Makes sense to me. I mean, I would prefer that over living in a refugee camp for 15 years and being treated as a second-class citizen, with no future. "To live" is more than just existing.
You'll note that the Syrian refugees are also going to places which don't list all the befits you described, like Brazil. Then again, there aren't many opportunities for them as they don't speak Portuguese.
If you had to flee your country, would you want to go somewhere where you couldn't speak with the locals, or get a job?
One option is German or Swedish. It's very unlikely that a refugee will know either language.
A large percentage of Germans and Swedes know English. If a refugee also knows English, that's one language possibility.
Also, French is another widely spoken second language in Syria, though less common than English. (Remember, Syria was a French Mandate.)
There is an existing minority population in both those countries which speaks Arabic. If a refugee also knows Arabic, that's another possibility.
On the other hand, in Brazil, fewer people know English (5% says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s... , compared to 64% for Germany and 86% for Sweden).
And far fewer Brazilians know Arabic, or refugees know Portuguese. (I don't know the mutual overlap in French.)
In any case, you can see it's much more likely that a refugee from Syria can communicate in either Germany or Sweden than in Brazil, even without knowing German or Swedish.
That's why I think your question was poorly posed, and why I think it's obvious why a refugee, when given any sort of choice or allowed to express a preference, would have a bias towards German or Sweden over Brazil.
Do you not agree?
As for Sweden, I think we should accept more refugees and refugees should be accepted more evenly across the EU.
There's plenty of room. We accepted 160,000 asylum seekers last year, for a country with fewer than 10M people. The EU is 508M people, or 50 bigger than Sweden. 160K*50 = 8 million, while there are only 5M displaced Syrians outside of Syria. Many of those don't want to flee to the EU, while on the other hand there are about an equal number of displaced people from Iraq and Afghanistan.
So, what's the point of your question again?
Yes and no. It's a rational choice for a refuge but not for language reasons, let's be honest here.
>As for Sweden, I think we should accept more refugees and refugees should be accepted more evenly across the EU.
I agree that there is more place in Europe however Sweden seems to be out of capacity now. Last year new people where put into tents. There are no jobs, SFI is overcrowded (and always was kinda bad). Food for thought. I'm leaving Sweden after my SO finishes her PhD in a few months but boy that country has changed. I hope its for the better for old and new Swedes. Rapid immigration and big changes in fabric of society seem to have generated big party of right-wing crypto-nazis which is damn scary.
None of those (aside healthcare) are the rights of someone given asylum, while you are waiting for support you 'may' be given housing and financial support. There is no "free lifetime income"
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. In Austria, where I live, as well as in Germany, asylum gets you access to the country's welfare system, which equates at least €827 monthly for single people (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedarfsorientierte_Mindestsich...) and includes healthcare and additional benefits like I wrote. Once granted asylum, people are allowed to work, but due to extremely poor education and language barriers, most cannot or will not find jobs and end up in the welfare system forever. Typically, they are granted citizenship after 6 years (https://www.help.gv.at/Portal.Node/hlpd/public/content/26/Se...).
My main issue with this is not the fact that these are given to people with asylum (even though they get preferential treatment compared to EU citizens from other countries, who need to work for 12 months before having access to the welfare system), but that asylum was granted to far too many people who didn't deserve it. War refugees are "displaced people" and would normally receive temporary asylum-like status and return to their countries after the war. Civil war is not a reason for being granted asylum according to the Geneva Convention. Besides that, 2/3 of the refugees coming to Austria are not from war zones.
It's not greedy to try to obtain these with some risk and a $5k investment, but just wanting these is not a good enough reason for EU taxpayers to pay for millions of migrants - especially when there are many more needy who cannot afford to travel to Europe.