Europe's Migrant Chaos Should Be a Warning for America

Europe faces several migrant-related situations. First, the International Rescue Committee, founded in 1933 on the advice of Albert Einstein, said Wednesday Europe should agree to take in half a million refugees from the Middle East over the next five years as a legal resettlement program in order to curb massive illegal migration. The New York-based IRC said it was "a fair and achievable minimum target" for the EU to resettle 108,000 refugees a year, half from Syria. EU leaders are discussing a plan to take in one legal Syrian refugee from Turkey for each illegal Syrian asylum seeker the Turks take back from Greek islands. The aim is to ruin people-smugglers' business and give refugees an incentive to stay in Turkey. EU officials say the one-for-one resettlement goal can be met initially with member states' existing commitments, which will mean taking in a maximum of 72,000 more people. "Europe can and must do more," said IRC president, former British foreign minister David Miliband : "The choice for Europe is not between having refugees and having no refugees," Miliband told Reuters, "It is whether refugees come in a legal, orderly, managed way or in an illegal, disorderly, smuggler-enriching way." The IRC proposal assumes that the number of Syrian refugees trying to reach Europe will keep on growing. Miliband says the EU one-for-one scheme will create reverse incentives for Turkey, since it could only send Syrians to Europe legally if it first let them cross to Greece illegally. Asked whether it was realistic to expect EU countries facing protests against migrants to create a resettlement program for 500,00 people, Milbank said the scheme had to be large enough to give refugees in the region hope. Creating a "legal pipeline for resettlement" is the best way to move from a chaotic to an orderly system that could reassure EU populations, he said. ~~~~~ While the naive IRC was trying to convince the EU to take in even more migrants, a gunman was shot dead on Tuesday in Brussels following a raid linked to investigations into the November Paris attacks. Mohamed Belkaid, a 35-year-old Algerian, was living illegally in Belgium, Belgian federal prosecutors said. They are also holding two men, one who is in hospital with a broken leg, and are still assessing whether they were connected to the shooting. A police sniper shot dead the Algerian, who had an assault rifle, after four officers were wounded on Tuesday during what investigators had expected to be a routine search of an apartment in the Belgian capital. Brussels, which is EU and NATO headquarters, was entirely locked down for days after the Paris attacks and has maintained a high state of security alert since then, with regular military patrols. Belgium has a Moslem population of about 5% of its 11 million people, and has Europe's highest rate of citizens joining Islamist militants in Syria. ~~~~~ French police arrested four people in Paris Wednesday, in raids also related to the Paris sttacks, but French authorities are also tearing down half the illegal migrant Calais camp known as the "Jungle" that houses thousands of migrants who fled war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. They are intent on crossing the English Channel to seek asylum in the UK. At least 500 are unaccompanied children and France's top minors' rights watchdog has urged the French government not to leave children live unsupervised in the Calais slum without proper shelter. Most try to climb onto trucks or trains crossing the Channel Tunnel in hope of getting into Britain, their favored destination, with its plentiful jobs and family connections. Police forces are deployed permanently in the area. Calais regional government is being pressured to build a shelter for the unaccompanied children. British policy is to take war refugees only from Middle East refugee camps, to discourage migration. ~~~~~ Dear readers, similar news items appear daily in Europe. The EU has taken in more than a million unvetted migrants, including terrorists who attack. It should be a warning to America.