Reporting on new boat immigration flows to Europe, the press likes to divide socialists and conservatives on their willingness to take in largely African and Mideast refugees. Italian Prime Minister Gerogia Meloni gets the brunt of the socialist press criticism for turning way immigration boats from docking in Italy. When Brexit passed June 23, 2016, it was largely due to immigration issues in the U.K. where voters thought Brussels was insensitive to U.K. citizens Brussels officials at the time put heavy pressure on all EU states to take their quota of refugees largely from the Syrian War to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. While al-Assad is still in power, the same immigration problems, now stemming from the Feb. 24 Ukraine War, are creating the latest refugee crisis in the EU. EU officials are no longer led by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel took in over 1 million Syrian refugees in 2017, setting the standard for Brussels, but, at the same time, forcing Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary to shut its borders. Today’s issue is no different but with Meloni replacing Hungarian President Viktor Orban as the new villain for the socialist press. After 16 days at sea, France finally let the Ocean Viking dock at Toulon Nov. 11. French Interior Ministers Gerald Damanin said Meloni’s action “lacked humanity” and was “nasty gesture,” and was “incomprehensible.” But if France wants to take in boatloads of African and Mideast refugees, they need a plan how to assimilate them into French society. France is notorious for relocating refugees into the Paris suburbs where periodic rioting has become commonplace in recent years. Italy has its own economic problems dealing with hyperinflation from the Ukraine War.
Meloni’s Interior Ministers Matteo Piantedosi fired back at Daminin saying that Italy had taken in over 90,000 refugees in the last year. Eric Kaufmann, author of “Makeshift,” Prof. of Birkbeck College at the Univ. of London, said that immigration is up in the EU by 77% in 2022. “The number of Europeans saying immigration is a top issue really rises along with rising immigration numbers, and then the populist right rises with that,” Kaufmann said. Instead of agreeing that something must be done to stop immigration flows into the EU, Kaufmann repeats the same claptrap as the socialist press. It’s easy to blame EU states that have said no to more immigration because Brussels’ economy has been struggling since the Feb. 24 Ukraine War. All EU countries back the Ukraine War but they don’t like the economic fallout. Why does the socialist press blame already cash-strapped EU states?
Immigration flows in the EU happen with failed states in the Mideast and Africa create intolerable living conditions, no employment or acceptable living conditions. No one blames refugees for trying to find a better life but when wars like the eight-year Syrian War, backed by Brussels, pushed immigration to the breaking point, you wonder what the EU was thinking. Now some 15 millions of Ukrainians have fled the war zone in Ukraine for Poland and other EU countries, including Greece, Albania and Bulgaria. What’s that supposed to do to countries forced to take in massive numbers of new refugees? If you listen to the socialist press, it’s the humanitarian thing to do, regardless of what it does to the standard to living. Brussels, once again, hasn’t tried to push 80-year-old President Joe Biden to pressure Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky to the peace table.
Biden and his former boss President Barack Obama, paid billions to Syrian rebel groups to topple President Bashar al-Assad. Immigration flows worsened to the point in practically broke up the EU. It certainly ended the U.K. continuation in the EU. According to Frontex, the EU border control agency, 2 to 2 million non-EU nationals entered the EU illegally, compared with 125,000 to 200,000 through normal immigration By year’s end over 3 million illegal immigrants will cross into the U.S. in 2022. U.K. officials have paid France $75 mllion to tighten up borders security from Calais, France to Dover, U.K. Spending billions on foreign aid in the Mideast and African hasn’t stopped the immigrant flows to the EU. If there’s one concrete solution that could help immigrant flows to the EU, the end to the Ukraine War would stop the flow. No one in Brussels sees the Ukraine War as an urgent refugee crisis.
Brussels has repeated the same mistakes on immigration seen during the eight-year-long Syrian War. Once 70-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin defended Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, immigrant flows from Syria slowed down. Whatever happens with the Mideast and African boat people, stopping the Ukraine War would help stabilize Europe in terms of its economy and immigration problem. Blaming center or right leaning politicians, like Meloni or Orban, completely misses the point about refugee flows to the EU. Just the Ukraine War alone has imposed 5 million immigrants on Brussels. Brussels needs to take a stand that the Ukraine War cannot, as Biden and Zelensky want, go on indefinitely. Whatever Europe’s declining population, the Continent needs better control of illegal immigration, exacerbated by the EU’s Ukraine War policy.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
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