I would like to know your views, experiences about this. However, I would like raise some points too.

For How Many and For How Long: Right now I can’t find any specific and authenticated numbers on how many people have already made their way into EU. That includes people who have passed into Austria and Germany and those still stranded in Greece, Serbia and Hungary. However, it’s already been speculated that up to a million Syrians may eventually cross over to EU.

The recent liberal attitude to let the Syrians in may encourage people from other trouble-torn regions like Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and even Iraq and Yemen to resume their efforts to reach the calmer shores. So how many refugees will EU accept? The trouble that’s driving these people to such desperation shows no signs of abating. So for how long EU is going to host this suffering humanity.

Rich Arab Nations Should be Taxed: They (gleefully) instigated the Syrian crisis, generously funded various militias, profusely spends fortunes on military and currently having a safari in Yemen and to some extent in Libya. They should be paying the bills for these people. Europe played their part in instigating and spreading the Syrian (and Libyan, Iraqi, Afghan) crisis. Now at least they are providing a safe place for a portion of the suffering people. The Arabs, Japan, Australia and US should be sharing the financial cost for their mischief as well.

Prevention Failed, Cure Needed: The world leaders, the rich and mighty, failed to solve the Syrian (and Afghan, Iraqi, Libyan, Tunisian, Egyptian and Yemeni) problem when it was in its infancy. Now that the crisis have reached their doors, may be they will sober-up. It’s time they forget their agenda and proxies. After all, all they have got for their meddling and instigation is several hundred thousands people, who they have to house and feed now. May be it will knock some senses into them and now they will something can actually solve this problem.

I don't know how to feel about this.

Why aren't the rich Persian gulf states and their so called "Arab brothers" helping these guys out ?

Europe already has a lot of issues with illegal refugees and immigrants, and some countries like Sweden are losing their national identity as a result....From my understanding and talks with my friends over, the Nordic nations and Germany seem to be the ones most keen on taking them, whereas the Eastern Ones are rejecting them hard (Poland I've had good sources).

Anyways.....I just hope in 50 years, we aren't sitting here calling Europe "Eurabia".

ACTUAL NEIGHBOUR countries of Syria should step up....or the saviour of the world, "United States of America"

Germans aren't keen on taking them at all if you read through the various comment sections of online newspapers and forums. It's just, as usual, that the politicians who are running the country are the doing the exact opposite of what the people want.

No, it's just the curmodgeons being really vocal. While there's tons of vitriol in online forums and media from Germans damning the influx of migrants, and refugees, because let's be honest, for most of those people the term "refugee" is much more appropriate, all polls on the subject show a solid majority in favor of taking the refugees in.
(Solid meaning here 65ish percent. 64 to 71% depending on which statistic you read)

The government here seldom does something the people don't want because Merkel bases 90% of her decisions on her next election netting her a favorable outcome.

So yes, there's vitriol, and over 200 homes for refugees have been burnt down in 2015 alone (gladly, most of them empty at the time, sadly, not all of them), there's far-right violence and neo-nazis parading up and down the streets at times. But the majority of the population is surprisingly welcoming and eager to help.

TBH this might be the wake-up call German society needs to rethink it's general and long-term stance on immigration, and right wing violence. Because for decades now the government as well as the police forces have turned a blind eye to right wing violence and marginalized it's impact on society as a whole, while society as a whole has pretended Germany isn't the nation with the 2nd largest influx of immigrants in the world, and has been for years and years.

But all my theoretical politicking aside, Merkel has done something right for once (of course I assume it's for the wrong reason), and this is an opportunity to help a shit ton of people. I for one have taking up teaching German to Syrian kids in Heidelberg barracks, and so have dozens, if not hundreds, of others in the region. Something is happening.

Only one place where an uncontrolled influx of 1 million Syrians, Sintis and Romanies, Afghans, Albanians etc. are going to "migrate" into and that's straight into the social welfare system. You and your student collegues do your thing though and teach a couple of kids some German words if it makes you feel better.

