# Mass immigration- what's to be done? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 4, 2015, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909 "2015-09-04T15:24:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/161 "2015-09-06T16:44:49Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > No, it doesn’t. Someone fleeing from Syria to Turkey is definitely a refugee. That exact someone “fleeing” from Hungary to Germany is an economic migrant. Once they are in Turkey, do they cease to be refugees? ---
**Author:** ![Hiker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3be4f8/32.png) [@Hiker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hiker)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/162 "2015-09-06T16:46:28Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > No, it doesn’t. If you think that once you’re a “refugee”, you’re allowed by Geneva Convention to migrate to any country you want, you’re obviously wrong. But I have never said that. Then again, if you think that a refugee after crossing the next border stops being one, you are obviously wrong. Once again: Can you back that claim up with a cite? ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/163 "2015-09-06T16:48:08Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Once they are in Turkey, do they cease to be refugees? When they flee from Syria/Libya, they are refugees. I believe I said that several times in this thread. When they flee from Turkey, Greece, Hungary, Serbia etc. they are economic migrants. Glad I can make it clearer for you. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/164 "2015-09-06T16:49:40Z")
> [@Hiker](#): > > But I have never said that. Then again, if you think that a refugee after crossing the next border stops being one, you are obviously wrong. That’s a restatement of the same thing. You think that someone fleeing a country as a refugee is entitled to continue on to any other country because of that “refugee” status. That’s absurd on its face. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/165 "2015-09-06T16:50:36Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > When they flee from Syria/Libya, they are refugees. I believe I said that several times in this thread. When they flee from Turkey, Greece, Hungary, Serbia etc. they are economic migrants. Glad I can make it clearer for you. It seems ludicrous that refugees cease to be refugees when they still can’t go back to their home countries. Did Jews fleeing from Europe cease to be refugees if they went from the USA to Canada? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/166 "2015-09-06T16:50:53Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > When they flee from Syria/Libya, they are refugees. I believe I said that several times in this thread. When they flee from Turkey, Greece, Hungary, Serbia etc. they are economic migrants. Glad I can make it clearer for you. The problem for you is that even the European nations that do want to help are not making that distinction. > **[Migrant crisis: UK aid budget will help fund refugees response - Osborne](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34167271)** > > Money from the UK's international aid budget is to be used to help councils to house refugees from Syria, Chancellor George Osborne says. Glad to make it clear that the ones that are dealing with the issue are not getting the peculiar definitions that you mantain. They are indeed ignoring you. [http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/sep/05/refugee-crisis-austrians-greet-thousands-off-hungarian-buses-live-updates](http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/sep/05/refugee-crisis-austrians-greet-thousands-off-hungarian-buses-live-updates) ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/167 "2015-09-06T16:53:03Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > It seems ludicrous that refugees cease to be refugees when they still can’t go back to their home countries. Did Jews fleeing from Europe cease to be refugees if they went from the USA to Canada? Yes. Can you give me an example of Canada receiving someone as a refugee when they came from the US? ---
**Author:** ![Hiker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3be4f8/32.png) [@Hiker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hiker)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/168 "2015-09-06T16:54:53Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > That’s a restatement of the same thing. You think that someone fleeing a country as a refugee is entitled to continue on to any other country because of that “refugee” status. That’s absurd on its face. Do not tell me what I think. You do not understand me well enough for that. I believe that if the number of refugees arriving from Syria in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey is threatening to overburden these countries’ capacity to help, the richer countries are under a moral obligation to share that burden. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/169 "2015-09-06T16:55:11Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > The problem for you is that even the European nations that do want to help are not making that distinction. They are. They are taking them as economic migrants, under special circumstances. Which is fine, it’s their choice. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/170 "2015-09-06T16:56:16Z")
> [@Hiker](#): > > I believe that if the number of refugees arriving from Syria in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey is threatening to overburden these countries’ capacity to help, the richer countries are under a moral obligation to share that burden. The “moral obligation” to take in some economic migrants - maybe. Each country decides for itself. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/171 "2015-09-06T17:02:45Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > They are. They are taking them as economic migrants, under special circumstances. Which is fine, it’s their choice. You need a quote from the articles cited claiming that, I checked again and they are calling them refugees, your denial is now just a willful one. ---
**Author:** ![Hiker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3be4f8/32.png) [@Hiker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hiker)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/172 "2015-09-06T17:09:49Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > The “moral obligation” to take in some economic migrants - maybe. Each country decides for itself. If you must call the refugees “economic migrants” in order to justify your unwillingness to help, it says something about the confidence you have in your position. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/173 "2015-09-06T17:17:42Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Yes. Can you give me an example of Canada receiving someone as a refugee when they came from the US? Much to the infamy for posterity, Canadians refused to accept Jewish refugees, so that is mostly a moot point. [http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1174272-canada-turned-away-jewish-refugees](http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1174272-canada-turned-away-jewish-refugees) [http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/quebechistory/readings/CanadaandJewishRefugeesinthe1930s.html](http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/quebechistory/readings/CanadaandJewishRefugeesinthe1930s.html) Incidentally just because the refugees had to stop in places like Casablanca in Morocco that did not mean that they automatically became “economic migrants”, maybe you should see the movie Casablanca, but not for the fictional example of the move, but for the real European **refugees** that worked in the movie. They never were called “economic immigrants” as only you prefer, but once again, historians are not like you and the countries that do want to help are not using your sorry definitions. > **[1942: 'Casablanca' premieres as Allies land in Africa](https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2014-11-26/ty-article/.premium/1942-casablanca-premieres-as-allies-land-in-africa/0000017f-efe1-da6f-a77f-ffefb13d0000)** > > Central Casting couldn't have created the kind of verisimilitude the actual refugees exhibited in this Hollywood blockbuster. > [@](#): > > ``` > "Casablanca" is not an overtly Jewish film and none of the principal characters in it are apparently Jewish, yet most of the individuals behind the camera, as well as many of the actors playing supporting parts, were. **What’s more, the film is infused with the dread and desperation felt by refugees and freedom fighters attempting to escape the Third Reich’s net.