Migrant Crisis Update: “No End in Sight” to Influx
“This is a continental transfer”
When the migrant crisis in Europe first broke into the American media, many analysts compared it to the outpouring of refugees following other high-profile (and particularly violent) conflicts in places like Vietnam and the former Yugoslavia. They struggled to find a benchmark; but as the migrants continued to come, the numbers defied comparison, and now those monitoring the situation believe that the thousands who have already managed to gain passage into Europe represent “the tip of the iceberg” of what’s to come.
It’s not an overblown prediction. What’s happening right now in Europe far surpasses past migrations:
So much for comparisons to previous population surges. This is continental transfer. pic.twitter.com/sskMm8JOUA
— Diana West (@diana_west_) September 16, 2015
More from the New York Times:
“I don’t see it stopping,” Amin Awad, director of the Middle East and North Africa division of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters in Geneva. If anything, he said, the thousands of refugees arriving daily at the borders of European countries may be “the tip of the iceberg.”
The warnings came as the impact of the European Union’s decision on Tuesday to apportion 120,000 migrants among member countries — in some cases, against their leaders’ wishes — continued to ripple across the Continent.
…
Up to 10,000 migrants have been entering Austria daily, mostly from Hungary; 134,000 made the crossing from Sept. 5 to 23, Austrian officials said Friday. While many of the migrants have continued on, to destinations like Germany and Sweden, 500 to 700 people each day have filed papers to stay in Austria, officials said.
After Hungary fenced off its border with Serbia last week, migrants turned to Croatia, entering Hungary through a different route — with the grudging acceptance of the Hungarian authorities — and then heading to Austria. Hungary on Friday continued to seal its border with Croatia, which like Serbia is not part of the passport-free Schengen travel zone that has been a cornerstone of European unity.
Austria’s left-leaning chancellor, Werner Faymann, and Hungary’s conservative prime minister, Viktor Orban, met in Vienna on Friday to discuss the situation. While they have divergent political stances, they agreed on the need for cooperation to manage the westward flow of immigrants.
The situation in Croatia in particular has descended into chaos—mostly due to the border closure mentioned above—and has caused tensions with Serbia. Croatian officials accused Serbian leaders of funneling migrants away from their borders, leaving the tiny, poor country to deal with hordes of people demanding food, shelter, and safe passage into the passport-free Schengen travel zone. Although those tensions somewhat relaxed following a relaxation of border policies, the small nations in southeastern Europe are still struggling to gain ground.
Other “transit countries,” such as Greece, Turkey, and Hungary, are also seeing no end to the strain—and the ensuing humanitarian crisis:
Seventeen migrants attempting to reach Greece by boat from Turkey have drowned after their boat sank off Turkey.
The victims, all thought to be Syrians, included five women and five children, local media said.
Another 20 people on the boat’s deck, who were wearing life jackets, survived, the news agency said.
Some 300,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Greece so far this year, most of them moving on to try to reach other EU countries.
Those arriving in Greece have mostly set off from Turkey’s Aegean coast, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Those who drowned on Sunday were trapped in the boat’s cabin as it sank, Turkey’s Dogan news agency reported.
The boat is thought to have set out from the village of Gumusluk near the Turkish resort town of Bodrum, where three-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi died earlier this month.Separately, 500 migrants have been rescued from the Mediterranean so far this weekend in seven operations involving the Italian coastguard and navy and a ship belonging to the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.
A spokesman for the coastguard told the AFP news agency on Sunday that three of the seven operations were ongoing.
The rescued migrants are thought to be largely from Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Sierra Leone and left Libya three days earlier. They were rescued about 80km (50 miles) off the Libyan coast.
Hungarian police said on Sunday that 9,472 migrants had arrived in the country on Saturday, overwhelmingly crossing from Croatia. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that his government plans to seal its border with Croatia, in the same way that it has sealed the border with Serbia.
Oddly enough, Finland’s interaction with its unhappy migrants dominated headlines this weekend. Many of those seeking asylum there have canceled their asylum applications and turned back, saying they don’t want to setting somewhere so cold and…boring?
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Comments
The world grows ever smaller and dangerous while ignoring causes and profiting from the treatment of symptoms.
Once more, it’s not ‘migration”, it’s an invasion.
At the end of the day, this is just a symptom of a bigger demographic problem.
Europeans aren’t having kids.
Middle Easterners are.
Geography is secondary to that.
Ideology is at least equally important.
Those people would be staying put if Islam were conducive to building decent, desirable societies. And they wouldn’t be so aggressive about pushing their way into Europe and demanding nice accommodations and various freebies if Islam didn’t teach them that Muslims have a right to whatever the infidels have built.
On the other side, there’s the arrogant, destructive ideology of “multiculturalism,” with its contempt for the culture that took centuries to create.
You are absolutely right. Furthermore, Europeans have been consumed with self-loathing and subconscious desires for nihilism for decades. Their “liberal white guilt” is going to wipe them all out. The Left is trying to do the same to us here but we are a younger culture and still (so far) fighting back. These are true, existential battles.
You haven’t been paying attention. The “right-wing” (AKA native rights) groups have been gaining a lot of ground the past few years, and more than one EU member is actively pushing back against the flood. Even Denmark has severely cut back benefits to new immigrants.
If fences and reduced bennies don’t work, I suspect a large number of Europeans will start remembering how to deal with the “colonials…”
“…those monitoring the situation believe that the thousands who have already managed to gain passage into Europe represent “the tip of the iceberg” of what’s to come.”
This iceberg, the tip of which the Europeans are now admiring with some curiosity, is far bigger and more dangerous than the one which sunk the Titanic and will likely sink Europe.
“Hey, fellow Islamists: Why should we risk attacking infidel countries? Or try to terrorize them into submission? Let’s just move there! Their borders are open, and the best part is: they’ll pay us to do it! Once we’re the majority we can impose Sharia on everyone! We’d be foolish not to, right?”
seal the borders…
The coming annihilation of Europe will make the 1930s and 40s look like an anecdote in history.
I’m surprised no one has brought up the mass migrations after WW1 and WW2 yet. A comparison would be instructive.
The Euro is an interesting fabrication. It is designed as a “one currency dollar bill” … because, perhaps the lunatics in Belgium, thought if you took all these nations and put them together under one currency then you blow away borders. And, cultures.
First,it was the Greeks who were threatened they’d lose the Euro, if they didn’t accept the terms from the EU. Which has been accepted on paper. But not one change was actually made in Greece.
And, now, the cherry on top are the millions of feet running through Greece, without any desire to stop there and stay. Just a gateway to Germany.
Things will stay the same because of the magic of a single currency. None of those nations have any intention of propping themselves up by starting their own printing presses, again.