Refugee situation / EU response - rolling news

whatta country

POTUS has a lot of say in how refugees come in. I read that the limit is determined by his consultation w/ congress but I'm guessing he makes the final decision?

well they have to have somewhere to go and state governors have a lot of say in that iirc

iirc Sweden grants refuge to the highest proportion of applicants anywhere in the European Union and the implication that two thirds will stay is vastly more positive than it would be anywhere else.

yeah iirc upwards of 75% of asylum applications in France fail

Yes, and France is not the worst offender. Sweden has always deported close to 0% of Syrians, etc and close to 100% of Albanians and Kosovar, etc. A change in policy is important to pick up but without knowing where unsuccessful applications are from, it can't be read into the bare numbers.

right the success rate in France is quite different for people from the Balkans than for people from today's war zones

Germany's Merkel says refugees must return home once war is over

also this fresh horror: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3423968/Mobs-hundreds-masked-men-rampage-Stockholm-central-station-beating-refugee-children.html

Yeah, the motorcycle gangs and football ultras are getting very, very organized around this bullshit throughout Europe.

How much of a crossover is there with PEGIDA or is it a separate phenomenon?

37 people inc. 10 children drowned yesterday in the Aegean Sea

The Dutch Labour party is proposing a scheme where all refugees who reach Europe by sea are deported immediately:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/netherlands-plan-ferry-refugees-turkey-160128170612335.html

sounds productive

xpost -- there is some crossover. They march along with the Pegidiots, but are probably more physically and less politically dangerous.

I seem to remember an article about hooligans "shepherding" crowds v efficiently at the original PEGIDA demos.

They are existing groups used to, shall we say, crowd control issues, so it's a natural fit.

Greece football protest: Players sit on the pitch after kick-off

Yesterday at about 9.30am, David Cameron visited the Notting Hill farmer's market with about 10 hired goons, all in 'casual navy' (DC was wearing a hideous navy fleece). Even the Tories who work and shop at the market aren't crazy about him and/or his apparent lack of compassion. He was there to be seen to be caring about small producers yada yada, you get the drift...

One of the guys who works on the tomato stall criticised Cameron to his face for the appalling way he speaks about refugees (no swearing was involved). By 12pm, head tomato office called to tell the guy he might be sacked, because ~somebody~ on Team Cam phoned them up to complain about his interaction with the PM. Tossers.

also this fresh horror: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3423968/Mobs-hundreds-masked-men-rampage-Stockholm-central-station-beating-refugee-children.html

― Mordy, Saturday, January 30, 2016 4:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, the motorcycle gangs and football ultras are getting very, very organized around this bullshit throughout Europe.

― Three Word Username, Sunday, January 31, 2016 12:19 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, here it is

xp is that legal?

Uppity proles have been given marching orders at the behest of snide toffs since the dawn of time. Am just hoping the tomato boss calms down and sees his employee's actions as perfectly reasonable 'taxpayer feedback.'

Ugh, old friend of mine was sharing PEGIDA crap on facebook today.

what a world

http://mashable.com/2016/03/09/syrian-refugees-get-warm-canadian-welcome-at-furry-convention-in-vancouver/

omg

https://twitter.com/SLevelt/status/720654077315694592

A comic for about-to-be-deported refugee children on why being deported is actually really great.

Jesus!

That is truly revolting

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mainstream-hopefuls-lag-as-austrians-vote-for-new-president-1461495458

Voters in Austria’s presidential election Sunday sent a stern warning to the established parties that have ruled the country since World War II, making a populist, anti-immigrant candidate the front-runner.

Preliminary results published by the Austrian interior ministry, which didn’t include mail-in ballots, showed that Norbert Hofer, from the anti-immigrant Freedom Party, which is known by its German initials FPÖ, with 36.4% of the vote.

Alexander Van der Bellen, a 72-year-old economist and former spokesman for the Greens who took a pro-refugee stance during the campaign, secured nearly 20.4% of the vote, according to the ministry. Mr. Van der Bellen, himself a child of refugee parents, is opposed to all restrictions on asylum seekers.

Candidates from the Social Democrats and Austrian People’s Party, which together form the current coalition government, each received around 11% of the vote.

