European refugee crisis thread

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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by madd0ct0r »

Well shit. I'll quote them next time.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by madd0ct0r »

Now this is interesting.

TLDR: A larger number of African migrants to Europe move on once they become EU citizens. Their choice of destination? Where they see BME people succeeding in business and integrating. The UK.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... n-citizens
clear majority of British people think current immigration levels are too high, according to many polls. A major fear is that too many newcomers will stretch Britain's already shrinking welfare state. According to some reports, Downing Street is considering negative advertising, to persuade Bulgarians and Romanians to stay away. It doesn't help quell these fears when new migrants from poorer parts of the world, such as Somalia, show high rates of unemployment.

But what if we were told that thousands of people from Africa we've seen arriving here are not, in fact, fleeing poverty at all? Or that, legally speaking, they're not even Africans, but rather nationals of such generous welfare utopias as Sweden, Denmark and Holland?


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For BBC Radio 4, I've been searching for some idea of what the modern "British Dream" could be, through a series of frank interviews with some of the almost 3 million new arrivals to England and Wales since 2001 (the first of three programmes is broadcast at 8pm starting tonight). Time and again, our team uncovered Africans who were not any longer from Africa. They were EU citizens and actually giving up welfare rights in places like Scandinavia to come to the UK.

Indeed, we met so many Nigerians from Germany, or Somalis from Denmark, that we asked Oxford University's Migration Observatory to crunch the numbers on how many EU migrants are not originally from Europe. They found that 141,000 people, 7% of those who came to the UK under EU rules were born outside the continent. Somalis are one of the biggest such groups, with an estimated 20,000 coming to the UK from the Netherlands alone. Studies show that between one third and a half of the entire Dutch Somali community has moved to the UK.

But why abandon the good life in Sweden, or the Netherlands, to start again from scratch in Britain?

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"It's great to have a decent house," I was told by Quman Akli, who was three and a half when her family fled Somalia for Bergen, in North Holland, in 1989. "But also you want more in life than a decent house. You want to be able to progress."

Quman's family had been housed by the Dutch government. She grew up there and spoke Dutch fluently. After finishing school, she would have been entitled to a subsidised university education; even her bus passes would have been paid for by the state.

Instead, in 2003, she told her father Jibril that she wanted to move to Britain, where she would have to pay for university. He wasn't upset – in fact he decided to quit his job in a printing firm and bring the whole family to London.

"I think the UK is more open than other European countries," says Jibril, who is now a London bus driver. He and many other Somalis told me they admired the success of non-white people in Britain – which was conspicuously absent, they felt, on the continent. Jibril mentions the Asian community who came to the UK from Uganda. "They are landlords, they are businessmen, lawyers," he enthuses. "It's amazing."

How should we feel about this admiration of Britain from non-white people across Europe? Some may find it uncomfortable that Jibril and other Somalis I met were partly attracted by the larger number of mosques in Britain. On the other hand, for them, it's often about racism. Quman remembers how well-meaning Dutch people constantly asked her when she was "going home" after 9/11.

"No one has asked me that in London," she says. She enthuses about Britain's education system and the number of minority MPs.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by salm »

Jibril mentions the Asian community who came to the UK from Uganda.
Woot? Did I miss something or is this a mistake?
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by Ralin »

salm wrote:
Jibril mentions the Asian community who came to the UK from Uganda.
Woot? Did I miss something or is this a mistake?
If I remember right there's been non negligible Chinese immigration to various African countries, though I don't know a lot of details beyond that.

