European refugee crisis thread

[Purple]

And in my scenario Greece would be giving them container ships or something since that's cheaper than trying to stop them crossing and caring for those that do make it.

[Broomstick]

How is it impossible for people to get to the UK by boat? Are there anti-refugee cooties in the water? Any other completely fucking stupid comments you'd care to make?

In fairness, it doesn't make sense to go to the UK when you can go to the rest of Europe easier. Why would someone in France leave for the UK?

It's all about those effective border measures.

As I said, the refugees aren't nuts. They'll take a safer route if it's available. But if countries institute strict border controls, put up walls, and so forth and the safer route is no longer available... desperate people will do desperate things.

If you put refugees into what are essentially prisons instead of letting them be part of society they'll eventually try to escape. Which is why extended stays in "camps" probably aren't a good solution, either.

[Thanas]

Why would someone in France leave for the UK?

Ask those in Calais who have been trying to cross for months.

[Thanas]

Note that if greece is actually willing to pay for all our flood defences I would be perfectly happy for us to send some boats to help with their border controls in return.

Pig-fucking Britain is unaware that the EU is already funding flood defences in Britain (and that this means that the Greeks are paying for it due to they paying into the EU budget). Pig-fucking Britain looks ignorant and dumb.

Artilce

This week saw the opening of the Tywyn Coastal Defence Scheme, a £7.6M flood defence project that will protect 78 properties in the North Wales town (see £7.6M coastal defence scheme opened at Tywyn)

Forty-six per cent of the funding for this project was provided by the European Union’s (EU’s) Regional Development Fund (ERDF). [...] Since 2007, the Welsh Assembly Government has secured almost £50M from the ERDF towards a £100M programme of 28 flood defence schemes.

Well, looks like the EU is paying about half of the Welsh flood defences. Hmmm....could that be European solidarity? Nah. I am sure pig-fucking Britain will come up with a different excuse to use now.

[Zaune]

Heh. There's the problem, then; if it was getting spent on flood defences for London and the Home Counties there wouldn't be a problem, but I'm not sure anyone with real political power in this country would bother to notice if Wales sank into the sea.

[salm]

By that logic Germany is perfectly justified to strong-arm everybody around us into submission all the time. Getting strong-armed is not our problem. It´s your problem so fuck you.

There's a difference between actively strong-arming a country and passively not doing anything to help a country. But regardless, Germany is trying that now and so far they are having problems. Meanwhile our approach of not doing anything seems to be working out fine for our purposes.

Why? I don´t care if you see a difference. I´m just putting my national interests before yours be it by passively doing nothing or actively strong-arming. The difference is your problem, not mine.
So if we manage to strong-arm Britain into taking more Refugees I hope you don´t complain because, well, it´s not my problem. In fact you should probably not complain about stuff other nations do at all because it´s your problem not theirs.

[Vendetta]

Why would someone in France leave for the UK?

Ask those in Calais who have been trying to cross for months.

Mostly they already have family here.

Despite what the howlings of the Daily Heil might lead you to believe, the majority of refugees and immigrants heading to Europe don't want to come to the UK, it's shit here, we're all racist and there's no jobs except for borderline slave conditions and wages. That's why there's only a couple of tens of thousands waiting at calais not a half a million or more.

[jwl]

It is also impossible for them to get to the UK via boat.

How is it impossible for people to get to the UK by boat? Are there anti-refugee cooties in the water? Any other completely fucking stupid comments you'd care to make?

Yes, people certainly can take a boat to the UK. How fucking fucking stupid do you have to be to say they can't? People have been doing just that for thousands of years.

Admittedly, something better than a rubber boat is advisable, but those are also obtainable.

The English Channel is around 35 kilometers at its narrowest point. The distance from Cuba to Florida is 180 km. We have people attempt that crossing all the damn time. One group even floated a goddamned pickup truck across that distance as an improvised boat. Quite a few have even been successful at doing so.

So please, DO explain why it is "impossible" for people to make that sea crossing in a boat. When they've been doing it for millennia.

