Source: Visual Capitalist
Does Europe Take in Enough Migrants?
September 21, 2015 7:30pm by Barry Ritholtz
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So, what is Russia taking in??? How many Assad regime partisans???
The Edward Snowden safe haven move by Putin morphed into Ukranian chess, economic warfare via sanctions, a strong dollar and a crush to oil and finally a much more active battlefront now in Syria (headline the other day on high-level military meetings between Russian and American brass to avoid shooting each other’s fighter jets down). Further, by landing fighter jets in Syria to support the Assad regime, Putin has also moved a strike force that much closer to The Persian Gulf… Sinking an oil tanker or two in the gulf could sky rocket oil overnight, improving the Russian economy at the same time as hitting Europe and America with $6 a gallon gas… But go ahead and turn on Fox News: they’ll be calling for war with Russia, tax cuts to get the economy going and a lessening of regulations so The Wolves of Wall Street can have relations with ‘independent contractors’ in the bathrooms at work…
The Syrian Civil War has been going on for 5 years and now turns into a refugee crisis… Methinks Putin is behind it, using the situation to launch a refugee fart bomb attack against the governments of Europe in response to the sanctions they placed on Russia. Time for a second Marshall Plan to aid European governments–help them take in the refugees and bail them out from the debt problems related to the financial crisis. Then Europe resumes humming along all the while Putin absorbs negative P.R. for generating and exploiting a humanitarian crisis.
Numbers wise, the EU can absorb the migrants so far and conceivably into the future. Unfortunately, I’m in the very unhappy position of sharing the concerns of right wing extremists regarding many of these migrants. I am extremely unhappy about this, but reality is reality no matter how you would like it to be.
First, Hungary has been demonized to a certain extent regarding the treatment of these immigrants. Let me provide a respected source, the BBC, to get a taste of what they are dealing with:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34142512
In particular, I would like to point out 2:10 of the first video. Still pictures of this incident were spread in Western media that showed Hungary in a bad light. However, in the video, you can clearly see that the police acted properly and compassionately. They are simply shocked by the incident.
Now, let’s go to some more questionable sources, but raw video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=3&v=lgmiWvKmQ18
Skip to the one minute mark if you are in a hurry. I know bleeding hearts will make excuses for this behavior. However, I would automatically reject all these migrants for asylum requests if it was up to me.
That said, I am well aware that there are very deserving refugees within this mass wave of migrants and I do support asylum for these people.
This is a complicated situation and this is not my blog, but I would quite thoroughly reject playing a simple numbers game here. This is not investing in stocks or bonds. This is dealing with a major culture clash.
For example, migrants were supposed to register in their EU entry country under the Dublin Regulation. Mainly Greece. They refuse to do this. Out of ignorance? Sure. But, they also refuse to be informed of the law and obey it.
Many (I think most) of these migrants also refuse food and water and instead demand, DEMAND, to be let through to Germany due to Merkel putting her foot in her mouth by answering a question of how many refugees Germany will accept. She answered that there was no limit. She is correct in legal terms, but somewhat understandably did not realize that that statement put out a green light for a massive flow of immigration from many countries.
Jesus. This comment is too long. My main point is this is much more complex than some rudimentary data.