Fleeing to a nearby country is one thing.
Being able to move all the way to Germany, Denmark or Sweden isn't exactly being fleeing war anymore.
The irony is that it's those with most money who can afford to move the furthest away from the refugee camps and many of those who do are men, leaving their family behind hoping to be able to get them to the country they end up in
60% according to some are migrants not refugees.
The problem is that the outer borders doesn't work and so once you are inside it's very easy to move around as there have been practically no border control inside the EU.
This is changing now.
That is because of how international travel works. Many of those people would love to hop on a plane, land in country X, and request refugee status. But the flight system is set up to prevent that. Only those with a visa (or visa waiver) are allowed on the plane.
It used to be that refugees could travel by passenger ship. Look at the refugees from Germany who came to the US because of the second world war. Including the MS St. Louis where the refugees were denied entry to Cuba, Canada, and the United States.
We have no real passenger fleets, so that is no longer possible.
The only option left is to travel by land.
"60% according to some are migrants not refugees."
Do you have any references for that statement? Even if true, millions of people are refugees.
> That is because of how international travel works.
Refugees fleeing from war are forced to travel through the entire European continent to the northern countries with the most beneficial social security because of how international travel works?
> "60% according to some are migrants not refugees."
> Do you have any references for that statement?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/12123684...
That one report has been repeated many times, but repetition isn't verification.
If I read https://euobserver.com/migration/132048 correctly, the 40% number refers specifically Syrian refugees. Quoting from it:
> Iraqis and Afghans, it says, each represent around 24 percent of the mix, or just under 50 percent together.
> In other words, almost 90 percent the people who arrived by sea in the EU in December came from countries gripped by war or emerged from a wider regional conflict.
As to your other comment, when people flee they want to move some place where they have a future. Few want a future living in a refugee camp. Few want a future living as if they are second-class citizens and subject to xenophobia.
I'm sure many would choose to go to the US even though the US does not offer "the most beneficial social security". Many have gone to Brazil.
The fact is that the second you are in the nearest country where there is no conflict you are a refugee from the war, but the second you move further you are not more an actual refugee of war but rather a migrant.
Now there are all sorts of reasons why we still accepts people as refugees rather than migrants but thats only because they didn't declare themselves refugees in some of the countries they came trough.
They don't have to because of Schengen which allow for people to move freely within the EU. The out borders don't work, so as soon as you get in you can move quite freely. This is what is being changed now that many european countries are putting up border patrol forcing them further and further back to where they originated from.
It's totally understandably why people want to move to a better place, just as it's perfectly understandable that countries don't want to let everyone in. Especially not the European wellfare systems which are quite lucrative.
https://www.rt.com/news/330284-economic-migrants-eu-refugees...
When experience says the Dublin Agreement starts to break own under high stress, who should suffer the most? The refugees? The border countries?
I certainly have no answers, but I can empathize better with the refugees more than I can those who insist that refugees are stuck in the first place they arrive.
But you are doing it again. Assuming the problem is mostly a refugee problem. It's not it's a migration problem, thats the one thats hard to solve and which can't be solved by doing what sweden and germany did.
Furthermore and as mentioned elsewhere. Many of these people are those with most resources, otherwise they wouldn't be able to actually make it so far. The real refugees, those who can't get away, them we are leaving with less resources because we end up spending money on those who come to the various european countries.
By your argument we should just let them all sleep in a ditch next to the border of the country they fled, because that's good enough? That is more or less what is happening now.
Tell me. If Britain were engaged in a shooting war, would you consider the Isle of Man safe? Or would you go further?
What's your take on the 3000 refugee a year limit the uk is working to? (20,000 by 2020)
If you flee because of war you don't care where you go, you just want to get away from the war. Moving to Denmark or UK or Sweden is a completely different operation.
Keep in mind that most people are left in the refugee camps near the conflict. For every person we have to take into our welfare system we are basically not able to provide for 10 if not hundreds of others in the actual area of the conflict.
The idea with being an actual refugee is that you are supposed to go back once the conflict is over and rebuild your own country. Thats not the plan of those who move so far away.
You are trying to turn something with a lot of gray areas into som black/white moral thing were the only right thing to do is help.
Sweden said just come everyone everyone warned them. Now they have closed the borders and is sending 80.000 back.
This is because they didn't realize that Denmark did which is you can't just take people in large quantity with such different cultures without it undermining the country they are migrating to.
It's easy to play the good person when you don't have responsibility for a country.
It's not cheap to get to Denmark, so only those with most money can do it, which means the rest are left in the actual refugee camps near the area they fled from.
All you need to do is go and check out the refugee camps in ex. Denmark and you will find it to be mostly men, many of them married which mean they left their wife and or children behind. Think about that for a moment.
"according to some"
Wow, I was never convinced more.
Why don't you import them to San Francisco? I guess life is even better there than in some small German town. Or how about Monaco or Disney Land?
[1] - http://www.unhcr.org/protect/PROTECTION/3b66c2aa10.pdf