Well to be fair you used the word ‘raid’ which means “surprise attack”. So when you said a town was ‘raided’ it means it was attacked. Now that I have read the news story it seems as if what happened was that a lot of people passed through a small border town on their walk to another place. How is that an attack?
Do you see how there is an incredibly big difference between people traveling through a town and attacking it? They are not really comparable and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to use the word ‘raid’ unless the people actually… you know… raided something.
Would you mind coming clear with what your agenda actually is?
Re-introduced (unilaterally, of course) border controls, which leaves the Austrians to deal with the migrants (BBC approved terminology) that she seemed so keen to invite to Germany a few days ago. Austria won’t have much choice but to close it’s border with Hungary, so again the onus is all on them.
It’s obviously up to the German people, but her position is looking untenable.
Yes, Angela Merkel blew it big time. This opinion is also shared by a number of Eastern European leaders. The Austrian Minister of the Interior is also pissed at the German Chancellor.
Is that one of these “dammned if I do, dammned if I don’t” situations? I was under the impression that closing the borders to refugees is exactly what you wanted the German government to do. (Though to be fair, you have never exactly said that. You have thus far very carefully avoided to say, what it actually is that you want. It has gotten to the point where I doubt that you even know.)
Either way, one country closing its borders or introducing controls is not going to change much. At best it will shift the problem to another country … and then another, and so forth. The article **mascaroni **cited pretty much sums it up:
The refugees will keep coming. If anyone believes that German border controls or a Hungarian fence are going to change that, they are living in dreamland.
Merkel actively encouraged people to come to Germany and then effectively slammed the door shut for many when they’d traveled half way across Europe to get there. Her actions and words beforehand have almost certainly increased the flow of people seeking to get to Europe. (If you want me to pull out cites for that I can, but it will mean trawling through numerous articles in The Guardian).
This has left Austria with a problem, which will inevitably lead to their closing their borders which means the problem is passed on to Hungary. Again.
So everyone gets to point at Hungary and call them fascists. Such fun.
Also, although a temporary reinstatement of border controls is allowed in exceptional circumstances, if the circumstances are foreseeable other Schengen states must be consulted in advance. Were they?
If Merkel couldn’t foresee this happening she is clearly incompetent.
Just to clarify: Germany’s temporarily reinstituted border controls (and Austria’s - don’t know about Hungary’s practice) do not effectively mean people are turned back at the border. You are let in if you are a EU citizen/Schengen visa holder or if you request asylum at the border. None of the migrants are so stupid as to not do the latter.
The effect is that arriving refugees are provisionally registered at the border and bused from there to their first place of accomodation, rather than (as before) popping up at a place according to their own notion, leaving the authorities to scramble for provisional accomodation and transport. That’s particularly critical as on Saturday this week Oktoberfest opens in Munich, with > 6 million visitors which stretches the resources of the local police as it is.
Net advantage: it leaves German federal, state and local authorities valuable hours/days to active distribution rather than reacting where people turn up.
Germany could not effectively close its border if it wished - there are more than a thousand km of land border where you just need to stroll on a footpath past a small border sign (if that).
Germany has allowed in refugees instead of following the Dublin Regulation (which would have allowed us to send them back to Greece). I suppose that is what you mean by “actively encouraging” them. Well - to that I can only repeat the quote in your Guardian article: “Whatever Germany does or doesn’t do with its border, refugees will still keep fleeing to Europe.”
That was true a week ago and it will still be true next week.
It’s not like Hungary will do anything different. In fact Austria’s border towards Hungary is still open (and Hungary’s administration is currently shipping refugees across that border as fast as they can). Hungary’s border towards Serbia is closed. And for the record: I have never called Hungary’s government fascist.
Your own approach would amount to nothing less than pushing the refugees back to Greece. How is that any better?
But the question remains (and I actually don’t know the answer to that) how this works in practice. Under European law, every refugee ought to be registered and processed in in the (first) country he arrives. By definition, that country can never be Germany, unless you arrive by plane or by boat on the coast of the North Sea or the Baltic Sea.
In other words, any refugee who shows up on the German-Austrian-border, the German-Czech-border or the German-Polish-border must have been already properly registered, if the rules have been followed.
This is true. The law you are referring to is known as the Dublin Regulation. Its original purpose was to ensure that asylum seekers do not apply for asylum in multiple European states. (“Germany has rejected my application? Fine - let’s try Austria next.”)
The problem with the regulation is that it places the burden of handling asylum claims almost exclusively upon the countries at the southern borders of the EU. And with the recent dramatic increase in the number of asylum seekers, these countries do no longes see themselves fit to handle that. Most of the Syrian refugees we are seeing these days *should *have been registered in Greece and it should have been Greece who decide on their asylum claim. It has not happened. One could point fingers at the Greeks for that, but somehow that does not seem fair. Why should Greece of all nations have to handle this alone?
Some regulation. Adhered to by Germany when it suits them.
No, I mean Mama Merkel, after being perceived by many as being unfair to the Greeks, actively welcoming migrants to the country.
That may well be true, but the numbers have increased dramatically since she implied that everyone was welcome to come to Germany.
The Austrian border with Hungary is not open as in the case of a Shengan agreement border. Likewise with the Germany Austrian border.
I didn’t imply that you personally have called the Hungarians or their government fascists, but there are plenty of people that have.
Oh, and BTW, Thank you Germany for the rather lovely word schadenfreude.
Your own approach would amount to nothing less than pushing the refugees back to Greece. How is that any better?
[/QUOTE]
So… Merkel & Co. have decided that Germany needs lebensraum for the migrants that, two weeks ago, she was welcoming.
BTW, camille, nice photo - what percentage of women and kids was it again?
Earlier this year, the travelers making their way to Europe on a land route through the Balkans were mainly young and middle-aged men who planned to bring their wives and children to Europe legally once they arrived and claimed asylum. But as the number of migrants rose dramatically through the summer, so did the number of women, children, and elderly…
A major factor behind the increase was the move by countries along the route to shift from blocking the flow of people to essentially facilitating their progress. That made the journey easier, and more possible to do with children.
That also meant less need for smugglers, making the trip cheaper, so families could afford to send more members.
Finally, as thousands of refugees and migrants arrived in destination countries like Germany and began the bureaucratic process of requesting asylum, they realized that family reunification – where the family of someone who is granted asylum is allowed to travel legally to join that person – takes much longer than they expected. They began advising others to bring their families with them.
Your first link is not about immigration to Europe, which is what all my comments are based on. Your second link says “more” but gives no statistics. There can be no reliable statistics when lots of migrants refuse to be registered. The rest is unsubstantiated claptrap.
I can find you more ‘random’ photos (from reputable sources) to back up my claims. Can you find any photos where even 50% of refugees are women and children (I’ll throw in old men as well, to make it easier) trampling through Eastern Europe to get to Merkel’s Promised Land?
According to Germany’s biggest news website Spiegel Online (which is left-wing and militantly pro immigration), ⅔ of all asylum seekers in Germany are male [1]. However, this figure includes asylum seekers from the Balkans who traditionally come in whole families which means that the vast(!) majority of asylum seekers/immigrants from the Middle East are (1) male and (2) young (>70 % under the age of 30, according to* Spiegel Online*).* Spiegel Online* even asks: “Where are all the women and children (from Syria)?”
This corresponds with my personal (and very random) observations in the last weeks.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, women only account for 13% of the refugees, and children 18%. Men make up 69%.
80% of people arriving in Europe arrive via crossing the Mediterranean.
So…unless those other 20% of people who aren’t coming across the Mediterranean are almost all women and children, that 75% are men quoted earlier is pretty close to reality.