Because if they tried they would be immediately caught. The UK is surrounded by shipping routes which need constant monitoring, and the striat of Dover is the busiest shipping lane in the world. Any attempt to cross the channel would be found, and they would be sent back. I didn't watch the top gear episode where they cross the channel, but if they claimed that they successfully crossed without the authorities permission, chances are they were faking it.

[jwl]

What do you mean by resist?

I mean the thousands of migrants already in the nations right now as well as all the people you can't catch because you can't police the seas 24 hours a day in all weather without blowing your budget. Not that you need to anyway because if you offer to ship them to england they'll come willingly. So the cheep and cheerful solution is to forget trying to catch them at all! Why bother intercepting them at sea when you can just open up an office on the beach and have them register for a free ride to not-my-problem-now-yours-england?

Would they go willingly? Most of these refugees want to go to Germany or Scandinavia, not England, and they are much more likely to get there from greece than a non-schengan country far west of Germany and cut off from the mainland. But the fact is, if you are going to put them in a big container with a motor and send them off on their way, they are much more likely to try go to nearer countries like Italy or Albania than the much further UK, even if you give them enough fuel to reach there (which would be a waste of resources)

[Purple]

Would they go willingly? Most of these refugees want to go to Germany or Scandinavia, not England, and they are much more likely to get there from greece than a non-schengan country far west of Germany and cut off from the mainland.

Because going to england by boat is a trip of luxury to a safe country when compared to trekking on foot across the balkans and hoping nobody will decide you can't pass into the EU for what ever random reason it is this week. And besides, the reason these people want to go to Germany is that they've heard its accepting. All you have to do is spin the yarn that the british are as well.

But the fact is, if you are going to put them in a big container with a motor and send them off on their way, they are much more likely to try go to nearer countries like Italy or Albania

Except that people who do get to those two take the first opportunity to rush right out. I doubt they'd stay.

than the much further UK, even if you give them enough fuel to reach there (which would be a waste of resources)

I ain't talking about giving them fuel and a boat. I am talking about chartering a liner (which by now are not doing well in Greece due to the whole economic crisis and it not being the tourist season) and sailing them to england.

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Also, I must say that your arguments are rather brain dead because you are missing the operand point here. And that's the fact that being a selfish jerk only works as a strategy if everyone else is not one. If everyone is a selfish jerk what happens is that everyone tries to fuck everyone else over all the time (as my example demonstrates) and everyone ends up fucked.

[Broomstick]

Because if they tried they would be immediately caught.

Ah, right - the British are superior to everyone else.

Sure, sure, they have perfect 24/7 surveillance...

I think you have too much confidence in the sea acting as a moat for you. You're not invulnerable, however comforting you find the thought.

[jwl]

Note that if greece is actually willing to pay for all our flood defences I would be perfectly happy for us to send some boats to help with their border controls in return.

Pig-fucking Britain is unaware that the EU is already funding flood defences in Britain (and that this means that the Greeks are paying for it due to they paying into the EU budget). Pig-fucking Britain looks ignorant and dumb.

Artilce

This week saw the opening of the Tywyn Coastal Defence Scheme, a £7.6M flood defence project that will protect 78 properties in the North Wales town (see £7.6M coastal defence scheme opened at Tywyn)

Forty-six per cent of the funding for this project was provided by the European Union’s (EU’s) Regional Development Fund (ERDF). [...] Since 2007, the Welsh Assembly Government has secured almost £50M from the ERDF towards a £100M programme of 28 flood defence schemes.

Well, looks like the EU is paying about half of the Welsh flood defences. Hmmm....could that be European solidarity? Nah. I am sure pig-fucking Britain will come up with a different excuse to use now.

The EU has helped with just under half of the flood defences in one region of the UK? Yay I guess. It's not exactly all of them, but it's nice that they are doing that.

However, if you actually read through what I posted you'll see I acknowledge that EU funds helped us with flooding, and that they are also helping southern European countries with their refugee stuff. I don't mind that, the EU find people can send money wherever they see fit, so long as our members hip subscriptions don't go substantially up.

