Europe Refugee Crisis

suby68 said:

The big Golf States and the US take none of the people and don't wait for them to do anything: They never will. Remember the boat people after the end of the Vietnam war? The US Navy got orders to ignore them and they ignore them now. It's left to other nations to pick them up and save them.

If you don't save them moral lessons will come out of Washington about Europe not able to handle poor refugees

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But the US Navy did end up picking up the South Vietnamese refugees onto their aircraft carrier and such. They even go so far as to dump a few of the Huey helicopters into the ocean to make room for them as well. Unless you are talking about the later groups of Boat people than that's a different story.

I saw some truly heart-wrenching pictures on Facebook of drowned children, very young children that I won't reproduce here.

We have all been hearing of the horrific losses refugees have been suffering trying to get to Europe, but it is truly a world of difference seeing that tragedy with your own eyes, even vicariously through social media.

I have also seen some truly sobering pictures of refugee lines at European train stations, and those are the lucky ones that got past the boarder.

It is sadly telling that this has only acquired full blown crisis status because the gruesome reality of it is literally battering down the door of the EU.

We were all too ready to turn our eyes and hearts from the awful truth happening the Syria, Iraq and Libya until we literally could avoid it no one, as lifeless babies wash up on our shores and desperate souls huddle at our boarders and in our train stations.

It is a man made slow motion tragedy created by hubris, selfishness and stubbornness. What makes it worse is that we have been here so many times before.

It seems every generation, someone has the pride and presumption to think they can follow the same path of those who failed before them, yet somehow emerge victorious because they are somehow better than all those that tried before.

Excuse my foul mood, but try as I may, I just cannot see an end to the needless death and suffering taking place that is the root cause of this crisis.

The world has all the moral justification anyone could dream of to step in and end this nightmare, yet none of the powers who could do something about it will short of some monumental, unforeseen event.

America is exhausted from decades of war, Europe hasn't the will or means to make a telling difference, both Russia and China are beset by local concerns (many of which were created or made worse by the same powers that were responsible for Syria and Libya), but to be honest, even without concerns at home, neither Russia or China would be interested in getting involved in these fights.

The only ones actually stepping up are the Iranians, and a lot of credit they are getting for their efforts and sacrifices. They are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, but at least they are actively engaged.

The only way I see an end to this, short of IS launching a 9/11 sized attack against one of the world's top powers and galvanising that power into action, is for Ban Ki Moon to step up and petition for the creation of an UN standing army, independent of member states of the wimps of their national self interests.

Sadly, that notion seems the most remote possibility if all.

Personally, I firmly believe that if the EU countries worked together, they can easily absorb the incoming mass of refugees at little to no cost to their economy, and may even benefit from it.

It's unfortunate that this is not happening, and that each EU state is too occupied with their own interests to work together, with the end result of the crisis that we are now seeing. This is why I think this crisis threatens to destroy the EU itself.

suby68 said:

The big Golf States and the US take none of the people and don't wait for them to do anything: They never will. Remember the boat people after the end of the Vietnam war? The US Navy got orders to ignore them and they ignore them now.

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You do not know what you are talking about.

During the final evacuation, as the North was overrunning the South, the US Military conducted Operation Frequent Wind in April and May of 1975 to assist Vietnamese leaving the country. There was a large Naval Component to that evacuation with Task Force 76. Junks, small craft, sampans, and about 30 naval vessels escaped and made to sea and to TF 76 in the first week to ten days.

By early May, Task Force 76 had picked up over 44,000 seaborne evacuees which were taken to US evacuations centers in the Philippines and Guam

The US navy continued helping to pick up, save, and transport the South Vietnamese escaping Vietnam by boat (boat people) and other means. About 700,000 boat people in all fled South Vietnam. Something like 1.6 million or more fled by all means.

The US was by far the largest nation resettling both boat people and other South Vietnamese refugees. Over a ten year period, a total of over 490,000 were settled in America. The next two largest were Australia and Canada...each with about 100,000.

