Paris under attack

[Bengalzona]

(11-17-2015, 02:34 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Why are we not setting up Camps at their borders, they do not need to be emigrating to other countries. They have their own country. They need to be ready to return to their homes once the problems are dealt with or assist in dealing with them.

There were camps set-up. On the Syrian side of the border with Turkey. Tent camps. And the people hoped to return to their homes. But this was a problem, as the article Benson posted mentioned: It gave the extremist rebels a convenient grouped-together target out in the open to terrorize. Also, tent camps in the desert are living nightmare after several weeks of several thousand people living close together. Little food, little water, poor sanitation, no organization, crime, disease, no medicine, etc. Think concentration camps, but with tents. These refugees have been living in camps like that for several years now. Their homes are gone. Most of the Syrian cities in the combat zone (and it is a wide combat zone) look like the pictures you see in the history books of Dresden or Berlin in WWII. Also, these are civilians. They generally don't have any weapons, and they wouldn't know what to do with them if they did. ISIL, Assad's troops and the Free Syrian Army are battle-hardened veterans now. They know what they are doing. You put these people out there with guns and tell them to fight ISIL, you might as well just shoot them in the heads yourself.

We finally convinced Turkey (and it was not easy) to let the refugees cross into their border. At least this way, they were somewhat safe from ISIL. ISIL does not want to risk drawing Turkey against them directly. Turkey is a member of NATO and has a modern army. Plus, they are immediately next door and could move directly with short supply lines. For their part, Turkey doesn't want to get involved much because: 1) Syria is a sovereign country and a neighbor. Most other countries in the world still recognize sovereignty, even if we don't. 2) ISIL is actually helping Turkey indirectly by fighting the Kurds and keeping them occupied. While the Kurds are fighting ISIL, there is no talk of starting a Kurdish nation (especially in Turkey's Kurd minority).

So millions of refugees crossed the border into Turkey, where they were immediately placed into... tent camps. Turkey has a modern army, but they are still a poor country. They don't have the resources to take care of this many refugees. And they wouldn't want to even if they did have the resources. The refugees were now safe from ISIL, but they were still stuck in these hellish camps. They can't go home. Turkey won't let them immigrate. If you are in that situation, what is your future (especially if you are female and have children)?

This is where Germany and some other European countries step in. Europe, like many western countries, has been experiencing reduced birthrates for several decades. Their workforce-age population has declined. But their older population has increased. In some countries, they relaxed immigration standards so that foreign workers could come in and fill the workforce, particularly the lower menial type jobs (the jobs we typically want Mexicans and other Latin American illegals to do for us here). A lot of people from former Eastern Bloc countries took advantage of this after the fall of the Soviet Union. When the refugees found out that countries like Germany and Sweden would accept them, they made a beeline for those countries. Unfortunately, there are a dozen or more countries in between that they have to go through to get from Turkey to Germany or Sweden. And those countries are generally not so helpful.