WilcoRoger

And we know this how??

Also - the parents are most probably also non-whites and they were not asked for their docs. So we can safely say, that it was not racial profiling.

WilcoRoger

Don't start me on Orbán, I've hated his guts since ca. 1996 and I really, really hate to find myself agreeing with him on ANYTHING.

An asylum seeker is someone seeking asylum. Someone who is not seeking it, or even actively avoiding seeking it per definitionem isn't one, just illegal alien. Or can you show me a treaty obliging countries to let people (without any checks, controls or documents) cross their territories in order to be able to claim asylum somewhere else? I didn't think so.

Also - and we are veering really off topic here - if certain countries chose (?) to become multinational/cultural it's their right. But can they force others, who do not choose (?) so, to become one? Especially seeing how "succesful" multiculturalism has been for the last 50-60 years.

NB it's been only a few years that Fr Merkel herself pronunced multiculturalism dead (or failed - cannot recall the exact words) - what has changed in the meantime that brought it back to life?

rabjoshu

Angela Merkel declared that multiculturalism in Germany was a failure and said it was an illusion to think that Germans and foreign workers could "live happily side by side."
"We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn't stay, but that's not the reality," referring to the influx of guest workers. "Of course the tendency had been to say, 'let's adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other'. But this concept has failed, and failed utterly," she said http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-723702.html

GUWonder

Forcing people to claim asylum or refugee status somewhere where and when they don't want to claim such status? No thanks, for free persons' right to leave should not be infringed upon merely because the free persons are seeking refugee/asylum status elsewhere beside a transit country. A refugee transiting a country is still a refugee on the move -- whether or not legally able and willing to claim such status in a transit country. And unregistered refugee's movements in third countries are not unlawful in those countries which are bound to certain legal agreements about the rights of refugees/asylum seekers.

Schengen was set up to make countries more multicultural/multinational. [I'm familiar with Merkel's campaigning about German "multikulti", which included her claim about it supposedly being "utterly failed". But does anyone really think that Merkel wanted to kill of the Schengen Zone because of how it fosters a multicultural and multinational dynamic that seems to have been anything but "utterly failed" in various places. But that may be a discussion for another time and place.]

WilcoRoger

A refugee is a refugee only once he claims asylum - until then: illegal alien. Which treaty allows them to cross any country unhindered on their way to their "choice" of asylum destination and at the same time obliges said countries to give up part of their sovereignity as in controlling who enters their territory? Please point me to that.

It's not about their right "to leave" - it's about their right to enter and be in the "transit" country, without any claims for asylum.

WilcoRoger

Nothing of the kind. It was set up to take the free movement of people within the zone to the extreme by eliminating borderr controls among the signatories.

Utterly failed - Lyon, Marseille, les banlieus de Paris, Neukölln/Berlin, Malmö - to mention just a few bright examples. No wonder many in the V4 (and elsewhere) look at these shining stars of multikulti dynamics and say "Multikulti? Nein, danke!"

GUWonder

The Schengen Zone was set up to allow travel amongst countries that consist of different nations and different cultures. It was by design a product of and for promoting multinational and multicultural mobility.

It's funny that you mentioned the cities you mentioned, as the V4 have plenty of their citizens as residents in those "utterly failed" cites in non-V4 Schengen. And by the way, Lyon is rather beautiful to drive through at night, but that is about all I can say about it. Malmo is rather great for a city its size, no less so because it has amongst its residents many people from the V4 (more so Poland than the other ones). Last I checked the Polish were mainly of a different nation and culture than the Swedes and the French and the Germans, but the "multikulti" works well for me in Sweden, France, Germany and especially the Americas.

I always find it amusing how the True Finn sympathizers complain about refugees and immigrants even as a large proportion of their fellow "true" Finns are living outside Finland and/or are the children or grandchildren of Finnish refugees. I always find it amusing how the V4 complain about "migrants", given they were so eager to jump on board the "multikulti" Schengen bandwagon because being economic migrants was part of their (V4) past and part of their (V4) desired future. Perhaps the critics of refugees picking and choosing their preferred destinations for refugee claims are afraid of the "migrants" being competition for opportunities and resources. Well, if someone can't compete and feels like they will be a loser, then the losers may need to up their game without resorting to that last proverbial refugee of scoundrels, namely politics.

A refugee is legally a refugee whether or not the refugee is legally claiming refugee/asylum status while in transit.

The legal conventions applicable to these countries when it comes to refugees are easily available to you via a search of the UN treaty database.

Free people have a fundamental human right to leave. It's rather draconian to try to lock people up against their will just because they are seeking to leave, perhaps even to leave to seek refugee status elsewhere.

There is no international legal requirement for a refugee to claim to be a refugee in order to have the legal rights of exiting a country or series of countries to be considered a refugee eligible to the relevant treaty protections in another country or series of countries that is a party to indicated international legal agreements that these countries agreed to when it comes to refugees.