But I don't see why the UK, as a nation, should be obliged to help out greece in of itself. I mean, even using your argument about organisations, Turkey is a member of NATO. Yes, greece is also a member of NATO, but Turkey is a lot more in need of help with refugees than greece is.

[Broomstick]

If your neighbors house is burning down do you ignore it completely, as no concern of yours? Or do you call fire fighters, maybe throw a blanket over someone who ran out of the building half-dressed or naked?

You are not obligated to help your neighbor with the burning house, but if his house burns down and while doing so yours catches on fire .... well, sucks to be you, doesn't it?

In the modern world nations help each other out because most of us have figured out that letting the neighbors burn can have negatives consequences for ourselves. Not so much altruism but enlightened self-interest.

The US sends disaster relief when some other nation is hit by an earthquake, then Canada helps the US with a problem one day when suddenly all air traffic has to be stopped, and shelters and feeds thousands of US citizens. Meanwhile, a bunch of nations send expert help to rescue miners trapped underground in South America and over in Nepal some daring guy with a helicopter breaks a few world records and risks his own neck plucking foreign nationals off Mt. Everest after some disaster there. Everyone and their cousin pitched in to help after the Boxing Day Tsunami and then again after Japan's 9.0 earthquake/tsunami doubleheader. Oh, and Kuwait sent hurricane relief to Florida some time after the US helped liberate them from an Iraqi invasion, which was damn nice of them because no one expected them to do it or required it of them.

See how that all works? The world is a better place when nations help each other out rather than turning their backs on a neighbor's crisis. And, given the size of the world and modern transportation and communication, we are ALL neighbors now.

The Middle East matters because we're all nauseatingly dependent on petroleum and they have a lot of it. Instability there makes problems for all of us, even if it's "just" the cost of fuel (and it's not just that, given how many other uses petroleum is put to).

Europe matters to the UK because they're your trading partners. Instability and disruption there can fuck with your economy in the UK. A refugee crisis that gets out of hand there will result in it literally coming to your shores, either as dangerous, improvised watercraft or dead bodies washing up on your beaches. I don't care how fucking good the Royal Navy is, given enough desperate people they won't be able to stop the flood. The waters between Cuba and Florida are patrolled by the US Coast Guard, the US Navy, and the Cuban equivalents as well as the private organization Hermanos al Rescate, private boats and commercial vessels that will rescue people at sea, and all of that effort combined can't stop desperate people from attempting the crossing, and some do succeed. Some aren't even in boats but using inflated inner tubes from large tires. Compared to that, the English Channel is a trifle. A dangerous and rough crossing, to be sure, but far from impossible.

How many Cubans? Well, during just a few weeks in 1980 (the "Marial boatlift") 125,000 made the 180 km crossing from Cuba to Florida in improvised "boats" and rafts. No one has any idea how many died during that event.

The English Channel is what, 20 km wide? Piffle. If the shit keeps hitting the fan in Europe you WILL have people coming through France and attempting that crossing. A lot of them will make it, the main question being what percentage will be able to walk onto the beach and which will arrived as drowned bodies with the tide.

But, treasure your illusion of invulnerability, while it lasts, if that helps you sleep at night. Ignore the burning home of your neighbor, that fire can't possibly spread to your home, right?

[LaCroix]

Also, it doesn't help Britain the least bit to isolate themselves even more within the EU. If they keep their 'not my problem' attitude they show regarding any European issue up, the EU will soon start ignoring them completely. They are slowly turning into the EU's equivalent of Tea Party.

[salm]

If your neighbors house is burning down do you ignore it completely, as no concern of yours? Or do you call fire fighters, maybe throw a blanket over someone who ran out of the building half-dressed or naked?

It´s even better because the Brits are members of the gang that set the house on fire in first place.

[jwl]

Would they go willingly? Most of these refugees want to go to Germany or Scandinavia, not England, and they are much more likely to get there from greece than a non-schengan country far west of Germany and cut off from the mainland.