I saw it as it happened...and tens of thousands of them (and more) were settled in my home state ofTexas along the Gulf Coast and most have turned into hard working, model US citizens.

I believe another of our Super Moderators, Popeye, was actually involved with US Navy operations at the time.

So, check your facts before you make such demonstrably false statements.

Equation said:

But the US Navy did end up picking up the South Vietnamese refugees onto their aircraft carrier and such. They even go so far as to dump a few of the Huey helicopters into the ocean to make room for them as well. Unless you are talking about the later groups of Boat people than that's a different story.

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See my post HERE Equation

In the first couple of weeks during the fall of Saigon in April 1975 and May 1975, the US Navy saved over 44,000 South Vietnamese.

By the time it was all over, the US settled over 490,000 South Vietnamese in the US.

The poster does not know what they are talking about when it comes to the US Navy helping the boat people.

I am not going to say that there werwe not some vessels, not a part of Frequent Wind or other specific tasking directed at the boat people who may have been ordered to Charlie Mike with their own mission...but I know for a FACT that a huge effort was made to help the boat people and bring them to America.

Arabs need dictators, plain and simple. Iraq under Sadam may have no freedom, but people live prosperous lives. Their education level was the best in middle east and have the best healthcare (i think i read that somewhere). I wonder given a choice, what would Libyans, Syrians and Iraqis choose now?

vincent said:

Arabs need dictators, plain and simple. Iraq under Sadam may have no freedom, but people live prosperous lives. Their education level was the best in middle east and have the best healthcare (i think i read that somewhere). I wonder given a choice, what would Libyans, Syrians and Iraqis choose now?

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I take exception to that view.

Arabs need dictators about as much as the west needs democracy.

Contrary to popular western dogma, democracy is not some magical panacea to the world's ills, if anything, I place democracy in the same category as communism - a fantastic idea in theory, and which works modestly well on the small scale, but who's limitations and flaws become ever more apparent and server as you scale it up.

The reason the west keeps failing to transplant democracy in the middle east and elsewhere isn't because the Arabs are somehow unsuited to democracy (with all the derogatory assumptions and connotations that comes with such a grave charge in the west), but rather because democracy isn't half what it's cracked up to be.

Western countries prospered despite democracy, not because of it, and most certainly not the current incarnation so rife with in-built corruption and legalised manipulation.

Western pre-eminence is based on wealth and power externally, and the rule of law and education domestically.

Democracy has proven to be a powerful tool to pacify the masses and prevent the kinds of internal schism and strife that so beset Imperial China (for the most part, events like the American civil war proves its by no means perfect at that job), but it is no better or worse at picking leaders compared to any other method, save the hyper-intensive natural selection process that only happens during wars of survival.

During which time survival instincts and the brutally unforgiving nature of events forces people to short-circuit the normal bias and self-interest that stops those truly worthy of leadership from ascending to positions of prominence, and anyone stupid or stubborn enough to put dogma and self-interest in front of reality and talent normally doesn't live long enough to regret their foolishness.

Life under dictators in Arab nations was good because those dictators provided stability and imposed the rule of law.

The mistake of successive western misadventures is that they are so pre-occupied with the one man at the top, they paid little or no heed to the machinery of government, which is often the first thing they undermine and destroy when they stage coups or incite rebellion, yet which is the most important thing needed to hold a country together after a regime change.

If you look across the middle east and back through history, those regime changes that took hold were inevitably those cases where the previous government was removed with minimal damage done to the machinery of government. Sure, lots of people were removed from their posts, by those posts were kept, and only someone else took their place.

Invariably, that only happens when an insider seizes power, and appoints himself the new boss, hence the mistaken presumption that somehow Arabs are predisposed to being ruled by despots.

However, the fact is that if some country pulled the same stunt on a western democracy, by undermining the government, inciting and supporting armed insurrection and pretty much destroying the government and letting armed bandits take over the country, the result would be little different to the horrors happening in Libya and Syria.

