suspect the importance of identity questions and religious topics. These questions belong to nations and since WW II, "the nation" is considered "bad." In addition, politicians and economists appear to think any cultural and religious problem is a secondary question. Despite the growing threat of Islamist terrorism (internal and imported from the Middle East), for example, they seem to persist in thinking that any violent domestic conflict can be dissolved in a "full-employment" society. Most of them seem to believe in U.S. President Barack Obama's imaginary jobs-for-jihadists solution to terrorism.
To avoid cultural conflicts (Muslim migrants vs non-Muslim natives) Germany could, of course, have imported people from the countries of Europe where there were no jobs: France, Spain, Italy. But this "white" workforce is considered "expensive" by big companies (construction, care-givers and all services…) who need cheap imported workers no matter the area (Middle East, Turkey, Northern Africa) they are coming from. Internal migration inside the EU would not have solved either the main problem of a projected shrinking European population as a whole. Added to that, in a world where competition is transferred partially from nations to global regions, the might of European countries might be thought to lie in their population numbers…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
SYRIAN REFUGEES: THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY
Margaret Wente
Globe & Mail, Oct. 1, 2016
Jim Munson has one of those refugee stories that warm your heart. He belongs to a private group in Ottawa that is sponsoring a Syrian family. Last winter, he was asked to make sure the boys got skates and hockey sticks. So he found them skates and hockey sticks and took them skating on the canal. Their first words in English were, “He shoots, he scores!” If only it were all that easy. Canada is held up as a model to the world for our warm welcome to Syrian refugees. People marvel that Canadians are clamouring to sponsor refugee families, sight unseen. In Canada, people complain not that we’re taking in too many refugees, but that we’re taking in too few, and eager sponsors are still waiting.
We are good people. But it’s a bit too soon for self-congratulation. Across Canada, refugees have been turning to food banks because they can’t make ends meet. Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank found that Syrian families have less than $400 a month left after they pay the rent. In Montreal, about 2,000 refugees depend on Moisson Montreal, the country’s largest food bank. In Winnipeg, Yasmin Ali, who runs the city’s newest food bank, told the CBC, “This is very stressful for them because I guess they didn’t expect this.”
To be fair, the federal government is in a bind. Its subsidies are pegged to provincial welfare rates. If refugees were to get better treatment than Canadians, Canadians would get cranky. Canada has a robust network of social-service agencies. But none were prepared for the deluge, and they didn’t get more funding to deal with it. In 2014, Canada resettled about 13,500 refugees; this year the number, from all countries, is expected to be more than 50,000. Language training, translators, trauma and mental-health care – all are in short supply. Refugees can’t find jobs until they learn English (or French in Quebec), but some language schools have run out of money to meet the demand.
“We need more than love,” Mr. Munson, who heads the Senate standing committee on human rights, told me. His committee has been monitoring the refugee program. To say the least, it has a lot of growing pains. In his view, we should be cautious about exporting the Canadian model while we figure out how to address them. On top of that, the rate of processing new refugees has slowed to a crawl. As hopeful families live in limbo abroad, sponsorship groups are increasingly fed up with an unresponsive immigration bureaucracy.
John Bryan belongs to a Toronto group that has agreed to sponsor a Syrian family currently living in Saudi Arabia. They’ve formed strong bonds. They’ve even arranged for one of the children, an engineering student, to go to York University. Now they have been abruptly informed that the family won’t be processed for three years or more. Why? Perhaps lack of resources, or perhaps bureaucratic logistics. Whatever the case, he told me, “The government made a commitment and they’re not going to keep it.”
Privately sponsored refugees do better than government-sponsored ones, in part because they have a better web of support. But for both groups, the money runs out after a year. Then what happens? The answer depends on employability. And the early signs aren’t very good. “Basically I can’t refer them to any employer because they don’t have basic communication skills,” one settlement worker told the Huffington Post. Also, few Syrian refugees are highly educated. (One survey of refugees in Hamilton found that two-thirds of those aged 15 and older had a high-school education or less.) And in some parts of Canada, especially Alberta, the job market is terrible.
“The last thing anybody wants to see is people moving from one government program to a provincial welfare roll,” Mr. Munson says. But it’s likely that more than a few will. No one expects the newcomers to be self-sufficient right away. That’s not why we took them in. We took them in because we have a moral obligation to ease the suffering of people who have survived an unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe. We owe it to them – and to ourselves – to give them the best support we can, and also to be realistic about what we can take on and what we can expect.