Diasporas can lead to odd sounding statements like that sometimes. You'd say the same thing about a bunch of people of Indian descent who immigrated to the US from the UK or Canada.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by salm »

You seem to be right. Apparently Idi Amin threw out all Asians in the 70s. Asian as in "people form India" and not Chinese, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion ... rom_Uganda
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by Hillary »

salm wrote:
Jibril mentions the Asian community who came to the UK from Uganda.
Woot? Did I miss something or is this a mistake?
No, this is very true - it resulted in the rise of the Asian corner shop phenomenon over here amongst other things.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by Ralin »

salm wrote:You seem to be right. Apparently Idi Amin threw out all Asians in the 70s. Asian as in "people form India" and not Chinese, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion ... rom_Uganda
That's interesting. I mentioned the example of Chinese immigrants in Africa because it was the one I remembered off the top of my head. Hadn't heard of this one before but I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by jwl »

If they've managed to gain Swedish (or whatever) citizenship they are obviously rather good at integrating and are already well-educated, so I don't think they would cause all that many problems in the UK.

But the timing for this study to come out is terrible, what with the EU referendum around the corner.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by cosmicalstorm »

jwl wrote:If they've managed to gain Swedish (or whatever) citizenship they are obviously rather good at integrating and are already well-educated, so I don't think they would cause all that many problems in the UK.

But the timing for this study to come out is terrible, what with the EU referendum around the corner.
There are absolutely no demands regarding integration, language skills, work skills or whatever for a Swedish passport.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by madd0ct0r »

jwl wrote:If they've managed to gain Swedish (or whatever) citizenship they are obviously rather good at integrating and are already well-educated, so I don't think they would cause all that many problems in the UK.

But the timing for this study to come out is terrible, what with the EU referendum around the corner.
It's actually from 2013. A brexit guy on reddit was pushing it as current news.

Also, let's check comicalstorm out:

http://www.migrationsverket.se/English/ ... dults.html

1)be able to prove your identity
2)have reached the age of 18
3)have a permanent residence permit, a right of residence or residence card in Sweden
4)have fulfilled the requirements for period of residence (lived in Sweden for a specified period)
5)have conducted yourself well in Sweden.

There is also an application fee of SEK 1500, and expect it to take between a year and two to process the paperwork.

5) means not getting arrested, basically
4) means 4-5 years of living in Sweden AFTER having received 3). You may leave the country, but if more than 6 weeks a year that holiday time is removed from you building it up.
3) If you are an accepted refugee then the rules is: http://www.migrationsverket.se/English/ ... weden.html

" In order to be considered a refugee, you must have been granted a residence permit as a refugee in accordance with Chapter 4, section 1 of the Aliens Act or corresponding sections in the old Aliens Act. It is not sufficient that you were accepted within the scope of the refugee quota. "

Unfortunately, I've not been able to find a copy of the Aliens Act online in english. There are other routes to gain a residence permit for EU citizens or their spouses. I've not found anything on the swedish website dealing with purely economic migrants from outside the EU.

Elsewhere it notes if you registered as an asylum seeker somewhere else first, you will be moved to that country for processing.
http://www.migrationsverket.se/English/ ... ation.html

---

To be honest, it is cheaper than the UK but does not look any different to the one we've recently been through. The process is pretty standard. The crux is the initial step, when you find out if you would be classed as a refugee or not. UK gov claims "87% of the total decisions made for nationals of Syria were grants, compared with 73% for Eritrean nationals and 22% for Pakistani nationals." https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... 015/asylum


EDIT: actually, reading over what comicalstorm wrote, he's correct. there is no standard for language, work skills or integration built into the swedish system. The Uk one you have to do a trivia quiz in english and have proof of language skills to move from 'refugee with right of residence' to 'uk passport holder'
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by Crown »

Those of you paying attention will already know this, but following on from the 'race to the bottom' to appear less appealing to economic migrants from Northern Europeans, now Central Europeans are going for the domino effect of closing borders. But what I love (and again this is from a completely compartmentalised "if only people weren't actually suffering" view) is now Austria is telling Merkel that if she wants the migrants so much she can go and collect them herself;
The Local DE wrote: Bring refugees from Greece yourself, Austria tells Merkel

With large numbers of refugees building up in Greece after Austria and western Balkan nations closed their borders, Vienna has put the ball in Germany's court.

Germany "should set up a daily quota and then bring these refugees directly from Greece, Turkey or Jordan," Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann told the Kurier newspaper on Wednesday.

