Millhouse

... looks like its heating up.

Where do you think this will end up? The EU will be under a lot of strain soon. I cannot see the wider EU block being as welcoming as the UK given their general intolerance of foreigners (or different religious groups), love of tear gas and weaker economies.

can't wait to watch this one... from the safety of the middle east

DXBtoDOH

Brexit.

It'll take the establishment by surprise and lead to the resignation of Cameron and Theresa May is elected by the party as a caretaker PM to negotiate the withdrawal, stepping side for Osborne (who remains at the treasury) in 2020, when he takes the PM spot in time for the election.

As for the rest of Europe: Eastern Europe (Poland, Czech, Hungary) who have long memories and are deeply distrustful of Muslims, battle it out with Germany/France. How it will end up, who knows.

shiva

i genuinely have no idea.

despite having been a growing issue for a couple of decades nobody seems to have given it any thought, as such i wouldn't be surprised by any action taken as it could be anything from a total "Europe is now closed" to "**** you Greece here is some money but you get all the newbies"

i do find it ironic though since all bar the scandic countries and the north west of scotland have had pretty much continual immigration for millenia.

scot47

Germany expects to take in 800,000 in the next year.
Media in Britain makes out that most migrants are heading for London. Simply not true.

Millhouse

But this was generally defined by war. Today it is being defined by a war somewhere else and people are coming (mostly) unarmed and unwanted.

I do wonder if the amount of people coming has really increased, or if the amount of reporting of the problem has. Either way, it doesn't matter "something" will be done as the natives won't be happy.

My sense is that the Eastern EU block will be the first to tear gas them.

Bahtatboy

That argument ignores two key factors. First, the scale: in August alone some 50,000 migrants arrived in Hungary, mainly from the Middle East and Africa. If that was an annual number, for the whole of the EU, it may represent a scale which would be manageable. But it's 1 country in 1 month. Second, the saturation level of the UK infrastructure (I don't know about the situation of the other western European members of the EU, but it's probably similar): NHS, schools, benefits budget, housing, policing, defence, all extremely stressed by the current situation.

I agree that the UK in particular and western Europe in general has benefitted from immigration, but as with any system, changes have got to be gradual unless the system is well-prepared for and capable of handling a shock change. The UK isn't.

DXBtoDOH

Is this really true? Using what parameters?

I'm only asking because it's fashionable to talk about the 'history' of immigration within Europe or the UK but when you look at the actual numbers, it's a very small group of people. The largest immigration group to move to the UK prior to WWII were the Hugenots and they were in the tens of thousands in the early 18th century.

In the various continental empires you did have some movement of people within the empire, as in some Polish moving into Germany when Poland didn't exist, or the Hungarians/Bohemians/Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian empires, but that seemed to have been on a very small scale and not enough to weaken the nationalists movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries.

The unstated fear people have regarding immigration is the losing the sense of cultural solidarity. Most countries of Europe were culturally distinctive regions for centuries, if not a millennia, with clear cut identities. It's not fashionable to talk about this but large scale immigration weakens a nation's cultural identity, especially if the immigrants are from vastly different cultures in the Islamic or Asian worlds.

I imagine for many people it's a tug of war between genuine sympathy for the plight of the migrants and a deep seated instinct to protect their home "culture" from unwanted outsiders. When the going gets tough, it's unpredictable as to what will happen and this crisis is pushing Europe into a very tough place, unexpectedly.

norsk

It is clear that the fairly open system for dealing with migrants/asylum seekers (call them whatever you want) in place today is being taken advantage of by a lot of people who are not in imminent danger in their home countries.

In my opinion it is only a matter of time before the people of Europe start demanding their governments take steps to close their borders to stem the flow. And it is definitely not because they don't want to help those who need it the most....

Millhouse

you've made them sound like cockroaches. Which isn't far from how most of our fellow Europeans would like to see them treated

DXBtoDOH

If you buy the argument that deep inside most people are nasty self-protecting little buggers, then you're probably right. History certainly has confirmed this.

scrubbedexpat141

This is true, it's hard for some to admit but it's definitely got some validity.

I'm not so sure about this crisis. It seems like it could be never ending. Wouldn't it be easier to wade into the Middle East and start chucking some weight around to fix the root cause? Can't we stick people on a ship to the States? They'll not like that and maybe invade for us.

There's a big difference between helping refugees like the Syrians streaming out and helping people who just don't fancy their own country any more. But how do you know? How many can we actually help before (as Bahtat says) we reach a limit of being able to provide the basics?

Bahtatboy

Root causes = the Industrial Revolution, dogmatic religion, the Magna Carta, the inability to properly use one's own natural resources, and a long, hard-fought history of democracy and justice.

You'll have to sort out for yourself which of those causes lie in the UK and which in the countries from where many of the migrants/refugees hail.

scrubbedexpat141

Do you think it's a blend of a relatively successful destination state (UK) that isn't completely unfriendly in welcoming the needy combined with a source state that's not been able to progress almost at all in the last X years.

Boomhauer

The Western media should focus in on how the rich GCC countries do not take in Syrian refugees , despite sharing a lot of cultural similarities and being closer to Syria than Northern Europe. Israel does not take in Syrian refugees in any meaningful numbers either.

Boomhauer

I am all for helping refugees escaping death/torture/rape/ethnic cleansing etc.. but this should be coupled with a foreign policy that address the causes of the Syrian conflict and takes to task Western allies in the MidEast who are aggravating and fueling the conflict.

The other issue is that you just know that most of the Sunni refugees once settled in the West are just going to join the wider Sunni society in demanding and expecting society accept and defer to Islamic sensibilities.