Secretary of State John Kerry has said the US will accept 85,000 refugees from around the world next year, and up to 100,000 in 2017.
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“I’m holding intensive talks with my colleagues to remove today or tomorrow the measures that we had to introduce”, the Croatian prime minister, told reporters. “I have a brother there”.
It is not enough to resettle refugees in Europe or show them that they are “welcome”. So far this year, Germany has received 527,000 asylum seekers – more than any other nation in Europe.
The country’s efforts didn’t go unnoticed – or without influence, either.
Emel Kurma, coordinator of the Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly in Istanbul, is critical of Turkey’s policies towards its refugee population. “Asylum-seekers and migrants are among the most vulnerable people in Libya and their plight must not be ignored”.
So what is driving this surge?
A group of 250 mostly Syrian and Iraqi asylum seekers and refugees were travelling from Turkey to Greece’s Aegean islands on 15 September. The European Union shored up some support for the plan by putting more emphasis on the more efficient return of economic migrants, a harder tactic that many say Europe is right to do. Michalski said the “networks” used to rekindle family relations were growing, and that with every new Syrian arrival in Germany, there will be a new opportunity for another connection. When he arrived, there was a lot of joy. They focus on the people who drown trying to cross the sea.
The news report said that many, though not all, of the additional refugees would be from Syria, with the others coming from “strife-torn” areas of Africa. In the last month, the numbers of women and children recorded crossing European borders has spiked.
This is sheer madness, given fears that ISIS terrorists are seeking to infiltrate the ranks of Syrian refugees and gain access to countries to cause mayhem. “These are societies that put a high value on education and now they are seeing their children out of school”. Mohammad’s story was not uncommon: He lived with a man from Damascus, who wished to remain anonymous, who was arrested by Assad’s regime for writing satire in his local newspaper. “I can’t sleep. I miss them”.
I’ve watched in silent horror as protheses for refugees without limbs are hammered into form – collateral damage come to life.
More than a hundred were stacked up at the frontier between both countries. In Canada, Vietnamese community members are helping raise money to sponsor them, he said.
But there is some concern among asylum seekers that the welcome is not universal.
He found temporary work in Munich, met a cold reception from a 1970s Germany exhausted of refugees, wound up in an immigration holding cell destined for deportation, then found last-minute salvation when he was accepted for graduate school by a major German university, where he thrived. “But now, Germany isn’t good”. But when I came here, my dream has been destroyed. “What we will become of them on cold, winter nights?” “No one can protect us here”.
To prevent the production of more refugees and disabilities, we must abandon complacency and demand an end to the conflict in Syria.
Based on surveys of refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq, Awad cited seven principal factors behind the latest outflows, first among them loss of hope with no sign of a solution in sight.
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“I wish it didn’t happen to Syria”, Mohammad said.
