On To Germany… Or Somewhere?

UN warns Hungary it faces a wave of 42,000 more migrants (Associated Press, September 8th)

Leaders of the United Nations refugee agency warned Tuesday that Hungary faces a bigger wave of 42,000 asylum seekers in the next 10 days and will need international help to provide shelter on its border, where newcomers already are complaining bitterly about being left to sleep in frigid fields.

Officials from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it was sending tents, beds and thermal blankets to Hungary’s border with Serbia, where for the past two days frustrated groups from the Middle East, Asia and Africa have ignored police instructions to stay put and instead have marched on a highway north to Budapest. {…}

Hungary’s inconsistent reception near the border village of Roszke has left many hundreds waiting for buses that arrive too infrequently, leaving large numbers stranded at night. Officers have found it increasingly difficult to keep them within a designated field. Some have pushed through police lines and walk north deeper into Hungary, while others head south back to Serbia where camps are sometimes better organized.

On Monday, a few hundred people broke through police lines near Roszke and, despite being hit with pepper spray, made it onto the main highway linking Serbia with Budapest. It happened again Tuesday night following a day of scuffles with officers in which one man was injured amid a stampede.

Surge Of Refugees In Europe Could Be Just The First Wave (NPR, September 8th)

The Syrian refugee crisis now descending on Europe may just be the beginning, says Rae McGrath, who heads Mercy Corps’ operation in northern Syria and Turkey.

The Syrians reaching Europe are only a small percentage of the 4 million who have fled to neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan over the past four years. {…}

As more Syrians reach northern Europe, it is encouraging more to try.

“The success stories of people who are reaching Europe are influencing those still in Syria, even those who are in safe areas,” says Rami Nakhla, a Syrian activist who was granted asylum in the U.S. and now lives in Washington.

When his brother applied for asylum in Germany to join his wife, German Embassy officials in Turkey told him his appointment to review his application would take a year. So, he hired a smuggler and joined the wave of refugees headed to Europe.

More European Countries Are Bringing Back Border Controls (Huffington Post, September 14th)

Germany, Austria, Slovakia and the Netherlands have all announced that they will reinstate temporary border controls — breaking from a core tenet of EU policy to keep borders open. These decisions will also create major repercussions for the hundreds of thousands of refugees who continue to seek new lives across central and western Europe.

Germany temporarily shut down all trains coming from Austria Sunday evening to only allow EU citizens and those with valid travel documents to pass the southern border. German police began patrolling crossing points from Austria shortly thereafter, causing major traffic delays.

“If Germany carries out border controls, Austria must put strengthened border controls in place,” Austria’s Chancellor Werner Faymann said Monday. Several hundred people spent the night at Salzburg’s train station. Slovakian officials also put in place temporary border controls along the country’s frontiers with Hungary and Austria. Hundreds of police were dispatched Monday to patrol the border. Later Monday, Dutch authorities followed suit and announced they would increase the number of border controls.

Croatia opens borders, welcomes sudden stream of refugees (CNN, September 16th)

“Come on guys, don’t be scared,” a Croatian police officer says as he urges a dozen worried migrants and refugees to step across the border into his country.

Again and again Wednesday, this scene repeated itself in cornfields straddling the non-demarcated border between Serbia and Croatia. People who have endured so much worried and wondered whether they should take those fateful steps.

‘This is not the road to Europe’: Croatian ministers close border with Serbia as they struggle to cope with surge of 11,000 migrants who were turned away from Hungary (Daily Mail, September 17th)

Croatia has been forced to close almost all of its borders with Serbia as it struggles to cope with the surge of migrants, telling them to keep away as ‘this is not the road to Europe’.

Authorities have said they had no other option than to close seven of the eight road crossings after 11,000 people, who were turned away from Hungary, flooded into the country in a matter of days.

Croatia has become the route of choice for those hoping to reach western Europe, but it has struggled to cope – and Ranko Ostojic, Croatia’s interior minister, warned those still planning on making the trip that it was not the easy route to places like Germany and Sweden.

Don’t come here anymore. Stay in refugee centers in Serbia and Macedonia and Greece,’ Ostojic said. ‘This is not the road to Europe. Buses can’t take you there. It’s a lie.’ {…}

This morning helmeted riot police tried to control growing crowds of refugees at the Croatian border town of Tovarnik, as thousands of migrants jostled to board buses after crossing into the country from neighbouring Serbia.

Drone footage captures the tear gas, tanks, tents and sheer scale of the Hungarian border fence keeping desperate migrants out (Daily Mail, September 17th)

Spectacular drone footage captured the moment defiant migrants were tear gassed by police at the Hungarian border yesterday and shows the staggering scale of the great wall of Europe erected to keep them out.

The film, shot for MailOnline yesterday afternoon, records the clouds of gas and pepper spray deployed by Hungarian police as they violently clashed with protesting refugees.

The footage provides a bird’s-eye-view of the 110-mile barrier, dubbed the new Iron Curtain, erected by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to keep refugees out.

Hungary closed its border with Serbia two days ago with tensions rising as migrants who have already travelled thousands of miles were blocked from proceeding on their way, mostly to Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has guaranteed a home to Syrians, but there are also many Afghans and Iraqis among the refugees.

Sweden’s ugly immigration problem (Margaret Wente, Globe & Mail, September 11th)

“There has been a lack of integration among non-European refugees,” he told me. Forty-eight per cent of immigrants of working age don’t work, he said. Even after 15 years in Sweden, their employment rates reach only about 60 per cent. Sweden has the biggest employment gap in Europe between natives and non-natives.

In Sweden, where equality is revered, inequality is now entrenched. Forty-two per cent of the long-term unemployed are immigrants, Mr. Sanandaji said. Fifty-eight per cent of welfare payments go to immigrants. Forty-five per cent of children with low test scores are immigrants. Immigrants on average earn less than 40 per cent of Swedes. The majority of people charged with murder, rape and robbery are either first- or second-generation immigrants. “Since the 1980s, Sweden has had the largest increase in inequality of any country in the OECD,” Mr. Sanandaji said.

Let them come and they will build it (Paul Romer, September 17th)

When doing the right thing (“be generous”) seems to make the problem worse (“more will come”), it is time to pull back and reconsider. What is the real problem? What would actually be the right thing?

The real problem is not that people are queuing up to get into Europe. Rather, it is that tens or hundreds of millions of people live in a place where a failing government precludes any chance at the basics that any person wants: safety, dignity, opportunity, hope.

When someone desperate for these basics shows up on our doorstep, our emotions naturally encourage us to respond with charity. When you see someone in desperate circumstances, you offer help.

Unfortunately, this innate emotional response is a very bad guide about how to respond to problems at the scale of tens or hundreds of millions of people. At this scale, we have to focus on opportunity, which can turn all these people into the resource that solves the problem. Our impulse toward charity leads inevitably to a lottery that is demeaning, wasteful, and horribly inequitable.

And don’t kid yourself. Only an official from a Kafka novel could believe that this lottery becomes more humane if you layer in bureaucrats tasked with separating the worthy refugees from mere migrants with the temerity to want for their children the safety, hope, dignity, and opportunity that we want for our own children.