Muslim Migrants Increase Crime in Germany by 65%
The Men Who Pretend to Be Syrian Refugees
KARA TEPE, Greece — “Oh, you’re from Syria,” said one of the officials holding up a spiral-bound book with color pictures of 100-pound notes. “Can you point to which of these pictures is your home currency?”
One by one, the head of the vetting team led by Frontex, a European Union agency that works between member states to secure EU borders, quizzes men and families claiming to be from Syria who arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos.
“I’m a Syrian,” the man repeated to the official cautiously, his shoes and clothing still wet from the journey by sea earlier that day. “From Deir Ezzor.”
The man, who had arrived from Turkey that morning, hesitated and pointed to a yellow bill, a fake note that vaguely resembled Lebanese currency but was clearly not from Syria.
“Are you originally from Iraq, maybe?” the officer asked. After some whispered words with his wife and brother, the man explained that, yes, his family is Iraqi, but they had lived in Syria for many years. [...]
The man who initially claimed to be from Deir Ezzor but was in fact Iraqi was just one of many who was cycled through this haphazard process. After being questioned by the Frontex official, he was waved through to other agents who helped him fill out a palm-sized slip of paper with his name, the names of his father, mother, and grandfather, and his nationality. At the next kiosk, that slip of paper became a legal document stamped and signed by a Greek civil servant. After being fingerprinted, the man was handed a single sheet of paper — a transit document — which allowed him to travel through Greece to the rest of Europe.
The next man in line approached the official. “I’m just asking for a friend, not for me, but is it OK if you’re Libyan, will you still get the papers?”
In the back of the crowd, one family debated among themselves whether to try to pass for Syrian. When asked where exactly they were from in Syria, one woman paused and smiled: “From Syria, for sure.” [...]
At the Kara Tepe registration center, only a fraction of new arrivals receive any sort of vetting at all. Greek officials lack the capacity to carry it out themselves, and Frontex employees are only present at the registration center for a fraction of the day.
At around 4 p.m., after most employees had left, a group of men arrived at the camp asking how to register; they were directed by fellow refugees and migrants to a messy pile of blank slips of paper stacked on an abandoned desk. The men, speaking Iraqi-accented Arabic and slang, said they were from the northern Syrian city of Aleppo and lacked documentation because all their belongings had been lost at sea.
The men wrote “Syria” under nationality and proceeded directly to the local police officer, where the information was notarized. Within an hour, they were fingerprinted and had received letters of transit listing them as Syrian nationals.
“We are so thankful to the Greek government to give us this chance at a peaceful life,” said one of the men, who asked to be called Ali.
Aid workers say about half the people at this registration center show up without any kind of documentation. Along the island’s beaches, residents have collected identity documents from the rocky shores — Pakistani and Iraqi passports and Turkish national IDs, all presumably abandoned because people from these countries have slimmer chances of being granted asylum and being allowed to stay in Europe.
“We just have to trust what they write down,” said Dimitris Sarras, a civil servant and architect who now works part time at the registration center to help fill out paperwork. “There was one man from an NGO who spoke Arabic, but he left last week, so there is no way to know, really.” [...]
German officials have said that 30 percent of the people claiming to be Syrian asylum-seekers in Germany are not in fact from Syria, but officials in Greece with knowledge of the initial registration process on the Aegean island estimate the number is much higher.
“Honestly, it’s really not that hard. You just need to start by asking the guy about himself,” explained one official involved in EU vetting procedures who asked that his name be withheld as he was not authorized to speak to the media. “One guy, I could tell from his teeth he’s a smoker, so I asked, oh, you smoke cigarettes? Yeah? What is that Syrian brand again? Anyone who is actually from Syria will know, but Iraqis would never know.”
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Swedish police manhandles unruly Palestinian settlers, arrests 3 for violence against civil servants and refusing to obey police orders
Police in southern Sweden say they have removed an illegal tent camp that stateless Palestinians set up in early August outside the Swedish Immigration Agency to protest against the rejection of their asylum applications.
