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Comment by timtammittee | Hacker News Reader

> Most people coming to Europe are economic migrantw, not from countries affected by war.

Where do you get this information.

If you talk about asylum seekers (The majority of the current inbound traffic), you can look up the numbers yourself they are published as datasets by the UNHCR [1]

Looking at the top 5 origin states of asylum seekers for 2015 and 2016 reveals:

Syrian Arab Rep. 30.5% Afghanistan 18.1% Iraq 11.9% Serbia and Kosovo 3.5% Pakistan 2.9%

So more then 60% of the 2.7M asylum seekers are from Syria, Afganistan or Iraq all of which are currently in a state of conflict.

[1] http://popstats.unhcr.org/en/asylum_seekers_monthly

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"More than half of those fleeing to Europe from the Middle East and Africa are economic migrants and not asylum seekers fleeing the horrors of war in Iraq or Syria, according to first vice-president of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans.

Quoting what he said were new, unpublished, figures from the EU border agency, Frontex, Mr Timmermans said: “More than half of the people now coming to Europe come from countries where you can assume they have no reason whatsoever to ask for refugee status … more than half, 60 percent.”

Those 60 percent were predominantly from north Africa, mainly Moroccans or Tunisians who were leaving their own countries for “economic reasons” and attempting to travel to Europe through Turkey, the former Netherlands foreign minister told the Dutch national broadcaster, NOS."

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/most-fleeing-to...

Yes, but do consider that "economic reasons" can include "militias keep burning my crops, it is too unstable to make a living".

You can draw the line wherever you like, just remember that one day someone may draw a line that affects you, and you may not like it.

Me, I'm some kind of idiot that believes in being good to your fellow man.

No, unless you think that every south american who crosses into the US some is somehow deserving of a refugee status.

The refugee status is a very specific legal term and it comes with allot of requirements both on the person seeking refuge (different from seeking asylum, asylum seekers are not the same thing as refugees) and the country taking them in, a refugee is responsible to contact the authorities and register in the first safe country which is signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the "safe" part is a critical issue here, this is about not being shot and have to duck bombs not about financial opportunity and quality of life.

The migrants coming into Europe are not refugees as they've crossed multiple countries which while unpleasant are not currently in conflict, countries which are signatory to the UN convention and in which the UN operates refugee centers. Once they skip those countries and continue moving to greener grounds legally they are defined as migrants not refugees.

Now asylum seekers are a completely different legal group, they are individuals that are not considered as refugees and they can seek asylum in any country the wish however the rules regarding asylum vary considerably and they are not uniformly protected by the 1951 convention on refugees.

Refugees are people escaping natural or man made disasters that while do not target them individually, no longer allow them to reside safely in their original homes, asylum seekers are running from very specific human made threats due often to their political, social, racial or religious background.

It's not that simple.

Fleeing to a nearby country is one thing.

Being able to move all the way to Germany, Denmark or Sweden isn't exactly being fleeing war anymore.

The irony is that it's those with most money who can afford to move the furthest away from the refugee camps and many of those who do are men, leaving their family behind hoping to be able to get them to the country they end up in.

https://www.rt.com/news/330284-economic-migrants-eu-refugees...

I am saying that because they are very specific in what country they apply for asylum. Only tiny fraction of people who pass through Greece applied for asylum here. Not even Hungaria and Austria(!) are good enough. Most people want to Germany, Sweden or similar country.

And somehow Turkey is not considered safe country. But Ukraine with actual war is just fine and EU does not take refugees from there.

This data is incomplete. For Germany it says that they had 440.000 asylum applications in 2015 even though Merkel herself said that they took in over a million in 2015.

Apparently it was 1.1 million registered refugees for Germany alone in 2015. Of these only 476.649 submitted a formal asylum request. Edit: And you can bet that there's a large number of migrants that didn't even register, the minister of interior in Germany even said that there's an issue with a large number of refugees of whom no one knows who they are, where they are and what they are doing here.

Who knows what the rest of them is doing here if they do not even bother to submit an asylum request.