I trouble as I see it Wolfie, is that taking Western Democracy to countries like those in the middle East, is about transplanting a highly individualistic system (ie one man one vote) into a country where society is traditional and communal based on religious, tribal and other communal lines.

Western Democracy is based on the notion of the swing voter, voting for the person or party with which the individual personally most agrees. In many other countries the only swing voter you would ever find, will be from the end of rope tied to a lamppost, for anyone who failed to vote for the appropriate tribal leader, cleric etc etc.

In that sense, one man one vote only serves to reinforce communal inequality by ensuring that dominant communal majorities retain power.

Notions of democracy are fine, but they must be implemented at the level that reflects the real power composition of the nation and through that ensures that the voices of all get a chance to be heard.

The most depressing part is that this is hardly rocket science, so the failure of our policy makers to understand this is either malicious or incompetence.

Part 1

Rx for Prosperity: German Companies See Refugees as Opportunity
The German business community views the recent influx of refugees as an opportunity to help companies grow and ensure long-term prosperity. Many are calling for bureaucratic red tape to be lifted so that new arrivals can enter the labor market faster.


aid Hashimi is sweating. He has already spent two hours reorganizing the storage room next to the office, assembling metal cabinets and moving boxes in an out of the room.

The 18-year-old from Afghanistan has been in an apprenticeship program for about a year now to become a plumbing and heating installer with Heizung-Obermeier, a heating installation company located in Munich's historic city center. The work is never boring, he says. "I like my coworkers, and I often work on construction sites."

He completed a long journey to arrive where he is today.

Hashimi is the eldest of four children. His father died in the war in Afghanistan. When he was 15, Hashimi fled from Jalalabad in northeast Afghanistan and embarked on a five-month journey to Munich. He flew from Kabul to Tehran, and from there, he traveled on foot or by bus through Turkey, Greece and Italy before reaching Germany. Sometimes he was part of a group and sometimes he was alone. He completed a journey of more than 6,000 kilometers (3,730 miles) -- without his family.

After arriving in Munich, he received assistance from the local youth welfare office. As a foreigner, it was difficult at first to find his bearings. "I couldn't understand anyone," says Hashimi, who now speaks German almost fluently. After graduating from lower secondary school with a high grade point average, he completed a traineeship as an auto painter, and then a second traineeship at Heizung-Obermeier, where he was given an important opportunity last year. "If he wants to, he can also complete the work here he needs to become a foreman," says business owner Olaf Zimmermann.

'All Skin Colors Are Welcome'
Two years ago, Zimmermann noticed that it was becoming more and more difficult to find skilled personnel. He already employed people from other countries at the time. "We've had employees from all over Europe. All skin colors are welcome," says Zimmermann. "The focus is on the work. Everything else is unimportant."

Zimmermann, who currently employs two immigrants, says that the problems he encounters are with the German bureaucracy. He doesn't know, for example, whether Hashimi will be allowed to stay in Germany once he completes his apprenticeship.

Hashimi is one of thousands of children who become stranded in Germany year after year, often sent by their parents, in the hope that they will find a better life, get a good education and be better prepared for the future. They numbered an estimated 5,000 in 2013, and more than 10,000 last year. Their numbers are rising, along with the overall figures for asylum-seekers, migrants and refugees. The German government is expecting up to 800,000 asylum-seekers this year alone.

The massive influx of foreigners creates immense challenges for society. Many local authorities are overwhelmed, and refugee hostels, temporary housing and tent cities are overcrowded. The social welfare system and government budgets are faced with billions in additional costs.

A Silver Lining for Germany?
But the influx also provides opportunities for the German economy. Despite the official unemployment figure of almost 2.8 million, the business community urgently needs workers. And every refugee or migrant who finds work becomes less of a drain on the public coffers. The German economy is dependent on immigration, both from Europe as well as people entering the country due to asylum rights in Germany. With the German population shrinking, businesses are unable to fill many jobs, and specialized workers are increasingly rare. This trend will only be exacerbated in the coming years. It's a development that jeopardizes the country's future prosperity.