Because going to england by boat is a trip of luxury to a safe country when compared to trekking on foot across the balkans and hoping nobody will decide you can't pass into the EU for what ever random reason it is this week. And besides, the reason these people want to go to Germany is that they've heard its accepting. All you have to do is spin the yarn that the british are as well.

Yeah, and when they start getting sent back to Turkey they'll tell their friends not to believe them. Besides, I don't think that is the only reason they are after Germany, otherwise they would claim asylum in Croatia instead of passing straight thorough.

But the fact is, if you are going to put them in a big container with a motor and send them off on their way, they are much more likely to try go to nearer countries like Italy or Albania

Except that people who do get to those two take the first opportunity to rush right out. I doubt they'd stay.

And? They'd still want to land there, and they won't be going towards greece anymore.

than the much further UK, even if you give them enough fuel to reach there (which would be a waste of resources)

I ain't talking about giving them fuel and a boat. I am talking about chartering a liner (which by now are not doing well in Greece due to the whole economic crisis and it not being the tourist season) and sailing them to england.

In other words, even more of a waste of resources that I thought.

[Accidentally deleted quote]
We're not trying to fuck everyone else over, we are minding our own business. Trying to fuck everyone else over would be, for example, trying to sell the immigrants some guns on their way over to greece. That might be decently profitable, and as long as they are in international waters at the time, it should be fine legally. I don't think your example works very well, because it involves Greece doing things that aren't in their own interest, which defies the point of the exercise.

[salm]

[Accidentally deleted quote]
We're not trying to fuck everyone else over, we are minding our own business. Trying to fuck everyone else over would be, for example, trying to sell the immigrants some guns on their way over to greece. That might be decently profitable, and as long as they are in international waters at the time, it should be fine legally. I don't think your example works very well, because it involves Greece doing things that aren't in their own interest, which defies the point of the exercise.

Oh, the fucking everyone else over phase is finished. You sucessfully destabilized the whole region. No more fucking over is needed, there´s enough over fuck for everybody. You´ve earned resting for a while after all that hard work of mass producing over fuck. Just go get a cold luke warm beer down at the pub. We´ll call you as soon as we´ve cleaned up the mess and require more over fuck.

[K. A. Pital]

Actually, salm, we don't need more fuckups from Britain. Maybe we should not call them again. Like, ever.

I always thought Austria was smart for not entering NATO. The only problem is that, of course, now that the Middle East blew up they have to deal with the fallout anyway.

But hey, people with the aircraft carriers in the US and the UK somehow hate the refugees so much you start wondering just why the hell they are so interested in the Middle East to the point they send their troops and intelligence services there!

[Broomstick]

Except that the US has already decided to take in an order of magnitude more Syrians than the UK has, and there are on-going discussions about whether we should take more yet. In other words, despite the fuck up shit from the US the US is actually doing more than the UK is to put a band-aid on the boo-boo even though arguably it is less the problem of the US due to sheer distance (and argument I don't hold as valid, but seems to be in line with what jwl is arguing).

If anything, the UK has been fucking up the Middle East longer than the US has, their meddling there goes back farther than ours does. The notion they aren't involved and aren't at least partly responsible is ludicrous.

[salm]

Except that the US has already decided to take in an order of magnitude more Syrians than the UK has, and there are on-going discussions about whether we should take more yet. In other words, despite the fuck up shit from the US the US is actually doing more than the UK is to put a band-aid on the boo-boo even though arguably it is less the problem of the US due to sheer distance (and argument I don't hold as valid, but seems to be in line with what jwl is arguing).

If anything, the UK has been fucking up the Middle East longer than the US has, their meddling there goes back farther than ours does. The notion they aren't involved and aren't at least partly responsible is ludicrous.

Are there any new numbers? AFAIK the US wants to take 10 000 in 2016 and the UK 20 000 within the next 5 years. Which both is below any kind of useful threshold.

[Broomstick]

The US recently decided to take in 120,000 Syrians this year, then changed it to "10,000 for sure this year, 100,000 a year by 2017". It didn't get a lot of airplay, probably not being as dramatic as the visuals from the Hungarian border, so it was easy to miss.