** > > ``` > > The movie’s producer was Hal Wallis (born Aaron Blum Wolowicz), and its director the Jewish, Hungarian-born émigré Michael Curtiz. The Oscar-winning screenplay was written by the twin brothers Philip and Julius Epstein and Howard Koch, and the music by the Viennese-born Max Steiner. > > Even the second-unit director, who created the film’s opening montage, with images of wartime Paris and a map of the path taken by refugees to Morocco, was Jewish – Don Siegel, best known for directing the “Dirty Harry” movies starring Clint Eastwood. > > Personnel more authentic than location > \*\* > If “Casablanca” has an authenticity to it, it’s most likely due to the large number of refugee actors in the cast, rather than, say, to the shooting location, which was almost entirely the Warner Bros studios in Burbank, California. > > Many of the supporting and bit parts in the film were played by actors, many of them Jews, who had only recently fled from Europe, and who didn’t have to fake their accents. In addition to the obvious Peter Lorre (Senor Ugarte), they included S. Z. Sakall (Carl the waiter), Ludwig Stoessel (Mr. Leuchtag), Leonid Kinskey (Sascha the bartender), Marcel Dalio (Emil the croupier), and Curt Bois, playing a pickpocket. > \*\* > As Aljean Harmetz wrote in her 1992 book, “The Making of Casablanca,” “a dozen good actors, cast adrift, brought to a dozen small roles in ‘Casablanca’ an understanding and a desperation that could never have come from Central Casting.” ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/174 "2015-09-06T17:21:07Z")
> [@Hiker](#): > > If you must call the refugees “economic migrants” in order to justify your unwillingness to help, it says something about the confidence you have in your position. No, it is a legal determination. “Refugees” must be received, according to the Geneva Convention (at least by the convention’s signatories). “Economic migrants” are accepted or not accepted, depending on the good will and the needs/means of any individual country. People clamoring for the “Syrian refugees” to be accepted as refugees in the UK, Germany and the US are trying to use the Geneva Convention weight to force them through. That’s wrong. There are tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions) of refugees in the world. Have been, for decades and decades. Some living in conditions that are a hundred times worse than the conditions in which Syrian refugees live in Turkey or Greece. Yet during those decades upon decades, have you seen any kind of urgency to bring these millions of refugees into the US or the EU? Why do you think that is? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/175 "2015-09-06T17:23:27Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > No, it is a legal determination. “Refugees” must be received, according to the Geneva Convention. “Economic migrants” are accepted or not accepted, depending on the good will and the needs/means of any individual country. > > People clamoring for the “Syrian refugees” to be accepted as refugees in the UK, Germany and the US are trying to use the Geneva Convention weight to force them through. That’s wrong. They are not listening to guys like you as in reality you are wrong. Like Rick in Casablanca you were misinformed. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/176 "2015-09-06T17:25:51Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Yes. Can you give me an example of Canada receiving someone as a refugee when they came from the US? That’s an awfully weird definition – that refugees stop being refugees even if they remain homeless just because they move from one place (that’s not their home country) to another. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/177 "2015-09-06T17:30:39Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > That’s an awfully weird definition – that refugees stop being refugees even if they remain homeless just because they move from one place (that’s not their home country) to another. That’s an awfully weird definition - that refugees, once they leave their home country, are entitled to shop for a country to go to - and that country is bound to accept them as refugees. ---
**Author:** ![Hiker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3be4f8/32.png) [@Hiker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hiker)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/178 "2015-09-06T17:32:20Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > No, it is a legal determination. “Refugees” must be received, according to the Geneva Convention (at least by the convention’s signatories). “Economic migrants” are accepted or not accepted, depending on the good will and the needs/means of any individual country. > > People clamoring for the “Syrian refugees” to be accepted as refugees in the UK, Germany and the US are trying to use the Geneva Convention weight to force them through. That’s wrong. You keep repeating that. You also keep failing to back it up. [Here is what the UN has ro say](http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/prsr/prsr.html) (bolding mine): > [@](#): > > Article 1A, paragraph 1, of the 1951 Convention applies the term “refugee”, first, to any person considered a refugee under earlier international arrangements. Article 1A, paragraph 2, read now together with the 1967 Protocol and without the time limit, then offers a general definition of the refugee as including any person who is **outside their country of origin** and unable or unwilling to return there or to avail themselves of its protection, on account of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group, or political opinion. Is anything in that definition not clear to you? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/179 "2015-09-06T17:33:23Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > That’s an awfully weird definition - that refugees, once they leave their home country, are entitled to shop for a country to go to. Red Herring spotted. Like your definitions it can be ignored because it also depends on what the host nations decide to do with the refugees. [QUOTE=Casablanca] ``` **Ferrari:** What do you want for Sam? **Rick:** I don't buy or sell human beings. **Ferrari:** Too bad. That's Casablanca's leading commodity. In refugees alone, we could make a fortune, if you work with me through the black market. **Rick:** Suppose you run your business and let me run mine. **Ferrari:** Suppose we ask Sam. Maybe he'd like to make a change? **Rick:** Suppose we do. **Ferrari:** My dear Rick, when will you realize that in this world, today, isolationism is no longer a practical policy? ``` [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909/180 "2015-09-06T17:33:55Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > That’s an awfully weird definition - that refugees, once they leave their home country, are entitled to shop for a country to go to - and that country is bound to accept them as refugees. I agree – that’s not my definition. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-immigration-whats-to-be-done/729909.md?page=10)