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Comment by programmernews3 | Hacker News Reader

They can certainly accommodate a lot of people. They have over 100,000 air conditioned tents at Mecca which can hold over 3 million people:

http://www.bricoleurbanism.org/beautiful-urban-moments/mina-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mina,_Saudi_Arabia

Despite the facility to do so, they take in no refugees. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/12/facts-figures...

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> The six Gulf countries - Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain - have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.

That's really shocking to me as these countries are rich in resources. Further, AFAIK, the majority of the populations share a religion/culture and these countries are very close (comparative to Europe/US) to the current middle east struggles, so why would they turn away refugees? I'm surprised there's not more political discussion happening to pressure stable, neighboring countries to help in this global challenge.

The reason is simple: incoming refugees will cause internal strife and fracture the Saudi Royal family's tenuous hold on power. I don't agree or disagree with that premise, but that's the reasoning.

The same is occurring in Europe and even America. The establishment is threatened as a result of this mass immigration. Perhaps the difference is that the Saudis do not suffer from white guilt and, hence, attempts at rational discourse are not drown out with calls of racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia.

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