This may not be well received, but immigration problems are difficult & complex matters. Every country wants the brightest and most talented immigrants, but hoodlums and criminals are difficult to keep out.
Now that Europe's immigration is in the spotlight, will the criticism of how cold hearted the US is with our policies go away? Is that opinion going to change now that some countries not typically used to seeing this influx of those that will defy their country's laws at any cost to get across borders?
I've heard just about every 1st world Euro nations leaders at some point criticize the US handling of such; shoe is on your feet now.
Good luck.
I think that in a general sense you are right and you raise a fair point. Europe is a mixed bag on this.
Some are stepping up, others are not.
As you allude to, each country works within the context of very different backgrounds, hopes and fears.
Some countries like Italy have been dealing with this issue for years, often with little or no help from other affluent European counties. (Greece, Turkey and Malta are other counties who have been dealing with this issue for a while. I don’t know about Spain.) I have read that Germany has just indicated that they will take in additional 500k migrants. I do not have a static chart by country, but in aggregate, CNBC put together the numbers below:
567,785 Pending EU asylum claims (June)
340,000 Illegal entries into the EU (January-July)
306,010 Pending German asylum claims (June)
300,000 Mediterranean crossings in 2015
2,500 Mediterranean migrant fatalities in 2015.
They have an interactive chart by country here:
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/03/by-numbers-europes-migrant-crisis.htmlMore general statistics on long term immigration in Europe (up to 2013) is put together by Eurostat: (There are a number of great interactive charts there.)
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/graph.do?tab=graph&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tps00176&toolbox=typeI think that the general point of the criticism that is leveled against the US has to do with the perceived reluctance of the US to take in refugees/asylum seekers/migrants fast enough and at a needed level.
After the Vietnam War the US took in about 2 million people from the greater Indochina area. The largest proportions of these people were from Vietnam. (I know several individuals who escaped to the US after the conflict. They were taken to Guam, then PA – were they sewed American flags – before dispersing in the general population. I am glad to know one of the people who went through this experience.)
Some in Europe have argued that given the predominant role that the US has played in the areas of the world where people are now fleeing from, that the US is obligated to take on a bigger role.
So, for example,
critics say that the US has only taken in something like 1,500 people from Syria. I don’t have any other source to counter those numbers, however, I do know that USAID has been providing substantial assistance since the crisis started:
“Total U.S. humanitarian assistance since the start of the conflict in March 2011 is now more than
$3 billion. The United States remains the single-largest donor of humanitarian aid for those affected by Syria crisis,…”https://www.usaid.gov/crisis/syriaThe numbers for Iraq, some would argue, are also low. USCIS says:
“Since the inception of the program in 2007, 203,321 Iraqi nationals have been referred to the USRAP for resettlement to the United States. USCIS has interviewed 142,670 Iraqi refugee applicants; approved 119,202 for resettlement and, 84,902 Iraqi refugees have arrived in the United States.”
http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/refugees/iraqi-refugee-processing-fact-sheetI do not know the exact (or even approximate) numbers for Afghanistan or Libya, but I think that you will find the same pattern.
(Not all of the migrants are from the 4 counties above, but a substantial number are.)
As far as Europe goes, I have been a bit surprised and a bit curious as to why European leaders keep referring to the fleeing people as migrants. Some of them probably are migrants,
but I think that any objective observer would very well say that most are refugees or asylum seekers. I saw one BBC program that made the point that if the migrants were classified as refugees, then a
European convention on refugees would kick in and mandatory protection protocols would have to be followed by every single EU county. (Not just Germany). It sounded as if that would put an incredible amount of pressure on the EU. I have not really seen too many pieces on this issue, so I am sure that there is a lot more to this aspect of the story than I know about.
http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/migrants-or-refugees/2948447.htmlhttp://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/sep/07/bono-these-people-are-not-migrants-they-are-refugees-videoHowever one may feel about this issue in general or on principled terms, the suffering, perhaps needless, is disturbing.