There are also at least 18 US mayors urging the Feds to take in more, saying they have room in their cities for the newcomers.

[jwl]

Because if they tried they would be immediately caught.

Ah, right - the British are superior to everyone else.

Sure, sure, they have perfect 24/7 surveillance...

I think you have too much confidence in the sea acting as a moat for you. You're not invulnerable, however comforting you find the thought.

No, because the same area they will try and cross also happens to be the busiest shipping lane in the world. Look, apparently in july there were 50'000 refugees landing in greece. Now if you take the 31 days of July and assume they went in 4 people per boat, that's 400 boats per day. Guess how many boats pass through the Straits of Dover per day? The same authorities will be dealing with them.

And for these authorities, it is a matter of routine. Any crisis point and they'll be able to ramp up the response.

The comparison with the united states is a false one because the united state's coast is huge, making it harder to defend the whole length. Also, are these Chinese people you are talking about actually coming in large numbers, or are they just a handful of people in one boat who make the news because it's rare?

[Broomstick]

I think you have too much confidence in the sea acting as a moat for you. You're not invulnerable, however comforting you find the thought.

No, because the same area they will try and cross also happens to be the busiest shipping lane in the world.

It doesn't matter. These folks won't be following maritime rules, they'll just set out into the shipping lanes regardless.

Look, apparently in july there were 50'000 refugees landing in greece. Now if you take the 31 days of July and assume they went in 4 people per boat, that's 400 boats per day. Guess how many boats pass through the Straits of Dover per day? The same authorities will be dealing with them.

That's how many landed, not how many set out. We don't really know how many are going down along the way.

Nor are they limited to the Straits of Dover, or the narrowest parts of the Channel.

And for these authorities, it is a matter of routine. Any crisis point and they'll be able to ramp up the response.

If you have 100,000+ people attempting the sea crossing it won't be enough to stop them, any more than a wire fence will stop a 100,000 refugees doing a zerg rush on it. Numbers count.

The comparison with the united states is a false one because the united state's coast is huge, making it harder to defend the whole length.

Which is why I was limiting the discussion mostly to the Cuba/Florida area - which is patrolled by more than one nation. We still can't stop them from coming.

Also, are these Chinese people you are talking about actually coming in large numbers, or are they just a handful of people in one boat who make the news because it's rare?

Here's an article from the LA Times from the early 1990's discussing two boats carrying hundreds of illegal Chinese being caught off the coast of San Fransciso, with it being the third attempt to land hundreds of people within three weeks.

Here is a video talking about a ship smuggling Chinese that ran aground in New York City, which is hardly on a direct route from China no matter which route you take. Here's a bit more on that particular ship. Apparently, they went China-Thailand-Kenya-Cape of Good Hope-New York City.

This particular problem surged in the 1990's for some reason (I don't pretend to be an expert on these matters, just an interested observer) but yes, I'd describe them as more than "handful". These are just the boats that were caught or ran aground - they aren't the boats that either sank at sea or successfully discharged their cargo without being noted by the authorities. Keep in mind, too, these were largely those "economic refugees" everyone seems to like to demonize - they were fleeing from poverty, not fear of death. People fleeing the Middle East wars will be even more desperate and tolerant of risks.

As I said, modern transportation makes us all neighbors now. There is no place too remote from where you are that desperate people can't attempt the trip.

[jwl]

If your neighbors house is burning down do you ignore it completely, as no concern of yours? Or do you call fire fighters, maybe throw a blanket over someone who ran out of the building half-dressed or naked?

You are not obligated to help your neighbor with the burning house, but if his house burns down and while doing so yours catches on fire .... well, sucks to be you, doesn't it?

In the modern world nations help each other out because most of us have figured out that letting the neighbors burn can have negatives consequences for ourselves. Not so much altruism but enlightened self-interest.

