Shameful Display
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Indeed, if the nations of Europe were just able to see past their racism (sorry "xenophobia") they would realize what a golden opportunity this is to replenish their declining populations.
This is often used as an argument in Germany where demographic decline is a mayor concern.
The problem however is that in practive by far the most refugees are relocated to parts of Western Germany that still experience an increase in population (because those federal counties are the wealthiest) instead of bringing them to the shrinking villages in East Germany (one mayor from a city in East Germany received quite a lot of media attention, including from the Guardian, when he asked for more refugees who live in the empty houses of his city). That means that the living expenses in those already growing cities tend to increase, which is not very popular for obvious reasons.
Isn't part of this also because immigrants want to live in big cities with thriving economies? If nothing else, if already fellow refugees, maybe even family and friends, live there, they will want to follow.
This is kinda assholish. Slightly before noon, a single train left the railway station for the border town of Sopron, packed to the brim with migrants.
Except halfway there, the police abruptly stopped the train at Bicske, proclaimed the train's surroundings as an "operative area" (which they later denied) and tried to transfer the migrants into the local refugee camp. Standoff ensued, with the refugees refusing to leave the train, refusing food, refusing even water. Police is apparently going for a tactic of tiring out the migrants until they are too exhausted to resist being taken away.
The Bicske station is still closed off. Journalists are not allowed anywhere near it.
Die Welt said the EU will take 54 thousand refugees off of Hungary's hands. Orbán called it a bluff, saying that no exact numbers have ever been mentioned at the EU meeting.
Back in Budapest, the crowd, Muslims and Christians alike, started praying together. A rightard radical charged into the crowd and started taunting the Hungarians present, calling them traitors and saying that they will hang before the police dragged him away. While he was being dragged away, he screamed at the migrants, calling them worms and gypsies. The crowd refused to be provoked and finished their prayer, cheering at the end.
Orbán held a press release where he said that the quota system is not a solution "and even the politicians who proposed it know that" because everyone would take it as an invitation to migrate here. "It is our Christian obligation to not make promises we cannot keep. We must make it clear that we cannot accept arrivals from countries that aren't at war."
New York Times released a video
where Hungarian policemen stationed at the Serbian border yell at a group of migrants to go back to Serbia and even pepper-spray a child. Police refused to comment.
edited 3rd Sep '15 10:20:34 AM by amitakartok
V
In Britain — Image of dead boy piles pressure on UK's Cameron over Syrian refugees
Cameron said on Wednesday that he did not think the answer was to take more and more refugees but to bring peace and stability to the Middle East, a response widely perceived as inadequate in the face of the unfolding tragedy.
"Mr Cameron, summer is over...Now deal with the biggest crisis facing Europe since WW 2," read a headline on the front page of the Sun, Britain's highest-selling newspaper, above the image of the lifeless boy being carried away.
The change of tone from a newspaper criticised by the United Nations rights chief in April after one of its columnists compared migrants to "cockroaches", was a mark of the emotional impact of the images of human suffering across Europe.
Nicola Blackwood was among several members of parliament from Cameron's Conservative Party who spoke out in favour of a more compassionate stance from the government.
"We cannot be the generation that fails this test of humanity. We must do all we can," she tweeted.
Her colleague Nadhim Zahawi also took to Twitter to express his feelings about the dead Syrian boy: "Pic should make us all ashamed. We have failed in Syria. I am sorry little angel, RIP."
Britain has granted asylum to about 5,000 Syrians who were able to reach the country by their own means since the start of the Syrian war. In addition, it has taken 216 people under a U.N.-backed relocation scheme for vulnerable Syrians. Several European countries have taken in Syrians in greater numbers.
As the outpouring of emotion over the dead toddler put the government on the defensive, Chancellor George Osborne appeared on television to express sympathy and defend what he called Britain's "leading role" in responding to the crisis.
