Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
Numbers of course dwarfed not only by total populations but by the hundreds of thousands of non-asylum immigrants. Not to mention that xenophobes don't distinguish those granted asylum and asylum applicants, where the latter are usually kept in camps and cheap housing and denied legal employment opportunities, and then everyone acts surprised at the lack of integration. (Sweden's rate of recognition on first instance is 53%, Germany's 26%, France's a mere 17%. while recognitions on appeal are similar at between 15 and 18%.)

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Mon Sep 22nd, 2014 at 09:57:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]
But note that if all asylum seekers apply, then even with your figures, the number of asylum seekers must be a lot larger in Germany relative to population than in Sweden. This isn't like Israel, where the  rate of recognition is around 0% and converting to Judaism once in the country has been ruled illegal (the high court just ruled that putting them in camps is illegal, but gave them 3 months to implement find a way around the ruling).

Anybody got figures of non-asylum immigrants whatever that means (for Swedish xenophobes this may include Greeks, but not include Americans, for example, so even EU vs non-EU may not be quite enough)?

by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Mon Sep 22nd, 2014 at 03:55:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
For the xenophobes it tends to be Nordic against non-Nordic. And even the Finns are suspect with their strange language.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
by A swedish kind of death on Tue Sep 23rd, 2014 at 03:16:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Greece is part of the Schengen area, which includes Sweden, so whatever xenophobes think, that's their problem. The basic classification is EU vs non-EU, and one can split the non-EU, non-asylum immigrants into categories, each to its own taste.

A few years back I dug a bit into the Dutch numbers on African illegal immigrants - but I found there isn't anything solid on non-asylum immigrants in regard to official figures, just estimates based on the numbers of police arrests, when police by coincidence discover someone has no legal status. It is not actively measured by policy, rarely researched and exceedingly difficult. Other means to attempt tallying the size of this group can be thought of (e.g. hospitalization), but these too would also form a proxy at best.

But what else is to be expected with a harsh government policy that actively pursues sending illegal immigrants straight across the borders and is blind for the very possible bureaucratic nightmare when people get stuck between nations and become de facto stateless? The upshot is that non-asylum immigrants (or those that applied and were not recognized) in the Netherlands actively avoid the means of government bookkeepings and drop out of the system and into darker circuits, with all the consequences that entails. Yet even stuck in these conditions, the people I interviewed confessed they were happier here than back home.

by Bjinse on Wed Sep 24th, 2014 at 08:44:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
As a tangent, here is an interesting photoseries of transit immigrants in Greece:
Penso has spent several years documenting Europe's worsening immigration crisis. He's produced work on detention centres in Malta, migrant workers in southern Italy, and in 2012, he began a project documenting young people stuck in immigrant limbo, in Greece. Many of them are barely 18 years old.

"At the time, Greece had the harshest immigration regulations in Europe," Penso told an interviewer earlier this year.  "Almost all applications for asylum were being refused and a wall was being constructed on the country's northern border to stem immigration in that part of the country. The economic crisis that was engulfing Greece was also contributing to a marked rise in xenophobia" [...]

In Europe, migrants must claim asylum in the first country they enter or the first country in which they are identified. The purpose of this regulation (called "Dublin II") is to discourage multiple asylum claims, but the rules severely tax the resources of the countries bordering the Mediterranean, like Italy, or Greece. And the regulation often disadvantages migrants seeking to move beyond these Mediterranean countries, many of whom are often en route to relatives already established in another country. If they are found in another country, they get sent back to the country of reception.

And from the same source:

Greece's Neo-Nazi Politicians Are Awaiting Trial -- and as Popular as Ever
Golden Dawn may emerge as the third force in parliament
by das monde on Wed Sep 24th, 2014 at 11:05:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Greece is part of the Schengen area, which includes Sweden, so whatever xenophobes think, that's their problem.

But we were talking about the results of elections, so if too many people vote for the far right because of immigrants from the "wrong" EU countries, that isn't just their problem.

by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Wed Sep 24th, 2014 at 03:16:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It remains just their problem for as long as there isn't elected a xenophobic government in Sweden that withdraws from Schengen on the basis of too many cooties. Before that happens, I won't bother.
by Bjinse on Wed Sep 24th, 2014 at 05:14:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
A cootie-averse government can do a lot of stuff to make life miserable for people who are in the habit of walking down the street while wearing a suspicious skin color, and still fall some way short of withdrawing from Schengen.

I'd say that's our problem as well.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Sep 24th, 2014 at 06:38:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:

Top Diaries

Occasional Series