VivaStPauli wrote:
TBH this might be the wake-up call German society needs to rethink it's general and long-term stance on immigration, and right wing violence. Because for decades now the government as well as the police forces have turned a blind eye to right wing violence and marginalized it's impact on society as a whole, while society as a whole has pretended Germany isn't the nation with the 2nd largest influx of immigrants in the world, and has been for years and years.

Yes. Don't forget, the official stance of center right politics for decades has been that Germany is "kein Einwanderungsland" ('not a country where immigration is supposed to happen').

And then they wring their hands because the so called 'integration' is encountering problems, and even have the nerve to accuse the left of ignoring, or 'totschweigen', problems when it's the right whose imagination of reality was, err, suppressive or evasive.

This stance still informs the reporting. "Flüchtlingsansturm", "Flüchtlicngsschwemme", "Krise" etc.

In a country of 80m people, how many refugees are we talking about? 100.000? A couple of hundred thousand now that it gets acute?

This can only be perceived as a 'massive influx', a problem or even a real 'challenge' for a rich society like ours if you're not prepared for any influx.
Which is exactly what Germany was, non-prepared, both mentally and logistically, so suddenly on a communal level one has to scramble, with help of charity and volunteers, as reality turns out different than 'no immigration' and there's no macropolitical plan nor will to deal with it.

Natalie Portman wrote:I don't know how to feel about this.

Why aren't the rich Persian gulf states and their so called "Arab brothers" helping these guys out ?

Europe already has a lot of issues with illegal refugees and immigrants, and some countries like Sweden are losing their national identity as a result....From my understanding and talks with my friends over, the Nordic nations and Germany seem to be the ones most keen on taking them, whereas the Eastern Ones are rejecting them hard (Poland I've had good sources).

Anyways.....I just hope in 50 years, we aren't sitting here calling Europe "Eurabia".

ACTUAL NEIGHBOUR countries of Syria should step up....or the saviour of the world, "United States of America"

Are you kidding me?

Take a look at a map and familiarize yourself with the 'ACTUAL NEIGHBOR' countries of Syria.

Lebanon and Jordan have taken up MILLIONS of refugees, numbers constituting sizable portions of their own population. Jordan has, what, 6 million people but have 1-2 million refugees now?

I want to see our German public if we're faced with the task of taking in 25 million people lol.

Turkey has about 2 millions Syrian refugees. Hundreds of thousands have even fled to Iraq even though that obviously is not the most promising destination, since millions of Iraqis themselves have fled to, err, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.

Also pretty ironic that one of the main reasons against Turkey joining the EU has always been that Turkey is bordering on many crisis zones and we Europeans wouldn't want to import those middle east problems to Europe by extending the EU borders. Another reason was the fear of uncontrolled migration from Turkish citizens. Oh the irony. Looks like the problems are coming to central Europe with or without EU borders near the middle east and instead of Turkish people we are getting an influx of people who come from even poorer and far less developed regions who will be even harder to integrate into German society.

IMHO people aren't ever inherently "hard to integrate", sure, some harder than others, but it's not a insurmountable obstacle, if you look at the US of A which, despite having problems with endemic racism, manages perfectly fine to instill a sense of constitution-focused patriotism with it's immigrants, even those who aren't christian, like the millions of Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and Buddhist immigrants.

Germany has struggled to integrate migrants because the center-to-right-wing politics like to pretend they don't exist, and only ever treat them as problems, despite the Turkish migrant work force being de-facto invited to the country, only to later then be ostracized.

The legacy of German right-wing hypocrisy can be seen in the current crisis as well, because while Merkel is celebrating herself as mother of Europe, it was her own shithouse of a party and their turning-hypocrisy-into-a-sport cronies who manufactured the shitty European laws on seeking asylum that lets the rich core of the Union dump all responsibility and cost on the border states, which ironically happen to be the poorest member states.