"I was very distressed when I saw it myself this morning, that poor boy lying dead on the beach," Osborne said. "What we need to do to help those desperate families is break up the criminal gangs who traffick in people and led to that boy's death, beat ISIS which is the thing they're fleeing, we've got to make sure the aid is going there to help those families."
Osborne pointed to Britain's contribution in aid to Syrians, which the government says is among the most generous.
Official figures from the Department for International Development (DfID) show that Britain has allocated 900 million pounds ($1.4 billion) since 2012 to U.N. agencies and NGOs helping Syrians, mostly in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
But a growing chorus of critics said more could be done within Britain. The number of people signing a petition on parliament's website calling for more refugees to be taken in was rising fast, from 85,000 early in the morning to 160,000 by lunchtime.
"The UK I know has always shouldered its burden in the world. DfID is doing life-saving work abroad but we can and must do more at home," tweeted Ruth Davidson, a member of the Scottish parliament and leader of the Scottish Conservatives.
Yvette Cooper, one of four candidates to lead the opposition Labour Party, called for Britain to take in an additional 10,000 refugees, drawing support including from political opponents.
"The Prime Minister is right to point to the need to continue to tackle the causes; and Yvette Cooper and others are also right to call for the UK to take in more refugees," wrote Conservative legislator Jeremy Lefroy on his blog. "It is not either/or. We need to do both."
Did that photo also appear in the Hungarian News?
edited 3rd Sep '15 10:25:23 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On
A nice butterfly
That photo has been all over the place. Even here.
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
Beware the Crazy Man.
@Zarastro - Is there any particular reason why the refugees aren't being resettled in the East?
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...
V
The refugees don't want to go there, I guess.
edited 3rd Sep '15 10:39:10 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On
Does anyone in Germany or Hungary realize the irony in putting the migrants in trains and relocating them to camps?
A nice butterfly
I am not sure that is "Irony"
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
I can't exactly blame anyone for wanting to settle in the best possible place, but "asylum shopping" can also feel pretty frustrating.
The most in need refugees are the ones who can't pick which country. The ones who can't afford smugglers.
Then again, it's a lesser strain on social nets to get the refugees who at least can get to Germany. Sort of like survival of the fittest.
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
Beware the Crazy Man.
@Greenmantle - Zarastro implied Germany was placing them in specific locations, which is why I asked.
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...
A procrastination in of itself
X4 The Germans aren't part of the whole "trains of migrants to camps" from my understanding, and the image issues that it would create if they were, may well be part of why.
edited 3rd Sep '15 12:24:00 PM by Silasw
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
There is a system called "Königssteiner Schlüssel" (Königssteiner formula) which allocates both the money which rich federal counties pay to poorer counties and the allocation of refugees.
The idea behind this is that the poorer countries have to take a lesser financial burden (refugees might bring long-term benefits, but in the short run, they are expensive to care for), so most refugees go to the rich Western and Southern part, of course those poorer counties are suffering from population delcline, so this makes it even worse. And bringing those refugees to e.g. Munich puts strain on the already incredibly overblown real estate market.
In Germany refugees are first brought to asylum shelters, where they have to live until they get a permission to stay. Unfortunately there is currently a severe shortage in places, because the current number of refugees is expected to be at least twice as high as the last record (which happened during the Yugoslavian Wars) so some refugees have to sleep in tents at least for some time.
Eit: Fixed "immobile market"
edited 3rd Sep '15 4:11:00 PM by Zarastro
Beware the Crazy Man.
Perhaps they can build new camps in the east and have the federal govt fund it so that it doesn't tax the poorer states?
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...
Orbán said in Brussels that the migrants all want to go to Germany, therefore the migrant crisis is Germany's problem, not Europe's.
Martin Schulz and Merkel both told him to shut it. Schulz said that this isn't Europe's crisis but the national governments', who cannot and do not even want to participate in European solidarity. He also said that, if the European Parliament and European Council were to have authority to divide refugees between member states, there wouldn't be a crisis.