The fact is that Germany has been a country of immigration since the mid-1960s, when the number of guest workers passed the 1-million mark. Nevertheless, the country still lacks a modern immigration law. Germany is, however, starting to recognize that it must avail itself of the skills of those already in the country. In recent months, the government has repeatedly amended ordinances and legal provisions to facilitate the integration of asylum-seekers and refugees into the labor market.

Nevertheless, it is often merely a coincidence when people like Jacob Sousani find work. In Damascus, the Syrian native had a hair salon, five employees, a 70-square-meter (750-square-foot) apartment, a car and social status.

All that remains of his former life is a back injury from a bomb attack.

Sousani fled from the Syrian civil war. His five-month odyssey took him through Lebanon, Turkey, Greece and Italy until he finally arrived in Dresden. His father and two of his brothers stayed in Damascus. Sousani doesn't want to talk about what happened to the rest of his siblings.

A Growing Labor Shortage
It is a busy Thursday evening in the small hair salon where he works today, Director's Cut in Dresden's trendy Neustadt neighborhood. A man with bushy, black eyebrows, he is standing at one of the hairdresser's chairs, meticulously applying blonde hair dye to a customer's roots. He has been working in the salon for more than a month and has lived in Germany for the last year. "It's a famous salon," says Sousani.

He found a new home, an apartment and work in Dresden. "I didn't think anyone would ever hire me," says Sousani. But the 31-year-old was lucky, when a neighbor, who is also from Syria, told owner Christoph Steinigen about Sousani. After a trial week, Steinigen offered him a job. Sousani now works 20 hours a week and attends a language school to learn German in the mornings. He answered 80 percent of the questions correctly in the last test he took there. "He's really good," says Steinigen. "My only criticism is that his cuts could be a little more modern."

The hairdressing business isn't the only industry with a shortage of qualified workers. There are currently close to 46 million people of working age in Germany, who are theoretically capable of working. Without immigration, that number will decline to less than 29 million in about 30 years. Even if the retirement age were raised to 70 and the number of women and men in the workforce were equal, the total workforce would only increase by 4.4 million people.

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Back to bottling my Grenache

Part 2

Rx for Prosperity: German Companies See Refugees as Opportunity


A smaller workforce translates into fewer people paying into the pension fund and health insurance systems, fewer people consuming and producing goods, and fewer people paying taxes to pay for expenses like schools and road construction. Fewer people also translates into a reduced potential for growth and less affluence.

Of course, in light of technological development and the digitization of life, it is difficult to predict future workforce requirements. Nevertheless, a study conducted by the Bertelsmann Foundation concluded, in every scenario it examined, that there is no getting around immigration. "If net immigration declines significantly, the aging of society will create intractable problems for the social security systems and the national budget," says Lutz Schneider of the Coburg University of Applied Sciences, who examined the consequences of immigration for the Bertelsmann Foundation.

The German Ailment
Germany will be unable to fulfill its needs through the European labor market, which allows the free movement of workers within the EU, alone. For now, most immigrants still come from European Union countries, and numbers have been especially high in recent years because of the EU's eastward expansion and the economic crisis in Southern Europe. But this situation will not continue forever.

"As the crisis-ridden countries see their economies recover, immigration from EU countries will decline in the medium term," says Schneider. In addition, all European countries are suffering from the German ailment, namely that their populations are shrinking and aging. Economist Schneider predicts that the average annual number of immigrants from EU countries will decline to 70,000 by 2050. "This is why we will be even more dependent on people from third countries immigrating to Germany for work in the future, people who now come to Germany primarily as refugees," says Schneider.

Germany needs more than just highly qualified academics. It also needs trained individuals with moderate to minimal qualifications. About a million jobs have been created for foreigners in the last four years in fields requiring no formal training: supporting staff in nursing care, restaurants and agriculture. The number of unfilled positions is constantly rising and was close to 600,000 in July.

