Hordes of fighting-age male refugees without their women and children are called enemy troops. #WakeUpAmerica #tcot #PJNET— Carmine Zozzora (@CarmineZozzora) September 23, 2015German intel chief warned that Islamists recruiting new terrorists from Middle Eastern migrants flooding his country. pic.twitter.com/un6Uq1pV5j— Israel News Flash (@ILNewsFlash) September 22, 2015EU urged to secure borders from 'millions' of migrants
Brussels (AFP) - The EU's president urged leaders gathering for an emergency summit Wednesday to stop fighting over a refugee quota deal and take urgent action to secure the bloc's borders in the face of "millions" of migrants.
After ministers forced through a deal to relocate 120,000 refugees in the teeth of opposition from eastern states, Hungary's hardline prime minister angrily denounced Germany's "moral imperialism".
Slovakia furiously vowed to dispute the quota deal in court, underscoring the deep divisions that have emerged over Europe's biggest migration crisis since World War II.
Donald Tusk, head of the European Council, called for an end to "the cycle of mutual recriminations and misunderstandings" fuelling the split between the EU's richer west and poorer former communist east.
"The most urgent question we should ask ourselves tonight is how to regain control of our external borders," Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, told reporters.
"The conflicts in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq, will not end anytime soon," he said. "This means today we're talking about millions of potential refugees trying to reach Europe, not thousands." [...]
Germany asks European Commission to extend border controls
BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany has asked the European Commission to approve an extension of its temporarily re-introduced border controls to better cope with the record influx of migrants, a spokeswoman of the EU's executive body told Reuters on Wednesday.Up until recently, the term "Middle East conflict" was reserved by the media exclusively for the Arab-Israeli conflict. So what I'm saying is: low info crowd will be blaming Israel for millions of Muslim migrants flooding Europe, even though most of them come from a far away as Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, north and sub-Saharan Africa.
The German government introduced controls of its borders with Austria and the Czech Republic on Sept. 13 for 10 days. Berlin requested an extension for another 20 days, the spokeswoman said.
Record numbers of migrants, including tens of thousands of refugees from Middle East conflict, have been traveling to Europe - many of them trying to reach Germany after it promised to admit 800,000 asylum seekers. [...]
And speaking of Afghanistan...
| A volunteer signals at a dinghy with Afghan migrants at a beach on the Greek island of Lesbos, after the dinghy crossed a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast September 21, 2015. Reuters/Yannis Behrakis |
LESBOS, Greece (Reuters) - More than 2,500 mainly Syrian and Afghan refugees, soaked and exhausted, reached the Greek island of Lesbos within hours on Wednesday, a sharp rise in the rate of arrivals via the dangerous sea crossing from Turkey.
They were the latest wave of at least 430,000 refugees and migrants, a record number, to have taken rickety boats across the Mediterranean to Europe this year, 309,000 via Greece, according to International Organization for Migration figures.
Around 50 rubber dinghies each carrying up to 60 to 70 people arrived in pouring rain in the space of five hours on one Lesbos beach, which was covered in life jackets and rubber tubes. Some refugees were suffering from hypothermia.
As they approached shore, a Syrian man lifted his wailing daughter, in an orange life jacket, above their overloaded dinghy. In another, packed with Afghan families, headscarved women smiled and young, beaming men flashed the victory sign. [...]
Scandinavia, Germany in with migrants, southern Europe out
With the exception of Denmark, which has taken a hardline stance on the massive influx of migrants and refugees, Scandinavian countries are the panacea for many.
Hassan Torkmani, a 29-year-old Syrian perfume mixer, is taking his family to Sweden.
"We heard that the life there is really good, the salaries are good and there is work," he says as he waits for a bus at the Nickelsdorf border post in Austria.
Sweden registered 80,000 asylum requests in 2014 and almost 50,000 in the first eight months of this year, making it the EU country that has taken in the largest number of refugees as a proportion of its population.
Some Iraqis, though, prefer to go to neighbouring countries like Norway or Finland.
"Sweden is good for Syrians but not for Iraqis, I read that on Facebook," an Iraqi asylum seeker said recently in Helsinki.
A total of 54 percent of Iraqi requests for asylum were granted in Finland in the first six months of the year, compared with 33 percent in Sweden.
Omar Khaldi, a 22-year-old Iraqi architecture graduate, is heading to Norway.
"I looked up (the possible destinations) before leaving and saw that the delay to obtain your rights is quite short, six months I think."
But all is not peachy.
Finland said last week it would step up its border controls with Sweden after an unexpected influx of mostly Iraqi asylum seekers, and anti-immigration protests have taken place in several towns. [...]
German Turks point at 'past mistakes' as migrant numbers surge
