IanHamlett wrote:Last time I saw figures, Syrians were a minority. The largest minority but still a minority. You might see an attempt to enworsen Syria, but there's nothing in that for the EU. I see an attempt to stabilise the country so that Syrians can live there safely.Which bit isn't true? Refugees, predominantly Syrians but with a fair few Afghans, are fleeing conflict zones which we've apparently done our best to enworsen.I would like the UK to take more refugees, and I would like Germany to take refugees directly from Syria, but the UK is spending more on Syrian aid than any other EU country and trying to stabilise the country militarily. Maybe not the best strategy, but Syrians aren't fleeing British bombs. So that's probably about half true, but the bit I was saying wasn't true was that the migrant crisis would be solved if more countries took more people.Other countries, notably rich ones like ours, are doing everything they can to avoid taking any responsibility for those suffering. I find this embarrassing. This all, at first glance, appears true to me.
Using migrants and asylum seeker interchangeably can lead to confusion but the main mistake you've made is to take this chart...Funkstain wrote:Again I'm not sure what you mean when you say the Syrians are but a minority of the EU migrant crisis? These figures seem quite clear, with regards to asylum seekers, which is the only thing I'm talking about: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911.
IanHamlett wrote:Using migrants and asylum seeker interchangeably can lead to confusion but the main mistake you've made is to take this chart... ... and interpret it as the total of all asylum seekers. The information you need to reach the right figures is actually on the page but very poorly presented. If you look at this pic you can see the total number of claims for 2015 is 1,321,560. The number of Syrian applicants from the other chart is somewhere around 360,000. That puts Syrian refugees at 27% of the total number of refugees. There are also economic migrants that are not covered here. If you take out the number of Syrian, Afghan, and Iraqi asylum seekers from 2015, there are still around 660,000 (about half of the original number) non-EU asylum seekers arriving in EU in 2015. That's still way higher than the 280,000 the IOM estimates arrived in EU in 2014. That's why I don't think the Syrian war is the main driving force in the migrant crisis and why I don't think more countries taking more people would solve it.Again I'm not sure what you mean when you say the Syrians are but a minority of the EU migrant crisis? These figures seem quite clear, with regards to asylum seekers, which is the only thing I'm talking about: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911.
bbc wrote:Mr Cameron criticised opponents who he claims are willing to sacrifice economic prosperity for wider political goals.
The two sets of figures do not contradict each other.Funkstain wrote:I can see that the two sets of figures appear to contradict each other, but they are both clear in their use of EU Asylum Seekers in 2015. The only difference I can see is "first time applicants" in the first chart. I would definitely like that explained and regret the use of that link. I should stick to UN numbers. In any case, a few challenges for you. 1) Where are the "missing" 660,000 asylum seekers coming from? Surely there would, for a number that large, be a big to-do about all those blighters coming from wherever they are coming from. The first chart covers Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and indeed any potential conflict or unsettled bastard hole you can think of except Yemen. Perhaps they are all Yemenis? 2) Are you aware of the vast number of potential asylum seekers from Syria? Did you know that there is an estimated 1.9M Syrian refugees in Turkey waiting to cross over to the EU? OK not all of them will actually come (or indeed make it alive) but many of them probably have that plan, don't you believe? http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php 3) How many of these asylum seekers are undocumented, anywhere, leading to serious underestimations? Who knows, right? But doesn't it possibly contribute to a migration / refugee crisis? 4) Do you really firmly believe that the migrant crisis in the EU is not predominantly caused by the Syrian crisis (and to a lesser extent, the Afghan and Iraqi wars)? If so, what possible alternative can you offer?IanHamlett wrote:Using migrants and asylum seeker interchangeably can lead to confusion but the main mistake you've made is to take this chart... ... and interpret it as the total of all asylum seekers. The information you need to reach the right figures is actually on the page but very poorly presented. If you look at this pic you can see the total number of claims for 2015 is 1,321,560. The number of Syrian applicants from the other chart is somewhere around 360,000. That puts Syrian refugees at 27% of the total number of refugees. There are also economic migrants that are not covered here. If you take out the number of Syrian, Afghan, and Iraqi asylum seekers from 2015, there are still around 660,000 (about half of the original number) non-EU asylum seekers arriving in EU in 2015. That's still way higher than the 280,000 the IOM estimates arrived in EU in 2014. That's why I don't think the Syrian war is the main driving force in the migrant crisis and why I don't think more countries taking more people would solve it.Again I'm not sure what you mean when you say the Syrians are but a minority of the EU migrant crisis? These figures seem quite clear, with regards to asylum seekers, which is the only thing I'm talking about: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911.
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