WilcoRoger

So any Latin-American can freely and legally enter and cross the US, without claiming asylum there, because they are "transiting" on their way to claim asylum in Canada?? What makes them different from illegal aliens?

Again - by claiming asylum, someone becomes a refuge-seeker. Until then - illegal entrance and stay. That some countries chose not to prosecute them, it's their choice.

V4 migrants in Sweden or Germany are hardly multikulti. The difference say between Polish and German culture is minimal. Whereas Turkish/Afghan/Iraqi is very, very different.

The cities I listed - yes, driving through Lyon is nice. Walking alone in certain parts in the evening (especially if you are a white female) is not so nice. Malmö - obviously your daughter/wife hasn't been called a whore yet by (how to put this nicely) men of middle-eastern origin, just because dressed as any Swedish girl would. Ah, and those parts of town that even the Swedish police prefers to avoid - again, putting it nicely, are not inhabited by the Johansons or even Kowalskis.

Perhaps the critics of refugees picking and choosing their preferred destinations for refugee claims are afraid of the "migrants" being competition for opportunities and resources

Yes, competition FOR resources. Many prefer to spend those resources (aka their tax euros) on the elderly, on education, on health care, god even forbid on defence.

WilcoRoger

GUW - I suggest we take this discussion elsewhere, because we really hijacked the original story of the dreadful experience of having an American male asked for his passport in Germany

GUWonder

Being singled out on a racist basis is considered dreadful by many. Racism has consequences, not just on the authorities but also on those subjected to the racist approaches. It's no surprise that those subjected to racism by authorities of some sort tend to be less supportive of those authorities than others. And when support for authorities becomes polarized due to racist approaches taking place and even being justified, so-called integration faces more challenges than it would otherwise have. Is the "multikulti" failed by its nature, or is it really that the structural racism of some sort and some other indigenous factors results in the "failure"? I'm inclined to say it's the latter, given the results are not uniform across the world.

To prosecute for illegal entry those who are legally entitled to refugee/asylum status would be contrary to the international legal agreements to which the US contracted itself in the same way as much of Europe after World War 2. It applies to Latin American refugees, entering and/or transiting the US, in the same way it applies to Asian and African refugees entering and/or transiting parts of Europe which are legally contracted parties to the same international legal agreements.

No, that is no true, as is the same case for the US. People are refugees when they meet the condition of being a refugee. That does not mean the refugee has to claim to be, or even know what is, a refugee to be a refugee entitled to the protection of such contracted law.

They are firmly multikulti contributions to Sweden, with clear and present evidence of such being the different ethnic and cultural background in terms of language, food, religion, holiday celebrations, shopping practices and more. And in any way there is often more diversity within a so-called culture than there is across cultures, although bigots of various sorts have no problem cherry-picking to try to claim otherwise.

Sounds like just about most any large city in the world if you don't walk in the right neighborhood, even as there are also neighborhoods where being non-"white" is too often a recipe for increased chances of harassment due to racist actors around.

I've walked around Lyon. Felt safer than New Orleans.

Quite clearly you have no idea about the sex and family situations of FTers like myself and what some may have observed or not. I've seen ethnic Swedish and Polish guys call girls of all sorts in Sweden -- even in areas of Sweden that have almost no non-European ethnic residents -- the same sort of thing for who knows what reason. And such kind of talk is rather common talk in US schools even in places where the plurality of students have only Scandinavian grandparents. And not all ethnic Swedish girls dress the same way -- there is a lot of diversity within even a given culture.

Many police everywhere seem to have a general preference for not working lower crimes/wealthier area, but even the poorer parts of the city have lots of those with Swedish and Polish family names. And I have lots of acquaintances in the Swedish police and security forces.

I've been to the so-called worse neighborhoods in Malmo and Stockholm in the past two years, and let's just say that I would be no more "worried" there than I would be in some of the wealthiest urban neighborhoods in the US say 20 years ago or even today.

Those afraid of being losers in society tend to have more worries than those confident in their ability to compete for resources and opportunities to benefit themselves without dragging down or disparaging others. Individual self-interest pursued in lawful course tends to maximize resources and opportunities for the state as a whole, and yet those most worried about "foreign competition" have been the long-term drag on the proverbial exchequer and yet complain about others possibly becoming the same as themselves. How cute that what is good for the goose isn't good for the gander just because the feathers are supposedly a different hue.

I really do wonder if racism makes people die faster due to its impact on the health of even the racists. And in national systems with people like me subsidizing the healthcare of locals due to the fungible nature of money contributed to government, that would mean much higher health care costs. One way or another, racism seems to cost people.

Oh, I complain about racist profiling at airports beyond Europe too. It seems to hit me at some airports in Asia, even in countries that have ethnic Europeans as citizens of them. Nothing like getting flagged down or harassed in India on arrival or departure at some airports when the Italian-Indian woman was de facto leader of that country.