"Austria cannot and must not become a distribution hub [for refugees]. There must be an end to that," Faymann went on.

He could not accept "that several thousands of people are waved through every day, on the other hand Germany informs us that today it will only allow 1,000 or 2,000 into the country."

Merkel fights back

"Anyone who closes national borders doesn't do anything against the causes for the refugee movement," Chancellor Angela Merkel shot back.

The German Chancellor has long been fighting for a solution at the EU level to distribute refugees after they arrive in Greece and Italy.

But it's tough going, as many other national leaders accuse her of attracting more people to Europe with an open-door policy which Germany decided on alone.

"We have to find sustainable solutions that we will still be able to justify tomorrow," Merkel said. "Above all, [we need] solutions that don't set up something on one side that other countries simply have to deal with."

Refugees blocked in Greece

Thousands of people remain stuck at Greece's northern borders after Macedonia – not a member of the EU, but invited to Austria's western Balkans conference last week - closed its gates.

People crammed into the camps up against the border fences on Tuesday called on Merkel to resolve the situation and let them continue their journeys.

"I don't know what the EU states are waiting for – how much further must the situation escalate?" Selmin Caliskan, General Secretary of Amnesty Germany, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung on Wednesday.

Germany is looking to an EU-Turkey summit in Anakara on March 7th to make progress in bringing refugee flows under control.

"No-one understands if the EU first keeps Greece in the Euro with billions [in aid] and now fobs the solution of the refugee crisis onto the country," Justice Minister Heiko Maas told the Rheinische Post on Wednesday.

"The images from the border between Greece and Macedonia should be a spur to all of us to fight more decisively for a European solution."
Some observations;
  • I checked and Austria's Chancellor is indeed right; there are airports in Greece and in Germany so Merkel could very well import them directly
  • Hey, speaking of Austria's Chancellor wasn't he criticising Hungary last year? Why yes, yes he was. Huh, I guess when local polls showing your party losing ground to anti-migrant parties you change your holier-than-thou tone pretty quickly
  • Merkel is either an idiot-savant with a divine providence watching over her (the quote that gets attributed to Bismarck type of providence) or the most Machiavellian politician in the continent. After (arguably) making a bad situation worse, she has essentially done nothing and the end result is she gets to save her political skin because all the other nations are going to take the hit on appearance when they close their borders, amazing!
  • Oh yeah, immanent humanitarian disaster incoming in Greece
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by madd0ct0r »

That was a fucking good read. Based on something he wrote I went looking:

start at https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/39% ... !1s0x0:0x0

and track southwards. Every orange dot is a pile of life jackets, mostly fake (see article). I haven't the heart to calculate the ratio of orange dots to corpses that didn't make it.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by Darth Yan »

So this is a thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpwON8OnZa0

They're taking an egyptian custom (not even a custom, just a problem in egyptian society that most don't do but is still widespread) and say all arabs do it
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by Grumman »

If you're going to post a link to a Youtube video, it's polite to tell us what's in it. Especially when the subject is gang rape.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by Darth Yan »

Basically some guy ranting about how it's a custom to gang rape women in muslim culture.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by Thanas »

Well, the general point of widespread misogyny being a part of middle eastern muslim culture is certainly correct.

The more specific point of gang rape going to become common in the west is pretty overblown.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by K. A. Pital »

Was the subject of plundering the refugees in Lebanon and Turkey for cheap kidneys discussed already in this thread?

It seems that this war has created an exceptional number of destitute people who are being coerced by black market agents into donating kidneys for between $1k and $4k, which are later resold to middle class Europeans willing to dish out 40-100k USD for the organs.

A paradise for the middle class! Rich eat the poor, war is death to poor third worlders but a new lease on life for the richies.

Hideous.

Some links to articles about this:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/blogs ... gee-organs
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 33228.html
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

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Thanas wrote:The more specific point of gang rape going to become common in the west is pretty overblown.
Well, no more common than it already is... it's hardly unknown in the west, either.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by Crown »

Thanas wrote:Well, the general point of widespread misogyny being a part of middle eastern muslim culture is certainly correct.

