Helping the refugees/migrants integrate will cost a lot of money. Legal representation for them initially. Initial housing. Schooling. Essentially everything has to be paid for by govt until they get some low paying job that will barely pay for their expenses. And most likely they will end up needing govt assistance for the rest of their life because they don't have the skills needed in the local economy. And this life of depending on govt assistance will very possibly be the life of their offsprings too, because they couldn't get the necessary education due to their parents inability to deal with the new society.
2) The people creating the legal standard for dealing with refugees in 1950s and 1960s couldn't possibly have foreseen what's happening today. Certainly not the scale. With smartphone and social media, the scale is something no one expected.
3) Some limit has to be set on how many refugees/migrants are allowed in. Otherwise, the region of Syria/Afg/Iraq will be empty of people except for the warlords and their underlings. Now where do you draw the line?
It was interesting seeing the difference in opinion in these countries on both treatment of refugees, and the whole "Brexit" situation.
Germans (that I spoke to) see Brexit as a purely racist / nationalist debate and don't really understand why it's being argued as an economic debate. They run the numbers and shake their heads. From an immigration point of view, they bring up, for example, the Spanish situation (~100k spanish people living in the UK, ~500k UK people living in Spain) and wonder why Britain think that leaving the EU is going to be good for "jobs and population" when this imbalance exists in many other european nations as well.
In the UK I saw "Leave" posters everywhere, and occasionally an EU flag or "Remain" poster. Speaking to people it seemed obvious that this debate was primarily about racism / nationalism and the economic questions were secondary to the general population.
I have a feeling that this may be a perfect case-study in how governments disguise contentious and emotive issues (that the general populous have strong opinions on) as economic issues (that are easily mired in layers of complexity) to make the debate seem more palatable to outside observers.
The horrific killing of Jo Cox occurred while I was on the flight back to Australia. It will be interesting to see how, despite the terrible circumstances, this event changes the tone of the debate. After all, it's hard to stomach that someone would kill someone else over the effects of trade policy, but the effects of "migrants" taking jobs are historically contentious. You only need to look at the Trump campaign (And Australia's disastrous immigration policy) to see how passionate these issues can make people.
I think MSF are making the right decision here (from a logical and moral viewpoint) but I hope they don't shoot themselves in the foot with this precedent. After all, it won't take too many further changes before they can't, by the same justification, accept money from the US, Australia, and any other country that seems bent on pushing a nationalist, rather than a humanitarian agenda.
In the uk we now have people so filled with hate and fear of immigration that they're murdering politicians. Many will argue that this isn't the case, mostly those who believe the above paragraph - I don't know but "death to traitors, freedom for Britain" when shooting an mp who is pro migrant rights probably means something.
If there's a future to look back from, this period will be looked upon with shame.
Or more likely just written out of history, and anyone who talks about it is called a revisionist or terror apologist.