It would be foolish to open the doors even wider (as some people think we should) while so many newcomers are struggling to find purchase. It would also be smart of us to remember that integration takes more than a generation, and that not all immigrant groups are equally successful, no matter how much help they get. The Vietnamese boat people thrived in Canada. How will the Syrians fare? We’ll find out in 20 or 30 years. Meantime, we shouldn’t underestimate the challenge.
Burak Bekdil
Hürriyet Daily News, Sept. 9, 2016
[Turkish] President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is right: there is something shameful about the refugee crisis. But he is wrong about whose shame it is. Erdoğan repeated his clichéd rhetoric at the G-20 Summit in China that "the West's attitude over the refugee problem is disgraceful." Once again, he accused the West of racism.
… Since the beginning of the Syrian refugee crisis, Mr. Erdoğan has claimed that it was (Christian) Europe's moral obligation to accept a big part of the refugees. Because the refugees want to go to (Christian) Europe? Why? We all know why. But why is it not the neighboring Muslim countries' moral obligation to host overwhelmingly Muslim refugees in their own Muslim lands? Jordan's (late) King Abdullah wrote in his memoirs: The tragedy of the Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false and unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs and 400 million Muslims would instantly and miraculously come to their rescue.
Decades later, Syrians fleeing the civil war in their homeland are not tempted into the same tragedy: They want to use Turkey and other Muslim countries as stepping stones to reach better, more civilized lands. Is it not neighboring Muslim countries' moral obligation to host Muslim refugees in their own lands? First of all, that is an Islamic self-insult: Why do Muslims risk their lives trying to cross into the predominantly Christian West, which probably most of them have viewed as "evil?" Why do our Muslim Syrian brothers not want to live with us? Why do they want to risk their lives and flee to Christian lands?
Even totally irrelevant, faraway non-Muslim countries like Brazil, Chile and Venezuela have said that they would volunteer to take thousands of Syrian refugees. Any Muslim refugees in oil-rich Muslim Gulf countries? How many in the Saudi kingdom that is the custodian of Sunni Islam and is the seat of the holiest Muslim shrines in Mecca and Medina? And, even if they had invited Syrian refugees, would the poor souls prefer to be accepted by Christian lands or by the custodian of Sunni Islam? We all know the answer. The Muslim refugees cannot even stand Turkey, which is heaven compared to the custodian of Sunni Islam.
And for all that self-humiliating picture, Mr. Erdoğan blames the West for having taken "only" over 250,000 refugees as opposed to almost none in the rich Gulf. Why really do Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman keep employing large numbers of Asian workers but have not taken even a few dozen Syrian Muslim refugees? Muslims in this part of the world view the Christian West both as 'evil' and as the most decent place to live.
The moral story is about a grandiose, multi-faceted Middle Eastern dilemma: Muslims in this part of the world view the Christian West as "evil," yet they know quite well that Christian lands are the most decent places to live economically and politically, while wealthy Arab states are programmed to turn their back on the plight of fellow Muslims who are in need of a helping hand and Islamists blame it all on the West – the easiest thing they, too, are programmed to do reflexively. The legitimate questions here are: Why do "West-hating" Muslims want to go to the "evil" Christian West? Why do their fellow Muslim Arab nations not raise even a helping finger, let alone a hand? And why should non-Muslims pay for exclusively intra-Muslim wars and the wave of migrants these wars create?
After Snub, Turkey’s President Threatens to Unleash Another Migrant Surge on West: Michael Birnbaum & Brian Murphy, Washington Post, Nov. 25, 2016 —Turkey’s president warned Europe on Friday that his nation could unleash another migrant crisis in the West, sharply raising the stakes after E.U. lawmakers called for a suspension in membership talks with Turkey.
Save the Refugees on the Berm: Jason Cone, New York Times, Aug. 10, 2016— For millions of Syrian civilians trapped for five years by a relentless war, mere lifesaving aid, let alone refuge, is out of reach. But for the 75,000 displaced people caught on Jordan’s desert frontier with Syria, salvation is only yards away. Unlike many of their fellow citizens, they can be saved. So why have they been effectively abandoned?
Quelle Surprise: France’s Political Right Turn: Konrad Yakabuski, Globe & Mail, Nov. 24, 2016 —In a year of shocking ballot-box upsets, what’s truly shocking is that anyone could be so shocked by another one. Yet, France’s political establishment was knocked off its chair by François Fillon’s first-place finish in last Sunday’s opening round of the Republicans’ primary. With it, every assumption about the country’s 2017 presidential election went down the drain.
Europe's Terror Challenges: The Returnee Threat: Abigail R. Esman, IPT News, Oct. 19, 2016— Another week, another barrage of headlines illustrating the depth of Europe's terror threat.