So please don't tell me how 60% of asylum seekers are real refugees, the majority doesn't even try because they are probably smart enough to know that there's no chance that they'll be accepted.

Source: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/fluechtlingskrise/deutsch... (German, sorry - but this is one of the largest pro government online media)

I admit that these numbers do not include people who did not apply for asylum.

But in your own source theres a chart showing the distribution of all 1.0919M registered entries.

39.2% Syrian 14.1% Afganistan 11.1% Irak

I'd say even though not all of the 1.1M register as asylum seekers (or have not yet registered). Their distribution is quite similar to that of the people who registered.

Most applicants from Afghanistan are not granted asylum at the moment. The problem is that Afghanistan isn't willing to take them back.

Also it isn't like everyone from Iraq is given asylum.

Oh and btw - NGOs in Europe are actively teaching prospective asylum seekers to say they are from Syria. Most of them do not even speak Arabic.

Edit: reply to comment below:

Please see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=11928413

In the Frontex Western Balkans Annual Risk Analysis 2016 Frontex investigated Nationality swapping and they found:

"In 2015, 173 042 migrants who claimed Syrian nationality were screened; of which 85.8% were assumed by screeners to be Syrian nationals. As regards the rest, 8.6% were assumed to be Iraqi; 2.5% Palestinian, 1% Moroccan, and 2.1% were assumed to be of other nationality."

So yes, 14.2% of the people who claimed to be from Syria really originated somewhere else. But, if we again sum up those who come from a country who is currently in a state of conflict (I included Palestine), we gain 97%.

Edit: Also, you should note that people are screened again during the process of applying for asylum. So I guess the number of wrongly assigned nationalities is neglectable.

So, you think, if dropped into, say, Uzbekistan, you would immediately understand their language and bureaucratic processes? Because that seems to be your expectation of migrants.

By any chance, do you support pegida? Or are they too left wing?

I don't even understand what point you are trying to make (aside from telling me that you hate me) as it is totally unrelated to my previous comment.

Do you have anything substantial to add? Again, 1.1 million refugees registered, only 467.xxx of them submitted an asylum request and on top of that there's a large number of refugees that are not even registered.

Therefore the 60% figure cannot be correct for anyone who is able to calculate properly.

Edit: Sorry can't create a comment to reply, that's why I'll reply here again to madaxe_again:

There is no need for you to appeal to my emotions, I'm interested in facts here. And yes, the default should be and always is "I don't believe you" because you have to prove that you are really a refugee whose life is under threat in his home country.

Right wing and nationalistic parties are on the rise in Europe precisely because the current governments are waving these kinds of statistics around that clearly give a false impression of the situation instead of telling the truth.

They wilfully ignore our own laws and not just enforce an open border policy but even invite everyone who'd like to come like Merkel did in 2015 with the rationale that it is not possible to stop this migration, while Hungary and Macedonia were perfectly capable to do it by constructing a fence and controlling the border.

And then they also had the gut to tell us that these migrants are comparable or in case of Syrians even better educated than our population and that's why we'll prosper from these migrants. After a year statistics then showed that the majority couldn't even read. This must be a sick joke, who comes up with this stuff?

I don't like getting lied to. As long as this lying doesn't stop the right wing will continue to rise and at some point the EU will collapse.

My point is that they may not know how or whether to submit an asylum request. Do you know the process?

I don't hate you, I just pity you for having a selfish worldview - I hope you don't one day find yourself in need of help only to find your alter ego going "nope, I don't believe you."

Thank you for posting this. I am baffled at how some people just ignore reality and post (and believe in?) lies, even here on HN where most of us work with data.

It's amazing that fact checking and critical thinking is so low in this internet age where information is freely available for everyone.

It's funny that you mention crtitical thinking when working with data. this data reports country of origin. Now make that critical thiught work please, and tell me why these refugees insist on goingfrom the safe Turkey to Germany?

Sure, here's two articles [1, 2] that describe the situation. Most of the refugees do stay in Turkey (including 1.9M Syrians acc. [1]).

[1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/09/29/why-dont-syrians-stay-tu...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/20/amnesty-report...

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