Mail-in ballots didn't change much, except that the SPÖ are now a tick ahead of the ÖVP. Will still be a run-off between the Fasc... uh I mean Freedom Party and the Greens, which means a referendum on foreigners (in Austria, it's always about foreigners, even when they say it's about refugees), which means I am wondering whether to renew my residence permit. I am not surprised by this outcome even though polling showed a much closer race between VdB and Hofer, because Austrians who hate foreigners are chicken shits who think the mean Americans will punish them for admitting their true feelings and are afraid even of pollsters; if polling shows a close race in the run-off, it will mean a landslide for Hofer.

The major parties have also been triangulating poorly by making Austrian immigration law progressively more incomprehensible and xenophobic over the last 10 years; folks clearly want the real thing. Pfui.

there are few things more dispiriting in the world than the European reaction to the refugee crisis and the consequences - new found hegemony of the xenophobic right in multiple countries - it will have for, the rest of our lives, i suppose?

The other thing that is wildly different about Austrian politics for people who know German politics: in Austria, a Grand Coalition always means failure and stagnation -- neither of the major parties wants it to be successful, so no coherent ideas come out of it. This has meant with this particular government in this crisis a Socialist Chancellor who talks about tolerance and openness vis-a-vis refugees with a black (I can't say Christian Democrat, the words get stuck in my mouth) Minister of the Interior who sets acts like she's part of Orban's cabinet and nobody does anything, no elections aren't called, and Austria just moved to a longer five-year cycle for standard terms of office.

Kenya has announced it is going to close the Dadaab refugee camp, the biggest in the world, and force the more than 300k people either back to their country or onto somewhere else

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/11/kenya-close-worlds-biggest-refugee-camp-dadaab

Run-off elections in Austria today: 50-50 results. Going to the absentee ballots. (Vienna did not vote for the Nazi, nor did, to my happy surprise, my tiny town.) Am cautiously optimistic as absentee ballots favor better educated voters, and clearest demographic trend here has been O-Levels Green, no O-Levels, extreme right.

Nazi loses.

NOW it's official 50.3 -- 49.7. The FPÖ are screaming -- keep your eyes on Austria in the coming months.

they're claiming fraud etc? else the usual indignation when the silent majority has failed to summon itself into existence

http://www.zugespitzt.at/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/csm_aufderuni2_a95509a9b0.jpg

Yes, they started hollering fraud yesterday, at which point I started relaxing a little.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/25/why-are-so-many-muslim-refugees-in-europe-suddenly-finding-jesus.html

In Denmark it's apparently illegal to help refugees now. One politician let two immigrants sleep at her place for a night, after which they left for Norway. She's probably going to jail for it.

wtf

so i found a link, here: http://cphpost.dk/news/danish-politician-on-trial-for-harbouring-refugees.html

Where it says:

The charge sheet accuses the two defendants of allowing two African refugees to stay overnight at their home and then arranging transport and ferry tickets so they could travel on to Norway the next day.

You'll also notice that the informer was a conservative politician.

The Danish Alien Act says:

(7) Any person is liable to a fine or imprisonment for up to 2 years if he –
(i) intentionally assists an alien in illegally entering or transiting Denmark;
(ii) intentionally assists an alien in illegally staying in Denmark;
(iii) intentionally assists an alien in entering Denmark for the purpose of entering another country illegally from Denmark

the act is 3 years old

Australia is closing their refugee detention camp in PNG - or rather has been told to close it by the PNG supreme court and has agreed:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/17/manus-island-detention-centre-to-close-australia-and-papua-new-guinea-agree

But also: '“Both Papua New Guinea and Australia are in agreement that the centre is to be closed,” O’Neill said, but offered no time frame, only stating that the process should not be rushed." and "offered no detail on the future of the 854 men held there – except that Australia remains adamant it will accept none of the detainees for resettlement."

This is absolutely horrific.

The Greek government is taking migrants from detention centres, including babies, putting them on overloaded inflatable life rafts and abandoning them at sea for the Turkish Coast Guard to rescue https://t.co/qxgKcgksj8

— Abi Wilkinson (@AbiWilks) August 16, 2020

Christ.

It really, really is...

right wing on twitter already advocating for the uk to do the same, not going to link to it, nobody needs to see that

What can one say to this kind of evil? I think we’re way down a very dark path and I can’t see the way back.