Merkel, on the other hand, reminded Orbán that Hungary must abide by the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of migrants. DAMN. FUCKING. STRAIGHT.
Migrant train is still standing at Bicske. Five hundred are on board, lots of children. Police and immigration office issued a joint statement that the reason why the train was stopped is because they want to ID check everyone on board, which they couldn't perform in Budapest due to the migrants' sheer numbers. Authorities say that the number of migrants who entered Hungary this year has exceeded 160,000 as of today, of whom 146,000 requested asylum (which is required to avoid an automatic expulsion from the country).
Austrian volunteers are organizing a mass migrant transport operation on Facebook and Twitter.
edited 3rd Sep '15 3:25:37 PM by amitakartok
Is immobile used like this in English or should you use real estate instead?
There's also a difference between refugee shelters, which are intended to be temporary though stay can extend really long, and living spaces immigrants of all kinds choose for themselves, within certain restrictions. One can certainly argue that financing should be more centralized and immigration to economically weak regions encouraged but the question remains if they even want to stay there.
edited 3rd Sep '15 3:28:54 PM by Mastah
You gotta hand it to Merkel, she knows when there is an opportunity to get the spotlight.
In the light of terrist attacks on asylum shelters, she has been widely (and rightly) criticized for condemning these attack way too late, whereas her coalition partners have immediately taken a stance.
Now she tries to take the initiative in Europe regarding a coordinated refugee policy and by doing so (and speaking out against Orban) she gets all the good press again.
@Shinra: That's difficult because of the level of federalization in Germany, refugees are responsibility of the counties, and those counties never surrender sovereignity willingly. That being said it is finally time that someone calls out Orban for his bs, considering his party is in the same parliamentary group with Merkels party in the EU parliament, she should have tried to influence him sooner.
Oh and EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini said that the EU might use military actions against smugglers in the future. I don't know if that'll make a difference, but I guess in these times, anything is better than doing nothing.
edited 3rd Sep '15 4:22:31 PM by Zarastro
...so? If I would've been in her place, I wouldn't have condemned at all. Not because I like what those pricks are doing but because I see "condemnation" as a completely useless, purely symbolic gesture that doesn't actually achieve anything other than patting myself on the shoulder for my good deed of the day.
A procrastination in of itself
I find it darkly amusing the Hunagry has camps, but German has shelters.
edited 3rd Sep '15 5:45:06 PM by Silasw
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
Well, quite a lot of them are empty schools, so I don't think the term "camp" would be appropiate.
Well, it is obvious that this is not going to affect the criminals, but it is seen as a gesture for those who are fighting racism, which is significant because in some parts of East Germany, the Nazis have significant local support and speaking out against them is not so easy. AL lot of Germans are voluntarily helping refugees and many voiced their disappointment about Merkel's silence.
edited 3rd Sep '15 6:02:07 PM by Zarastro
This is likely going to get worse. They've got migrants from all over the place heading over there, not just Syrians.
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
Beware the Crazy Man.
Syrians are going to be the plurality though for some time to come.
What worries me is that Algeria might falter in the near future. It's one thing to have chaos in Libya. It's an order of magnitude worse (all around but especially for refugee flow into Europe across the med) for Algiers to lose control. Then Spain and France might be getting even more coverage that Italy after that...
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...
You know, as bad as this is... as an Italian, it's somehow reassuring to see all the other countries in the EU finally treating this as an emergency. I have little sympathy for my own government, but we have been repeating "You guys, this refugee thing has become an Europe-wide emergency, or at least will become one very shortly, a little help here?" for years. :/
At least now I hope somebody more competent than us will be put in charge of the whole thing.
edited 4th Sep '15 2:13:11 AM by Cozzer
Isn't Ireland just now recovering the population they had back before the famine...? If anything Ireland should be happy to receive a working force
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes