tsastor

So in order to not have to take an excessive number of refugees, the only option is to exit or modify the international agreements concerning refugees? Or mitigate the situation by taking away most benefits awarded to refugees and/or possibly isolating them from the communities they try to enter?

GUWonder

Those aren't the only options -- even if I were sure what an "excessive number of refugees" is when even rather poor Lebanon (with a smaller population than Norway, c. 25% of the land area of Denmark, and per capita income at near Romanian levels in USD terms) has more Syrian refugees than Germany and Sweden have taken in together since 2012.

What you mention are just some ways to dance around the current legal agreements to which these countries in Europe (and elsewhere) contracted themselves for the past several decades. Maybe those who think they can't afford these agreements being honored in full should stick the bill for these troubles to those who were part of the "coalition of the willing" in 2003? That is another way to respond too. They can also consider withdrawing from the agreements or revising them, although that too may come with a price to be paid.

I prefer the rule of law and the predictability that ought to come from the rule of law over being subjected to governmental games like this when it comes to exercising the freedom of movement. And yet the governmental path is to infringe upon the freedom of movement and to try to engage in mass surveillance on the movements of the traveling public (legal residents/citizens included) by playing games around the agreements to which they choose to contract themselves.

FredAnderssen

I'm not following you. The Dublin Regulation plainly states:

And a quote from "Asylum Shopping:"

Bolding mine. Can you extrapolate on this disparity?

tsastor

At the moment, the Swedish government sees that its limit has been reached and to me it seems that also Germany's limit has been reached if not exceeded. And I'm talking about the total amount of migrants. If the numbers were smaller, it would have been easier to accept a lot more, maybe 10 times more, true refugees. So this being the situation, there has to be some mechanisms to limit the influx of not-entitled-to-aid migrants and adventurers.

GUWonder

Lots of migrants are not refugees but there are huge numbers of refugees that easily outnumber the number of non-refugee migrants that have been making irregular entries in and transits through Sweden in 2015 such that Sweden put in these checks. They put in these checks because of 2015 refugees not because of the minority of 2015 non-refugee migrants.

In Sweden, the housing situation for refugees had become a mess -- as in a lack of housing/beds available to the government. There just wasn't sufficient housing, but lack of housing isn't a grounds to fail to abide to legal agreements.

Given what the government was paying for housing -- and still is -- and given some of the characters whom these payments are enriching -- the money would indeed be better spent on using the same funds elsewhere in providing better conditions for refugees elsewhere. But that fact doesn't excuse the government trying to circumvent the rule of law just because it's convenient and cheaper (at least in the short-run).

The situation is a mess all around because it's a game for gamers (in government and beyond) and ends up being a clown show in so many ways. The checks at CPH and Hyllie range from being barely disruptive to very disruptive and the lack of predictability doesn't really sustainably improve the situation.


The Dublin regime doesn't run in full compliance with other international agreements applicable to the Dublin regime countries and many more beyond the Dublin regime. It was put in place to frustrate asylum shopping, even as refugees have always been asylum shopping as far back as anyone today has been alive and even well before. It's not like refugees are going to willfuly choose the worst possible socio-economic-political environments for themselves and their families; and so the Dublin regime was set up to frustrate that by taking advantage of the relative poverty of the Southern European Schengen external border states (principally those that were closest to North Africa and Turkey, as the Med has been seen as the gateway for irregular migration from Africa and Asia).

The Dublin regime doesn't trump national determinations to accept those refugees if may not be required to accept under Dublin but may choose to accept or still be required to accept for stay/transit under more international agreements that preceded the Dublin regulations or under domestic laws.

Since asylum shopping (which anyone in their right mind as a refugee should do) seems to annoy so many parties, perhaps the venues being shopped amongst should harmonize the assistance in purchasing power parity terms and actually be required to "share the burden". Then these disruptive checks to take the train from CPH to Sweden perhaps won't be seen as "necessary", and Schengen actually ends up meaning in practice what it used to mean..

tsastor

My assessment, which may be wrong, is that of the migrants, the overwhelming majority is not in need of refugee status and certainly not of refugee status far away from their home country. However I agree that the total number of refugees, living mostly in refugee camps close to their home country, outnumbers the amount of current non-refugee migrants roaming Europe.

GUWonder

I have no doubt that at least a substantial minority of those claiming refugee status in the latter seven weeks of 2015 in Sweden were making claims that should be suspected as being non-refugee migrants. The demographic pattern changed rather substantially within the fall 2015 to winter 2015/2016 period.

GUWonder

The ID checking contractors are costing Skanetrafiken $4 million dollars every five weeks they happen.

And then there is the hit to their revenue due to this situation. Sales of monthly public transport passes for bridge crossings are down; and sales of individual tickets across the bridge are down too.

And still the delays are rather substantial and causing a mess in both directions, with a growing number of people missing flights at CPH because of the situation that means all trains from Sweden to Denmark no longer stop at CPH (whereas before they all used to stop at the airport); and not all such changes (of skipping the airport) are known in advance of boarding the trains.

The border police staffing, housing and other costs being incurred by the border police assignment at Hyllie is in the millions of dollars monthly too.

tsastor

I think those costs are peanuts compared to the migrants problem as a whole. Agree that the CPH stop problem should be handled/informed better though.

Btw. it seems that my relatives in Malmö are turning SD, while those in Stockholm and elsewhere are still retaining their red-green attitude towards migrants.

nacho

The car crash in the tunnel yesterday doesn't make it any better either. Sweden still has no idea how much this mess is going to cost them.

GUWonder

The costs are low compared to the Swedish state's welfare payments for one and all registered, whether the registered are refugees or Swedish/EU/EFTA citizens. But there are cheaper ways to do things. But doing things to save one's own money or secure one's own income stream is more of a driver of innovation/change than doings things to save everyone else's money too.

Keep in mind that who pays for the transport disruptions are not all the same people paying for the Swedish border police activity ramp-up.

Skane/Malmo turning directions? Happened years ago; but old habits change hard, and earlier there were fewer as willing as now to openly admit certain inclinations and act upon changing affiliation -- even as the thinking was always there even when not as widely and clearly acknowledged and articulated. And the more reliant people are or expect to be upon welfare payments, the more hostile they tend to be to refugees and even ethnic minorities who aren't refugees. Competition for access to resources, or at least worries about such, has a rather predictable impact upon people. Not that there is any clear picture on the costs/benefits for the state as a whole. And the more publicly acceptable it becomes to be hostile toward certain groups, the more the hostility tends to spread.

In the meanwhile, a large chunk of the business community in the cross-border region have worries that these border check-induced disruptions are going to mess up their business operations in various ways, big and small. And it has already hit in part.

Malmo would get more business without these checks being done this way than it is getting with the checks being done this way. What is going on is still a slapstick, tragic-comedy.

When even long-time commuters on this route are less certain than ever before about what their day will be like due to these checks, it doesn't take much guessing to figure out that it is messing up others too.

In the meantime, human footprints coming out of the water are supposedly being found around Skane in places where footprints would otherwise not be found. And that's when the weather is like it is in the region today. I'm not going to discuss the footprints -- even those of the police dogs being used -- any further unless and until it makes publication.

FateSucks

Malmö becoming SD?

Was does SD imply?

GUWonder

Donald Trump's role model since at least 2008. Except I don't recall him saying they should set up a machine gun pointed at the Danish, er, Mexican border. That was an SD type.

The city/region goes from one extreme to the other. For example, around the WW2 era, my own Swedish relatives used to be on the beaches around Malmo and would see vacationing (Nazi) SS officers hanging out on the beaches during summer to pick up women; meanwhile those relatives or others would be handing out literature about what extreme stuff was going on in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and sometimes would get shunned by other relative because "Germany could do no wrong". And post-WW2 too, the city and its surroundings were still highly segregated by socio-economic class. Guess where working class and poor migrants and refugees ended up mostly in the region? Not in the parevenu or older, more established bourgeois neighborhoods. Now move to the present, and the commuter demographic patterns are more mixed than the housing patterns. But now more of every group have just become sick of one situation or another and ended up alienated from the state in a way that had hitherto not been as widespread. I'm even hearing those who moved to Sweden as refugees or were born to refugees complain about refugees. It's an interesting microcosm to study.

The Danish and Swedish officials have told some of us that when Germany "shuts its borders" then Sweden and Denmark will largely return to business as usual.

Blogndog

With all the talk about costs associated with refugees, nobody seems to be mentioning the immense cost the border checks and rail disruptions must be having on the economies of the Öresund. The Nordic Union, the Schengen agreement and indeed the massive investment in the Öresund link were all aimed at better integrating the region and creating economic benefits. People have taken jobs and bought houses under the belief that there was a permanent change implemented.

I have no statistics, but I can't imagine this hasn't had a huge impact on home values in Malmö, Lund and elsewhere. And of course the big cost with the ID checks is not what is being paid to the GS4 security contractors, but the massive loss of productivity amongst all those commuters. The direct costs of the refugees and/or border procedures must be trivial in comparison with the economic impact on the region.

Fredrik74

SD is the anti-immigrant party Sverigedemokraterna. They are growing really, really fast.

The latest poll gave them more than 35% among male voters. And then there are some of us that are uneasy about the immigration level and how it's handled but still can't see ourselves voting SD.