The skilled trades have already started recruiting refugees and migrants. When Christoph Karmann is not sitting in his office in downtown Munich, he is visiting vocational schools, where he encounters young migrants with many questions. What can I do, they ask? What opportunities will I have? How does the vocational training system work in Germany?

As one of two so-called training canvassers with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Munich and Upper Bavaria, Karmann places refugees and migrants in companies with training programs. Bavarian skilled manual labor enterprises are urgently in need of trainees and workers. This spring, the chamber of trade wrote to 7,000 businesses in Upper Bavaria to ask whether they would hire a refugee. In response, it received offers for 1,200 internship and traineeship positions.

To combat the shortage of skilled personnel, companies and trade associations are urging policymakers to at least better utilize the potential of refugees and migrants living in Germany. Daimler was the first major corporation to appeal to lawmakers to allow refugees to begin working after one month in the country.

"It's a waste of valuable time for asylum-seekers to be condemned to idleness during their asylum proceedings," says Ingo Kramer. The president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) says that rules should be changed so that asylum-seekers and migrants not threatened with immediate deportation are given faster access to the labor market.

'Early Intervention'
The Federal Employment Agency's "Early Intervention" model project, designed to integrate refugees and migrants into the labor market as early as possible, has been underway since the beginning of 2014. The goal of the project is to determine which additional competencies, tools and resources it needs to perform its work as effectively as possible. Talent scouts in 12 locations identify well-trained refugees and try to place them in businesses.

Hannegret Deppe is sitting in her office at the employment agency in Detmold in northwestern Germany near Bielefeld. Today she has two appointments with clients, as refugees are referred to at the agency. Branko Nastasic, whose name has been changed by the editors to protect his privacy, is from Serbia, where he managed a café and was also a construction worker.

Deppe walks Nastasic through a computer program, step by step. He knows how to install drywall, but not how to put in windows or do electrical work. Deppe uses the program to identify the right employer for her clients. She also assists refugees and migrants in applying for jobs, by helping them write letters to potential employers and prepare their resumes.

The word "welcome" appears in countless languages on a sign on the wall in her office, next to the words "Keep calm and migration rocks." Deppe began volunteering for Amnesty International at 16, and while attending law school the 41-year-old worked for a law firm that specializes in issues relating to asylum law and aliens' rights.

Matching Refugees with Jobs
She has been trying to match refugees and migrants to companies since early March. When an asylum-seeker appears in her office for the first time, she gathers some basic information: which school the person attended and what kind of training he or she completed in their native country, and what they consider to be their dream job. The people who come to her for help often have less linear career paths than Germans.

She is currently helping around 50 refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Deppe has only managed to place a few of them so far: a cook from Lebanon, two upholsterers from Mongolia and an ophthalmology technician from Macedonia.

The lack of German language skills is the biggest obstacle for refugees and migrants in the labor market. But in order to learn German in a government-subsidized integration course, they are generally required to have proper residency status. Asylum-seekers and refugees not facing deportation have the right to seek advice in a job center and be placed in the labor market, but they have no access to integration courses. This, in turn, prevents job centers from successfully placing them in the job market -- in what becomes a vicious circle.

Immigration is currently regulated under Germany's Immigration Act. Even Germans without a law degree have trouble understanding the jumble of individual laws and ordinances, which is completely impenetrable for foreigners.

The Federal Employment Agency's "Overview of Assistance for Asylum-Seekers and Refugees," provided in the form of an Excel table, lists 17 different types of "residency permission," "residency permit" and "tolerance" for refugees and migrants. For each type, there are different regulations on when they are permitted to work, which assistance courses they are eligible to attend, under what circumstances they are entitled to access to student loans, child allowances and parental allowances, and for how many months or years they are required to have lived in Germany to qualify. In addition, refugees and migrants are constantly being shuttled back and forth between employment agencies and job centers.

All of this costs time, money and patience -- for the government and its employees, but also for migrants and refugees.


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Back to bottling my Grenache