So despite the epic proportions of scumbaggery displayed by Hungary, it was also a bit of a programmed error  when France, England and Germany forced poor country like Greece, Hungary, Romania, etc to shoulder most of the burden.

The only good thing to come from this is that Merkels epic lie-a-thon about her having a conscience, which she of course doesn't, forces other European scumbags to lie about having one as well, and play make-belief so the public doens't burn them at the stake. So even David Cameron now, a man who would surely have hunted peasants for sport if he had been born 200 years earlier, is saying he wants to help more. Even though that "Help" is taking in only 20k refugees over the course of several years, which is basically not helping at all. But at least it's a start.

So while I don't believe a thing the average politician says, I can at least appreciate that pretending to be a good person forces them to do the odd good deed.



TL;DR:
Germany is being hypocritic by now pretending to be the nice guy in the story, but at least someone is now being the nice guy, and other countries should follow, even if Merkel is lying her ass off, and helped engineer the problems she's now pretending to solve.

PS: Lol forgot to make my actual point, which was: now Germany has an influx of migrants that are actually glad as f*ck to be there, and are very thankful. German society should harness that goodwill to actually integrate the Syrians etc. into German society, teach them the norms and laws of the land, and show them they're welcome.

Not like we did with the Turks, who we f*cked over at every possible opportunity and still pretend it's their fault (though they're often not helping, granted).

futbol wrote:Only one place where an uncontrolled influx of 1 million Syrians, Sintis and Romanies, Afghans, Albanians etc. are going to "migrate" into and that's straight into the social welfare system. You and your student collegues do your thing though and teach a couple of kids some German words if it makes you feel better.

That's just statistically not true. In fact, the only migrants who really have a significantly higher-than-average dependency on welfare are Bulgarians, who for some reason are about 40 times more likely than Germans to be on welfare. But they're the exception, not the norm.

Right-wing xenophobic crap like you just posted very seldomly has any backing from statistics.

VivaStPauli wrote:

futbol wrote:Only one place where an uncontrolled influx of 1 million Syrians, Sintis and Romanies, Afghans, Albanians etc. are going to "migrate" into and that's straight into the social welfare system. You and your student collegues do your thing though and teach a couple of kids some German words if it makes you feel better.

That's just statistically not true. In fact, the only migrants who really have a significantly higher-than-average dependency on welfare are Bulgarians, who for some reason are about 40 times more likely than Germans to be on welfare. But they're the exception, not the norm.

Right-wing xenophobic crap like you just posted very seldomly has any backing from statistics.

For some reason you are mixing up migration with what's happening now. The situation of Turkish or Italian migrants in the 60s who were actively recruited by Germany and assigned workplaces and living places before they had even arrived because there was so much to do in Germany after WW2 is vastly different from the current unexpected influx of about 1 million Syrians and Afghans and God knows who else is coming here illegally from non warzones who are burning their passports on their way to Germany so they can't be identified and sent back to their home countries. Syria has an analphabetic rate of about 20 %. You are living in lala land if you believe these people will be able to learn a very difficult language like German and find appropriate jobs that will earn them enough without relying on social welfare. Only the small children have a chance to get integrated properly but even then Germany isn't what it used to be. Every day on the streets I'm seeing people collecting returnable bottles from the trash and people begging in the undergrounds in what is supposed to be one of the richest countries in the world.

futbol wrote: Germany isn't what it used to be. Every day on the streets I'm seeing people collecting returnable bottles from the trash and people begging in the undergrounds in what is supposed to be one of the richest countries in the world.

And you attribute that to refugees or immigrants coming in?

When obviously the Flaschensammler phenomenon is the logical product of Rot-Grün's ingenious one-two punch combo of simultaneously introducing Hartz IV and Einwegpfand

Hapless_Hans wrote:

futbol wrote: Germany isn't what it used to be. Every day on the streets I'm seeing people collecting returnable bottles from the trash and people begging in the undergrounds in what is supposed to be one of the richest countries in the world.

