[Europe asks: Why no mention of refugee crisis in GOP debate?].
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Croatia represents a longer and more hard route to the wealthier nations of the European Union, but those fleeing violence in their homelands, such as Syrians and Iraqis, had little choice. Suspending this regulation for Syrians removed that risk.
Now their action, formerly criticised, has been sanctioned by Germany by closing her own borders. On Monday, European Union ministers agreed to an earlier recommendation that 40,000 refugees be scattered across Europe but rejected Juncker’s new proposal, then put off any further discussion for a month. Hungary is a homogenous country that’s at the crossroads of east and west in Europe. And 72,000 people have signed a Change.org petition urging the BBC to “use the correct term Refugee Crisis instead of Migrant Crisis”.
Finally, the German press – even the tabloid kind – has been sympathetic, in stark contrast to some other countries. Variations in the welcome given refugees or benefits offered are national prerogatives. And it has transformed Merkel-respected by Germans but hardly revered-into a kind of folk hero for many refugees. Headlines that would circulate not only through the media, but also through social networks.
“We can not register and accommodate these people any longer”, Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic told a press conference on Friday.
Hundreds of different refugees who had stayed behind at Budapest’s Keleti railway station have been then additionally picked up in buses within the small hours and pushed from Budapest to the Austrian border.
A Hungarian police spokesperson said the migrants were being taken to two Hungarian registration points in Szentgotthard and Vamosszabadi – both close to the Austrian border.
“Germany’s conservatives do not play the race card like in France or Britain“, says Dietrich Thraenhardt of Muenster University. His role is more akin to a demonstration of “Prussian displeasure”. The answer has as much to do with the economy and politics as it does altruism.
Racism of course exists in western Europe, but the strength of feeling in this region, among politicians as well as the general public, has caused alarm.
It was, in many ways, an atypical statement from the chancellor. They would be waved on, he said. “So they need to do it together”. This increases the speed and numbers of those wishing to leave the safe havens where many now reside. But any attempts at open agitation against refugees are meeting resistance. During the Second World War, Germany was responsible for ethnic cleansing and the mass displacement of populations.
All were built through the entrapping of native African and Asian labour as well as the great migrations of expertise from Europe, as that continent looked outside its own borders for growth.
“It’s not likely we’ll achieve a European solution by saying no”, she said. And many Hungarians, also, especially in rural areas, have never met a Muslim.
Refugees and aid workers gather next to a fire at a temporary camp in Roszke, Hungary, on September 10, 2015.
Guest workers did not smoothly integrate into German society, says Triadafilopoulos. “They aren’t young children“, he says. But Germany certainly has responded with the right leadership. According to Spiegel Online worldwide , there have been at least 27 arson attacks on asylum hostels since 2012.
Ordinary Germans have backed the government, turning out to do their bit where the thorough and slow-moving bureaucracy fails to resolve bottlenecks. The refugees are now here, in the heart of Europe.
It’s political folly on a grand scale.
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The new “Refugee Welcome Board”, will work to settle refugees in the UK. “They will come more and more until they have a sense we are indeed serious about fighting [the Islamic State group] and ousting the terrorists … and there is a future for them in Iraq, or Syria or Libya”, says Gomes, who sits on the parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence. “And you do have a big exploitation issue, as far as Greeks that are exploiting refugees in the islands, making them pay three times or four times the price of basic commodities such as food and water”.
