In practical terms of improving matters, there are too many things to be done to be listed here in anything like a complete manner, and most of them are very obvious.
Obvious solutions are obvious to everyone, but not necessarily practical to anyone.
Things like prioritising certain groups (like the persecuted Yazidis, who are being pushed to extinction). Only taking refugees from the actual refugee camps in Syria and neighbouring countries, not letting in just anyone who rocks up at the front door. Taking in more women and children, as opposed to the nearly 80% of adult men that it's been so far. A big one - taking in much, much smaller numbers. If you pick up one person and plonk them down in the middle of a larger group, they'll assimilate into the group. If you pick up a million people at once, they don't need to assimilate, and so they won't.
Yeah, these are bloody brilliant ideas in theory, but why aren't the EU countries implementing them right now? After all, the hyper-progressive wonderland of
Canadia is gleefully "doin' it" without being called raycis or sexxis, so why can't we? Let's take maple leaf out of their book then, shall we?
Here's a bit from their
humanitarian resettlement policy:To come to Canada as a refugee, you must be:
- referred by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) or another designated referral organization, or
- be sponsored by a private sponsorship group.
You cannot apply directly for resettlement to Canada at any embassy or a visa office.
And here's an important tidbit from
another page:No one can guarantee that you will get a visa to come to Canada.
In other words, there are practically
two ways to get from the Middle East to Canada as an asylum seeker: (1) by applying directly from the refugee camps (via UNHCR or some other humanitarian organization), or (2) by swimming across the Atlantic. On our continent, however, the refugees only have to walk to the nearest EU border to claim asylum, or pay a few thousand € to some shady fucker to smuggle them to their preferred EU country like a parcel of contraband. Geographical distance just
might have something to do with the fact that Canada has accepted a total of
13,735 refugees so far, whereas the EU is swamped with a "gorillion billion, most of whom aren't even Syrian."
The funny thing is that pretty much everyone (myself included) agrees that it would be reasonable to prefer women and families over unmarried men in the asylum procedure, but because of the
UN Refugee Convention and the principle of
non-refoulement, that kind of discrimination has to be carried out pre-emptively before the people have arrived at our doorstep. Canada and EU have both ratified the same treaties, but only the latter has to bear the brunt of a refugee crisis in actuality. Unless the EU decides to turn the UN treaties into toilet paper, our governments are legally obligated to process all applications regardless of the applicant's age or gender. And if all the eligible applicants showing up at our borders happen to be male... welp, geography is just unfair.
What else? Stronger border controls. Actually enforcing the old rules; that refugees have to settle in the first country they come to, they can't choose to go to wherever because it has a nicer welfare system. Being somewhat realistic about people's age, rather than taking in men clearly in their 30's and classifying them as 'unaccompanied child' simply because they've been told to say they're 14. Not admitting anyone who has been convicted of any crime. Not admitting anyone who has no paperwork whatsoever without a very good, exceptional reason as to why they have no paperwork.
These are also great ideas, but did you know that the authorities are already
trying to do exactly what you propose? Enforcing
Dublin III has never worked very well in practice, and my guess is that it won't work until every individual entering the EU (legally or illegally) can be kept under constant digital/biometric surveillance for the duration of their stay. Which would be never. Right now the problem is that Dublin III is often enforced selectively and/or indiscriminately, and the member countries end up playing ping-pong with the refugees just like in the good old days before Dublin regulations.
You're right about the current system being sloppy and broken all across the board, but how should we go about fixing it? Cross-examination is the only practical method available to the authorities at the moment, but it's a hugely time-consuming and ineffective way to sort out an unexpected crowd of a million paperless strangers from god knows where. With the present constraints on time and human resources, the interviewers have had serious trouble verifying even the basic facts about their interviewees, never mind doing detailed background checks on every inconspicuous bloke with a highly plausible story. Hiring more interviewers and raising the budgets of police and intelligence departments certainly wouldn't hurt, but weren't we going to do that anyway?
(Also, passports and similar documents are not reliable signs of a bona fide refugee, because such things are often: (a) forged, (b) stolen, (c) sent in the mail to prevent them from being stolen, (d) stolen from the mail, and (e) all of the above plus a few laps 'round the globe in some druglord's pocket. What's more, denying someone asylum for not having the appropriate documents sounds kinda skeevy from the perspective of non-refoulement... I don't know. :/)
What comes to "closing the borders," well, we're getting there, for what it's worth. Schengen is on its last leg, and
Sweden has already introduced "carrier's responsibility" for trains and buses on the Öresund bridge, which, incidentally, put a stop to the influx of migrants into Finland via Sweden. But now that our western border is "closed," so to speak,
the asylum seekers are starting to worm their way into Finland over the eastern border, via Russia. Which is hardly surprising. Because, you know, smugglers and refugees and terrist infiltrators don't particularly care whether an arbitrary state border is "open" or "closed" – they'll find a way.
EDIT:
Also these people are already here. It's not like they might become our problem sometime in the future, they're our problem now, with all the culture and everything else they brought with them.
Yeah. No point obsessing over imaginary borders at this point, because "the horses have bolted," as Grandpa Whispers used to say.
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Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread (Read 1289697 times)