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Europe’s Migrant Crisis Could Be Ours

Posted September 3rd, 2015 at 3:12 pm (UTC-5)
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Migrant Crisis Isn’t Just Europe’s Problem, It’s Our Problem, Too

Amb. John Bolton – Fox News

While Americans may believe that Europe, long disdainful of our own intense debate over border-security problems, is getting what it deserves, we should nonetheless focus on both the potential threats and lessons applicable to us.

One critical cause of Europe’s illegal-immigration spike is the growing chaos across the greater Middle East. This spreading anarchy derives, in substantial part, from Barack Obama’s deliberate policy of “leading from behind” by reducing U.S. attention to and involvement in the region. When America’s presence diminishes anywhere in the world, whatever minimal order and stability existed there can rapidly evaporate….

How many boat people and others who seem to be economically motivated are actually terrorists, perhaps trained by the Islamic State in Syria or Iraq, seeking to conceal themselves among economic migrants to gain access to Europe?  This is the same issue America faces on the Mexican border.

Migrants disembark from the Italian Navy vessel Cigala Fulgosi in the Sicilian harbor of Augusta, Italy, Sept 3, 2015. (Reuters)

Migrants disembark from the Italian Navy vessel Cigala Fulgosi in the Sicilian harbor of Augusta, Italy, Sept 3, 2015. (Reuters)

For a photo gallery on the migrant crisis, click here:

Migrant Crisis? No, Europe Is Facing a Moral Crisis

The Editors – The Globe and Mail

Which brings us to the image on the front page of Thursday’s Globe and Mail: a tiny, lifeless body lying face down on a beach. The child was part of a group of at least 12 Syrians who drowned in the waters off Bodrum, Turkey, while trying to cross to the Greek island of Kos. This part of the Aegean Sea has long been a playground for European holidaymakers, but in the past few months it has become a highway, and also a graveyard, for an increasing number of far more desperate travelers. Today’s image is just one distressing scene from Europe’s growing migrant crisis.

There is no simple solution to the crisis. But one thing at least has become clear: Europe is mishandling it, badly….

The allegation by some that Europe’s asylum-seekers are merely economic migrants, and not real refugees, is simplistic. Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Somalis, Sudanese and others are coming from war zones, and war and poverty are deeply intertwined.

A Syrian refugee holds a boy moments after arriving on a dinghy on the Greek island of Lesbos Sept. 3, 2015. (Reuters)

A Syrian refugee holds a boy moments after arriving on a dinghy on the Greek island of Lesbos Sept. 3, 2015. (Reuters)

Europe’s Migrant Crisis Dwarfs U.S. Problems on the Mexican Border

David Horsey – Los Angeles Times

What would Donald Trump do about the immigration crisis in Europe? If his actions matched his rhetoric, he would react much like the Hungarian governmental leaders who have barred Germany-bound Syrian refugees from the Budapest railway station, strung razor wire along the border and threatened to send 3,500 soldiers to the Serbian frontier to stem the human tide.

The United States has a challenge dealing with illegal immigration from Latin America, but it pales in comparison with what Europeans are facing…. The United States has just one problematic border, Europe lies nearly wide open to vast, traumatized regions to the east and south….

Europe is a collection of ethnically distinct countries that are historically Christian, affluent and democratic. As much as they have in common, Europeans have only learned to get along with each other in the last seven decades. Is it realistic to think they can now navigate blissfully through an incoming tide of refugees and immigrants who are poor, darker-skinned, predominantly Muslim and often suspicious of Western values such as secularism, free speech and the equality of women? It seems more likely they will begin looking for their own Donald Trump.

 

 

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