Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

It's pretty natural to argue that there are "no limits" to the number of refugees/asylum seekers we can accept. After all we are obliged by international conventions to process asylum applications for people on our doorstep. A country that argues that their borders are closed, or that only X thousand refugees will be allowed to seek asylum, are most likely breaching international conventions, or never signed them in the first place.

What the authorities are saying now is basically that we'll honor our obligations but if you come here now the queue for processing will be many months and you have to sleep outside and it's Sweden so you don't sleep outside in winter. Essentially they are trying to achieve two things: raise awareness in surrounding countries that they too need to help, and also signal to refugees that Sweden might not be the best idea this winter.

I'm not sure what "self inflicted" refers to, I think more countries than us have signed these conventions. What we have had is a pretty liberal non-refugee immigration. Naturally that has to be cut back now, to accomodate refugees.

I heard the US were debating 10k Syrian refugees. To put that in perspective, 10k came to Sweden this week.

The further away a country is from the Southern/Eastern border of the EU the better the whole 'refugees should stay in the country where they arrive' deal looked to them when they signed up for it.

The problem is that the 'edge' countries where refugees tend to arrive are in no way capable of dealing with the flood and at the same time don't have the funds, the manpower, the will or the organization in place to deliver on this promise. These countries also tend to have the most porous borders.

Germany is in much the same situation by the way.

The thing is that EU countries would be fine if they all imposed "no limits". But selfishness has lead most EU countries to simply reject taking migrants entirely, leaving the few that do have "no limits" overwhelmed.

This all stems from the Iraq war. We get dragged into it by the USA, and now we have to house the hundreds of thousands eventually displaced by that illegal catastrophe as well as tighten our borders against bombing. And it's going to tear Europe apart, all while the west still funnel money into Saudi Arabia (and from there into ISIS).

Great. Fuck America.

Edit: Rather than patriotically downvoting me it would be cool to have a discussion.

Please stop posting inflammatory and unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.