It is pretty odd to me to assume that someone who has given up everything and spent all their money to leave, and thus has demonstrated a willingness to go to extremes to get away from their original situation, will cross a border and suddenly decide "hey, no point in seeing if we can get it better if we go a bit farther".

In other words, while I'm sure there are purely economic migrants who haven't suffered all that much hardship who try to take advantage of the refugee stream, it is possible to both be a genuine refugee fleeing for your life and also quite reasonably want to find the best possible place to live once you've managed to get away from the worst risk.

Not least because it is also about dealing with horribly poor information about where they might have the best chances at being allowed to stay.

If we want people to stay closer, then it needs to feel to people arriving in e.g. Turkey, like staying in refugee camps there is a reasonable choice.

It's just that then they are no longer in immediate threat of death or persecution (if they ever were) and thus not covered by the refugee conventions.

To counter this, the people smugglers teach (sell) stories to be told to the authorities in receiving countries.

Again, if I were among the migrants, I might very well do the same. Move on, try to adapt, do whatever is needed to be allowed to go on. I've talked to many migrants (mostly young men or boys) and they've almost all been reasonable kids with interesting though sad stories. But they were not being threatened for their lives by the nasty Swedes behind Torneå river whence they came from.

One boy who I invited for a cup of tea after a football training, for instance, was 17. He was born in Afghanistan but moved with his family to Iran at the age of 4. He lived there for almost 10 years, as a second class person (non-citizen, no right to go to school, no proper health care, despised by the locals). Then they moved on to Turkey, then to Greece (which was not nice at all, people were kept in detention), then through Balkans to Austria where he spent a year. Then migration through Germany, Denmark, Sweden. Now he's moved on again, looking for his place in the world.

Not an easy life,but it's hard to say what we really could do to the whole of Afghan diaspora who lives like this. Welcoming everyone isn't going to work, even if I want to be friendly and reasonable to anyone I meet.

I think we mostly agree. Though they would still (assuming they were at one point in immediate threat of death or persecution) be covered by the refugee conventions. It's just that they have no immediate right of asylum or refugee status in countries they subsequently travel to.

This is an important distinction. Someone coming out of Syria that then goes through multiple countries, is a refugee. They don't cease to be a refugee if they travel on to, say, Germany. But the refugee treaties regulates which states are legally obliged to consider an asylum application and which may choose to just tell them "no, you have to go back and apply somewhere else".

The problem, is that these treaties does not take into account human nature, nor do they take into account the tremendous burden they impose on the immediate neighbours of countries like Syria. And so they will not work, and it is not realistic to assume they will work without huge investments in actually making it undesirable to continue on by giving people a reasonable shot at something better closer.

A refugees who flees war only need to go to the closest safe area and they are away from the imidiate danger that make them refugees.

Those with most money are those who can afford moving the furthest away.

In most cases it's actually the men who travel all the way to ex Scandinavia and leave their wife and kids behind. They do this because they know they can get them reunited later on.

The people who really have no money are stuck in the nearest refugee camp. I certainly don't hold it against those with the means to try and make a better future for themselves far away from their homelands but that does not mean you just accept everyone.

Then you just end up like Sweden and frankly not even the Swedes are happy about that right now.

The point is not that we should encourage them to go on, but that dismissing those who go on as not really refugees fail to acknowledge human nature.

If you've taken crazy risks to flee, it makes no sense to stop at the very first point where you're no longer at immediate risk of death if you e.g. believe you have a better chance to be allowed to stay in a different country, or if you believe you have better chances at a normal life if you go on. Whether or not those beliefs are right.

I did not suggest we should "just accept everyone". Just that the idea that continuing on is an indication of whether or not someone is genuinely a refugee is flawed.