The US sends disaster relief when some other nation is hit by an earthquake, then Canada helps the US with a problem one day when suddenly all air traffic has to be stopped, and shelters and feeds thousands of US citizens. Meanwhile, a bunch of nations send expert help to rescue miners trapped underground in South America and over in Nepal some daring guy with a helicopter breaks a few world records and risks his own neck plucking foreign nationals off Mt. Everest after some disaster there. Everyone and their cousin pitched in to help after the Boxing Day Tsunami and then again after Japan's 9.0 earthquake/tsunami doubleheader. Oh, and Kuwait sent hurricane relief to Florida some time after the US helped liberate them from an Iraqi invasion, which was damn nice of them because no one expected them to do it or required it of them.

See how that all works? The world is a better place when nations help each other out rather than turning their backs on a neighbor's crisis. And, given the size of the world and modern transportation and communication, we are ALL neighbors now.

The Middle East matters because we're all nauseatingly dependent on petroleum and they have a lot of it. Instability there makes problems for all of us, even if it's "just" the cost of fuel (and it's not just that, given how many other uses petroleum is put to).

Europe matters to the UK because they're your trading partners. Instability and disruption there can fuck with your economy in the UK. A refugee crisis that gets out of hand there will result in it literally coming to your shores, either as dangerous, improvised watercraft or dead bodies washing up on your beaches. I don't care how fucking good the Royal Navy is, given enough desperate people they won't be able to stop the flood. The waters between Cuba and Florida are patrolled by the US Coast Guard, the US Navy, and the Cuban equivalents as well as the private organization Hermanos al Rescate, private boats and commercial vessels that will rescue people at sea, and all of that effort combined can't stop desperate people from attempting the crossing, and some do succeed. Some aren't even in boats but using inflated inner tubes from large tires. Compared to that, the English Channel is a trifle. A dangerous and rough crossing, to be sure, but far from impossible.

How many Cubans? Well, during just a few weeks in 1980 (the "Marial boatlift") 125,000 made the 180 km crossing from Cuba to Florida in improvised "boats" and rafts. No one has any idea how many died during that event.

The English Channel is what, 20 km wide? Piffle. If the shit keeps hitting the fan in Europe you WILL have people coming through France and attempting that crossing. A lot of them will make it, the main question being what percentage will be able to walk onto the beach and which will arrived as drowned bodies with the tide.

But, treasure your illusion of invulnerability, while it lasts, if that helps you sleep at night. Ignore the burning home of your neighbor, that fire can't possibly spread to your home, right?

That's the thing, I don't see greece as a neighbour in the same way I see my actual next-door neighbour as one. Or at least, not more than I see Turkey, Jordan or Lebonon.

Your argument about them helping us back can work in exactly the same way for the above three countries. For Turkey in particular, as a NATO member they have been protecting us. Yes, greece is in NATO too but their military is pretty useless so I think Turkey is a more useful ally. But apart from that, what has greece done for us? I'm talking about greece itself here, not an EU fund greece subscribers to (which, as I have mentioned, I don't mind them helping greece out either).

Parts of the Europe are our trading partners, but greece isn't. The big part of any trade we have with greece is people going there on holiday. I don't go on holiday in greece and I don't see why everyone else needs to. Why don't they just go to places like Whitby?

[jwl]

[Accidentally deleted quote]
We're not trying to fuck everyone else over, we are minding our own business. Trying to fuck everyone else over would be, for example, trying to sell the immigrants some guns on their way over to greece. That might be decently profitable, and as long as they are in international waters at the time, it should be fine legally. I don't think your example works very well, because it involves Greece doing things that aren't in their own interest, which defies the point of the exercise.

Oh, the fucking everyone else over phase is finished. You sucessfully destabilized the whole region. No more fucking over is needed, there´s enough over fuck for everybody. You´ve earned resting for a while after all that hard work of mass producing over fuck. Just go get a cold luke warm beer down at the pub. We´ll call you as soon as we´ve cleaned up the mess and require more over fuck.

Are you talking about the Iraq war indirectly causing daash? Well it's good to know you think we should ignore Italy, as they were in the coalition of the willing.

But just as many refugees are fleeing Assad as are fleeing daash, if not more, so greece would be facing the same immigrantion crisis regardless.