And you attribute that to refugees or immigrants coming in?

When obviously the Flaschensammler phenomenon is the logical product of Rot-Grün's ingenious one-two punch combo of simultaneously introducing Hartz IV and Einwegpfand

No, I'm not attributing it to anyone. My point is that Germany isn't the dream land that it maybe used to be a couple of decades ago. We have enough problems as it is with poverty, low income jobs, lack of proper full time jobs, inequality etc. Apart from the very very few well-educated people who already speak English it will be impossible for a random Syrian or Afghan to find a job in Germany and look after himself or his family. There are more than 3.5 million people without jobs as it is in Germany.

When was Germany ever that fabled dream land I always see right-wingers pining for?
In the 70s when the gas crisis hit? The 60s when it was all Wirtschaftswunder and Altnazis? The 50s when it was mostly rubble? The 40s when it was being bombarded? Or is it the 80s which I'm pretty sure culminated in the Reunification which brought it's own set of economic challenges.

Also, let's not gloss over the fact that the alternative to letting refugees into the country is letting them die. Let's let that sink in for a bit.
No, longer.
I know you're itching to say something.
Let it sink a bit more.
Okay, now.

Let's just say they magically wouldn't die in a warzone, it's just grossly insane to pretend we couldn't handle a million or two of refugees when we handled the rebuilding process after WWII just fine, and it'll probably still be cheaper than reunification. And for the small, small price of maybe losing a few billion of tax money, we can save hundreds of thousands of people from being murdered.

Let's not forget what Hans and I am proposing here. Not letting people die. And yet people try to counter that with economics. And even then, mate, read a sociological study or two. Immigrants aren't a measurable drain on resources now, and a million more won't change that. Sure, the refugees will cost money. We got that, we got money.

I should probably write this again:
Not letting refugees into the country is in most cases putting them in extreme danger of being murdered.

Please read that sentence a couple more times.

Don't know how true this is since I couldn't find a more familiar source, but it's just disgusting:

http://shoebat.com/2015/05/11/rich-arab-muslims-flock-to-refugee-camps-to-buy-little-syrian-girls-for-sex-andor-temporary-marriage/

Hans wrote:Are you kidding me?

Take a look at a map and familiarize yourself with the 'ACTUAL NEIGHBOR' countries of Syria...

Sepi did mention 'Rich' Arab nations. Which I assume is a reference to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and Oman. How many Syrians have taken refuge in those countries??? Why aren't Syrians going to these countries through Jordan, instead taking a far longer and torturous route to Europe???

Where do you draw the line? There are tens if not hundreds of millions people in the world living under non humane conditions that are in danger of ... wait for it ... DYING from starvation, nonexisting medical ressources or simply in war zones. Are we opening the borders for everyone? Once the precedent is set and millions more Syrians follow when do we say: "Sorry, no capacity anymore"? What if 5 million more Syrians want to come to Germany?

The moment people reach Turkey or Greece they have successfully escaped war. Why are they allowed to travel all the way over Macedonia to Serbia to Hungary to Austria to Germany? That's not escaping war anymore. That's deliberate migration into Germany's liberal welfare system that is well known world wide.

So your solution is to let everyone die? I salute your humanity, man. You sure showed me.

My solution is to make clear to these people that they will not get a residence permit or German passport and that they will go back to their countries once their home regions are (somewhat) stable again. That they can only stay temporarily. Under these conditions I have no problem with displaying "humanity" and I'd even voluntarily help out, donate, whatever.

What I don't want is Germany to look more and more like this permanently:



If needed, this stabilization process should be accelerated by military forces by cleaning up these regions from all plebs once and for all.

futbol wrote:Only one place where an uncontrolled influx of 1 million Syrians, Sintis and Romanies, Afghans, Albanians etc. are going to "migrate" into and that's straight into the social welfare system. You and your student collegues do your thing though and teach a couple of kids some German words if it makes you feel better.

