As I wrote, the stupidity here was in Germany proceeding unilaterally instead of first securing agreement from other EU nations to follow suit proportionately.
I fear that the past years have made quite clear what the chances of such agreement are..
those trying to enter a country of which they haven't citizenship or residential entitlement
Anybody with the correct papers can enter a country of their choice, at least if such a country is somewhere near basically civilised (a citizen of Israel wanting to try enter any of the countries on the Saudi-Arabia peninsula, assuming such a person would want to go the to start with, would be refused). For people not having the correct paperwork, the first question is why they do not have it. Someone having to run for his/her life may likely not have had the time to search where he/she put his ID. Someone deliberately throwing such away so his/her identity cannot be checked and hence, under current legislation cannot be sent back once given entry is trying to sabotage the system. It should be made clear which of the two it is. In the latter case, no entry.
If for someone is decided he/she might be granted entry, the next question to be answered then is, in each individual case, why do they wish to enter. Reasons may be legitimate for one but not for another. Not that long ago, a Christian woman from Pakistan had to flee the raving mobs for allegedly ‘insulting the Prophet’. She would easily be classified as victim of near-fatal religious intolerance. An IS-henchmen fleeing for Jezidi’s wrath would not classify as such. A homosexual fleeing pretty much any country in Africa would be a valid victim of murderous intolerance, a homosexual fleeing, say, France would not be.
Next, if someone is granted entry on humanitarian basis, I do think it should not stop there. There should be a trial period. For ex, if a family is granted entry on humanitarian grounds, but it turns out the father is keeping his wife indoors and refuses her to go to, say, lessons in Dutch language and society because he feels a women should not be granted such ‘western’ freedoms, he should lose his right of residence (you cannot claim to be the victim of suppression if you are supressing someone yourself). Asylum seekers guilty of committing crimes should be turned out immediately. There are courses about the Dutch language, laws and culture designed to help people settle here and to become part of society; it turns out quite a large number simply don’t go to these courses because they do not want to. Such should lose their residence immediately.
Currently, such procedures to turn people do exist, but there is a whole industry of lawyers doing nothing but get – chanceless – appeals taking years (they do not care they lose every appeal, they simply get payed for “assisting” such chanceless asylum seekers). Such should be stopped as well; no is ‘out’. The country is only so big. And even if the end result is ‘leave’, most don’t leave for they have either no known country of origin, or such country does not want them back, or they simply disappear into the underground after getting the eviction note.
In short, for everyone wanting to enter the country it should be established if they are genuine; either by way of ‘official’ paperwork, or a legitimate refugee. Anyone wanting to stay should prove worthy of such, ie wanting to adapt to the country and become an asset as to his or her abilities. Anyone not so (criminal, freeloader, parasite) should be evicted. And I would want that anyone from this country wanting to move to another be treated by the ‘receiving’ country the exact same way.
anyone without papers entitling entrance to a country is technically an illegal immigrant the moment that he/she steps onto its soil.
Not nessecarily; I do not know the UK laws on this, but anyone wanting to enter onto Dutch soil has to prove he/she is entitled to do so. Such may be by way of valid paperwork, but someone can ask for asylum the moment he/she steps onto Dutch territory. In the latter case, someone can immediately be granted entry as asylum seeker. He/she at that moment has not been granted to right to stay in the country wherever he/she chooses; he/she is then granted entry, not residency.
The very existence of that problem, however, is principally down to wars and their associated infrastructural devastation that render life in certain countries impossible
This is a complex issue. What war, to start with. The eternal civil/feudal/tribal/religious/whatever wars wrecking Africa are one of the reasons behind that failure of much of that continent. And the idea that ‘the West’ can stop them has been proven nonsensical for some decades now, without ‘the West’ taking note of that. The local faction of IS in Mali was a fringe problem before ‘the West’ (inclusive of my own country) deemed it necessary to step in and ‘help’ Mali (did Mali ask for that, or was it consulted in it?). After several years now ‘the West’ is retreating, leaving a devastated Mali where various factions of IS now run wild. I still need to hear the first minister of foreign affairs in ‘the West’ admit this failure was due to Western hubris.
The war in Syria is more a war happening in Syria. When several groups started revolting against Assad’s reign, ‘the West’ immediately supported the revolting groups, without asking, or wanting to know, just how revolting some of these groups were. And it turned out that some (IS, for ex) were extremely revolting indeed, making Abbas a saint in comparison. But as it happens, Putin is a friend of Abbas, so started helping him and his troops. Of course, ‘the West’ is against Putin and his dictator friends (of course, had Assad been sitting on oil and willing to sell such to ‘the West’, he’d be a big friend of ‘the West’), so ‘the West’ needed to prevent Putin getting an upper hand (-puppet) in Syria. So the revolt in Syria has become a pissing contest between Putin, the US and the EU, with the Syrian population sitting at the bottom of the toilet Syria became. Many fled to Turkey, only to find there a dictator who happily used all the incoming refugees as pressure tool to blackmail the EU into sending him many billions with which he could then keep up the failing Turkey economy and buy his support among the Turkish population. The war on Syria is turning blacker still, Erdogan apparently isn’t getting enough money to plug all the holes, so he now is using the Syrian refugees into cannon fodder to further blackmail the EU, knowing full well said EU is utterly incapable of formulating (let alone act upon) a decent and united strategy to stop it.
Vast swathes of displaced dispossessed people under threat of death have to go somewhere or risk being killed where they are. The only way to stop this is to stop those wars that are principally responsible for giving rise to it.
To do that, merely three things need to happen. One. Make war always unprofitable for anyone and everyone. Two. Silence ideological and/or religious demagogues with an ‘kill all who do not adhere to’ message and stop people listening to such people but think for themselves. Three. Stop the population explosion. In short, make sure all people act intelligently and responsibly. Start civilisation, for shorter.
In reality, ‘war’ began when 4 billion years ago the first prebiotic molecule vied with a neighbouring prebiotic molecule for resources, and will end only when the last extremophile bacterium will die under the increasingly glaring sun some 2 billion years hence. The one main difference is that humanity, thanks to that hypertrophic glob called brains, is so excessively inventive in and effective at it.
No doubt the above could be put in much better wording, but I grow bugs for a living and tired of the world I live in, so cannot be bothered here but will rather bugger off to listen to something worthwhile recorded by one Abel Sanchez-Aguilera.
gep
Topic: brexit?!!?