The more specific point of gang rape going to become common in the west is pretty overblown.
Sweden is the petrie dish experiment that will reveal the results of that hypothesis, that is of course if they don't cover it up. Although I would agree that the word 'common' isn't the correct term, but there will be an increase.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

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To be fair though, of the guys arrested in Cologne nearly all of them are North African, not Syrian and according to the local immigrants they were known criminals who fled to the EU to avoid prosecution. So far, only one Syrian has been identified as an assailant iirc.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by Grumman »

Thanas wrote:To be fair though, of the guys arrested in Cologne nearly all of them are North African, not Syrian and according to the local immigrants they were known criminals who fled to the EU to avoid prosecution. So far, only one Syrian has been identified as an assailant iirc.
So why were these known criminals from North Africa walking free in Germany?
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

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So why were these known criminals from North Africa walking free in Germany?
Being a criminal in one place doesn't necessarily mean that you are criminal in another place? Especially if the country you were a criminal in has problems keeping its lists up to date and sharing it with everyone?
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

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Grumman wrote:So why were these known criminals from North Africa walking free in Germany?
Because a) North African states are not great at sharing their crime statistics and court data b) They had not committed any crimes in Germany before c) many of them use fake ID.
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Re: European refugee crisis thread

Post by Eleas »

Crown wrote:Sweden is the petrie dish experiment that will reveal the results of that hypothesis, that is of course if they don't cover it up. Although I would agree that the word 'common' isn't the correct term, but there will be an increase.
The cover-up was stupid, but according to all evidence limited to one single festival, was not limited to immigrants, and was a known factor not related to immigrants (but still ignored by officials). As the linked article states, again and again, it was not a secret.
Assaults in the sea of spectators was a problem already in 2014, my first youth festival as newly minted field assistant, and obviously something that was being worked on toward 2015. A few differences that I noted this summer was that Fatta man was there with an activity tent. Stockholm city's project Respekt och självrespekt, with a similar focus, had a tent.
I thought that the reason no newspaper wrote of it already this summer was (sadly enough) that it was too common. That it had no news value. That it was not prioritized. Which it seldom is... Not silencing by the police. It feels so implausible. It. Was. Not. A. Secret.
The reason is now claimed to be that the assaults were perpetrated by lone immigrant children. This makes it all the more implausible, because it's simply not true. It's possible it was so to a certain extent, I don't know. But I KNOW it wasn't entirely so. I know because I was there. I spoke with several victimized girls. I got the police bulletins with several different descriptions. The common denominator was not "immigrant youth primarily from Afghanistan" which the police is now quoted as saying in DN. It was not ethnicity, age, skin color or mode of dress. The common denominator was gender. Both of the perpetrators and the victims. To try to connect sexual assaults to ethnicity, is wrong, unfair and dangerous.
The idea of Sweden being an "experiment in multiculturalism" is a far-right meme untainted by reality. Contrary to racist fear-mongering, there's actually no sinister social experiment being run in the darkened corridors of clandestine SJW bases on the verge of going out of control. Since the increase in reported rapes has clearly been documented by BRÅ as stemming from the redefinition of rape, and since they've already helpfully corrected for that to demonstrate at best a slight uptick, there's no reason to entertain the ravings of a resurgent Nazi party. So why are these people even afforded attention?

Oh, right. Because the Guardian wants to entertain their xenophobic gut feelings in order to build a patently false narrative of assaults specifically by immigrants. There may well have been coverups. But those coverups happen regardless of race, because as soon as rape happens systemically, as indeed happened with the very assaults we now discuss, the swarthy foreigners will collectively get the blame anyway. Pogroms aren't really conducive to a working society. So while covering it up is stupid, I can actually understand what would drive the police to do so -- it's not as if they've not mismanaged sexual prosecutions before, after all.
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