Fusball, my man

Leading the RightwinGoallegacy elections

iftikhar wrote:Don't know how true this is since I couldn't find a more familiar source, but it's just disgusting:

http://shoebat.com/2015/05/11/rich-arab-muslims-flock-to-refugee-camps-to-buy-little-syrian-girls-for-sex-andor-temporary-marriage/

Hans wrote:Are you kidding me?

Take a look at a map and familiarize yourself with the 'ACTUAL NEIGHBOR' countries of Syria...

Sepi did mention 'Rich' Arab nations. Which I assume is a reference to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and Oman. How many Syrians have taken refuge in those countries??? Why aren't Syrians going to these countries through Jordan, instead taking a far longer and torturous route to Europe???

They've taken ZERO/NADA so far mate.

But let's forget it. that little boy's death was all Europe and West's fault.

I am terrified how many ISIS militants can now sneak into Europe armed, as refugees. Are we gonna sit here and cry when another Paris masacarre happens in a few months ?
A country like Canada will be perfect for refugees. By far the most left-ish country, with 234235325432 feminist and SJWs...send them all here please. Europe and Islam have never gotten well with each other and influx of 1 million [Muslim] migrants, whom throughout history, have never shown willingness about assimilation into a Christian identity and culture in Europe is only going to end in tears sooner rather than later IMO. At least, at a place like Canada, Assimilation is not asked and assumed, and the MOSAIC society allows every one to remain hard core true to their beliefs without having to change them to fit in the public. It's less risk for the world.

Russia sees American not being arsed about ISIS (probably backing them behind the scenes, same with Saudi), and then Russia backs Assad's regime. I saw Putin said that he may think sending Russian army there. This is way too big of a chess game that can be solved.

Do you think the refugees are running away from ISIS or Assad ? Or both ?

I've already spotted one ISIS jihadist making its way to Europe as a "refugee". I know the chances are low, but the potential consequences could be absolutely fatal.

I am not as familiar with specific mechanics of German society because I don't live there, but I've seen what has happened to Sweden and the country has lost its soul and identity and it makes me cry and I don't want the same happening to ANY country on earth. To lose your soul and identity, you become a nobody and a nothing land.

Be it Sweden, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Angola, etc. Countries should protect their identity, culture, and authenticity first and foremost.

Coming to think of it, I don't think there is a solution.

Assad is (just like his father was) a blood-thirsty tyrant, and what is happening now in Syria, is what would have happened eventually in Iraq, had USA not intervened and took control of overthrowing Saddam in 2002.

The problem is, even if Assad is bombed and taken away, then there will be rise of "wanna-be" tyrants, with one clear example of ISIS rising. In some ways, it's perhaps better for people of that region to have peaceful dictatorships, than trying to emerge, as it appears to makes things worse.

But I think it'll be better to deal with ONE threat rather than 2. If the west and Russia could get together and destroy ONE of Assad/ISIS regimes, at least there'll be one thing to focus on, rather than picking their sides and dwelling on it why Russia keeps selling guns to Assad, and USA keeps selling the same stuff to Pakistan and Saudi which eventually ends up at ISIS' hands.

I haven't been on here in over a year.. logged in today to check this out.

I agree with Sepi and futbol. I'm all for helping refugees, and the war refugees from Syria and Afghanistan don't deserve what has happened to them in their countries, but radical extremists are dangerous and the solution to this crisis doesn't lie in flooding EU with migrants, most of whom have no respect for our culture, values, and way of life.

My country had no part in this crisis and because we're attempting to secure our border and refuse a quota, we're the black sheep. I'm not a huge fan of Viktor Orban but I stand with him on this issue.

Again, so you want to just let them die back in Syria?

Because that's what you're saying when you don't help refugees. Also, whenever you're standing with Orban, you should take a long, hard, look at your life choices.

Also, do we actually know, and have proof for, that most of "them" have "no respect for our culture"?

Also, what's "our culture"?