Ewa-Gun Westford, police spokeswoman in Malmo, says the protesters are welcome to stay but their tents have been removed.
She said Thursday's action came after Sweden's third- largest city on Sept. 22 banned the camp housing some 100 people on public property.
Westford said three people were arrested for violence against civil servants and refusing to obey police orders. It was not immediately clear whether they would be charged.
Eastern European countries gear up to protect EU's external border
The Czech Republic is ready to dispatch 50 police officers and up to 100 soldiers in Hungary to help protect the external border of the European Union and Europe's visa-free Schengen zone.
Interior Minister Milan Chovanec says he offered that at a meeting of interior ministers of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia in Luxembourg Thursday ahead of a meeting of interior ministers of all EU countries.
Chovanec says Slovakia is also likely offer officers while Poland is considering a possible help.
Over 324,000 migrants and refugees entered Hungary, which has built fences on its southern borders with Serbia and Croatia in an attempt to control their flow.
The Czech government already agreed to dispatch 25 soldiers on the Hungarian border with Croatia to help protect the Schengen border.
France proposes to beef up EU's external border with mandatory personnel and fund commitments by member states
France is proposing to beef up the European Union's external borders by committing member states to contribute more personnel to the EU's border agency and eventually setting up a largely autonomous international "corps" that could intervene wherever a crisis appears.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve made the proposal to his EU counterparts at Thursday's meeting in Luxembourg. French officials said it would be developed by EU leaders at next week's summit.
The EU is struggling to contain a migrant crisis which has exposed huge weaknesses in both cooperation and manpower as hundreds of thousands have entered the continent fleeing war and seeking a better life.
French officials, who spoke under the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that in the short term, member states would be obliged to contribute more personnel to the Frontex border agency based on their population, wealth and other criteria.
In the long term, France proposes a multinational European border guard corps which would have much more autonomy to act along the EU's external frontiers when crises appear.
EU to intensify deportation of asylum seeking migrants who don't qualify as refugees
The European Union has committed to speeding up and intensifying the deportation of people who do not qualify for asylum.
A statement of the meetings said: "Increased return rates should act as a deterrent to irregular migration."
A meeting of EU interior ministers agreed that the Frontex border agency set would start the organization of return flights and promised more staff for the organization to deal with the crisis.
It said detention could be used as a measure of last resort to make sure failed applicants actually go back and insisted enough pre-departure detention centers should be available.
At the same time most member states backed proposals to reinforce the EU's porous external borders.
Hungary authorizes EU and NATO troops to help defend the country's borders from Muslim hordes
The Hungarian government has authorized allowing troops from countries in the European Union or NATO to help defend the country's borders in the midst of the migrant crisis.
A government decree published Thursday says up to 1,000 troops from Hungary's allies can take part until March 15 in the "Common Will" operation of border defense. Their tasks may include participating in joint exercises as well as direct support of the Hungarian troops on the border. Some 4,700 Hungarian soldiers are now at the country's southern borders with Serbia and Croatia.
Zsolt Nemeth, head of Parliament's foreign relations committee, saw nothing unusual about EU countries sending troops to guard a border with another EU country, even if Croatia is not in the EU's Schengen zone of passport-free travel.
"The EU has to be able to defend border sections which some countries can't protect from migrants," Nemeth said earlier this week in an interview with The Associated Press.
Over 330,000 migrants have entered Hungary this year.
Bavaria is considering "self-defense measures" against the influx of Muslim migrants
The governor of Bavaria says his government is considering "self-defense measures" in response to the influx of migrants across the German border.
Horst Seehofer told German daily Bild that the state government will agree on a wide-ranging package of measures Friday that includes "integration, education and training."
Bild quoted him saying Thursday that "this explicitly also includes self-defense measures to restrict immigration, such as turning people back at the border with Austria and immediately sending asylum seekers elsewhere in Germany."
Seehofer's office confirmed the accuracy of the quotes.
Any move to close the German border to migrants would require authorization from federal authorities in Berlin.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she doesn't support limiting the number of asylum seekers coming to Germany.
