Austria Announces Daily Refugee Quotas
Earlier today, Austria announced daily quotas on refugees arriving at its borders. With that announcement, the last hope for Merkel’s refugee sharing program finally bit the dust.
The reduction in the number of migrants Austria will accept is staggering. Last year 1,000,000 refugees flowed through Austria. This year Austria will take 37,500.
Merkel’s Plan “A” Refugee Sharing Plan Bites the Dust
Please consider Austria Announces Border Clampdown to Slow Migrant Flow.
Austria has announced new restrictions on its borders with Italy and Slovenia, as ministers played down hopes of a common European agreement on managing Europe’s largest refugee influx in decades.
“Plan A [sharing refugees across the EU] isn’t enforceable . . . and it won’t be on Thursday and Friday,” Werner Faymann, chancellor of Austria, told reporters in Vienna, as he announced a tightening of restrictions along internal EU borders.
Austria will on Wednesday announce a new daily cap on the number of asylum seekers it will allow into the country, in co-ordination with neighbouring Slovenia. Once the daily limit is reached, asylum seekers will be turned away in line with the Dublin Convention on asylum rules, the official said.
Austria has struggled to cope with the arrival of more than 1m asylum seekers in 2015 alone — most use the country as a corridor to access Germany after their journey through Greece and the western Balkans.
On January 20, ministers announced the country would only accept 37,500 asylum seekers in 2016 and last week Sebastian Kurz, Austrian foreign minister, said Macedonia should be ready to “completely stop the flow of migrants across its southern border from Greece”.
Countries further south along the western Balkans migrant route are now bracing themselves for what Johanna Mikl-Leitner, Austria’s interior minister, described as a co-ordinated “domino effect” of border clampdowns. Officials in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia have repeatedly warned they will immediately match border restrictions imposed by any of their neighbours.
“It is important that each country progressively restricts the flow on its border, and that we do this in agreement with each other,” Ms Mikl-Leitner said on Tuesday. “The brakes are being applied step by step.”
Refugee Math
- 1,000,000 a year is 2,739 per day
- 37,500 a year is 102 per day
“Just Say No”
The EU finally has the start of a plan that makes sense. Let’s label the plan for the way it needs to work: “Just Say No“.
The refugee sharing proposals of Merkel were idiotic from the start. The “Just Say No” approach will lead to bottlenecks for existing refugees but it will stop new inflows.
It will be up to Greece to stop the flows right at the border with Turkey. But the EU should offer fence-building assistance to Greece, whatever it takes, instead of depending on Turkey.
Finally, Greece should be willing to turn away any flotillas that arrive on its shores, just as Australia has done.
The “Just Say No” plan is essentially the same plan I made about six months ago without the catchy name.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Given a large enough dose of reality a devout social liberal will quickly adopt conservative values. Trying to assimilate large numbers of Muslims into a Christian society is like trying to mix water and oil. The Austrians finally figured that out.
“Finally, Greece should be willing to turn away any flotillas that arrive on its shores, just as Australia has done”
Be careful there Mish – Australia’s treatment of our very small number of refugees that arrive by boat is absolutely appalling. We keep these people (men, women and children) incarcerated in tropical hell holes indefinitely while reports of abuse, death and rape are kept out of the media by a government policy of extreme secrecy.
And those who do report the abuse (teachers, doctors etc) are threatened with prosecution and a lengthy jail time.
When talking about the European refugee problem please do not compare to Australia as their are absolutely no similarities………..
PS: It has been reported with ample proof that the current Australian government actually pays the people smugglers substantial amounts of cash to ‘turn the boats back’…..
You are entitled to your point of view, Bob in Oz, but mine (also in Oz) is different – the current Liberal (conservative) government has succeeded in destroying the business model of an army of well organised and funded people smugglers which had under the previous Labor government led to hundreds if not thousands of deaths by drowning and exposure of would-be illegal immigrants at sea. I see evidence that many of the EU ‘refugees’ referred to above are middle-class economic migrants able to pay whatever it takes to find an EU country with lax immigration law and generous welfare benefits. Which is fine. If they comply with the EU’s immigration laws they can, like millions before them, seek to settle in Europe. Regardless of the political and economic situation in the Middle East or elsewhere, or the claims to refugee status by those fleeing, no country can simply open its borders to unlimited numbers of immigrants and hope to maintain its sovereignty and security. None. Each country is solely responsible for its sovereignty and security, and must do what is necessary to protect them, regardless of criticism of the means and ways.
Like I said above our problem with refugees compared to Europe has always been a non-event and Mish should stop lauding our governments tactics when offering a solution especially when we treat these people with such outright discrimination and disdain…….period.
People smugglers who we pay in order to turn the boats back, the LNP has never denied this. So we in turn help to keep their business model intact by doing so.
Boats are still coming but we simply turn them around….whatever happens to said refugees once this happens is anybody’s guess, drowning’s still occur. Our government on this issue rules by secrecy….appalling.
Both sides of government in this country absolutely stink and yet they continually try to distract us all with ‘boat people’ arriving here illegally – when the opposite is actually true, a huge political football that only stirs up bigoted, racist, xenophobic feelings in us ‘tolerant’ Aussies.
Open border policy – open your eyes, the front gate has been open for years with immigrants flooding this country in a Ponzi style population scheme, but most of us ignore this bigger glaring problem – we do not build the infrastructure to accommodate the masses of immigrants.
Australians are currently showing to the rest of the world that we are currently swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool.
What about the 12,000 Syrian migrants Australia volunteered to accept? We need them like a hole in the head. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are much better suited to integrate them. They have plenty of land, same religion, same ethnic groups, same weather, plenty of money, not to mention that those countries are largely to blame for the Syrian civil war. Australia had nothing to do with and has no responsibility for these refugees. But if Bob wants to host them in his home he is welcome to do so. But I forget that he is generous only with other people’s money.
How about ending the war? Get the EU to contribute to a real and sizable rebuilding effort
for the Syrians et al. Or perhaps WW III. Gentlemen place your bets.
Looks like WWIII then……………
No way EU is going to be rebuilding Syria while Assad , Iran and Russia are there .
Greece does not have the capability to turn the boats back, no way those migrants are going to float back to Turkey in those rafts. That is the issue – only way to stop the flow is build a wall around the coast of Turkey – not going to happen. Alternatively, have a huge number of ships patrolling the Turkish coast to intercept boats (that will all likely submerge to encourage “rescue”) and then deposit them back on Turkish soil – is this even possible as you would be infringing on Turkish territory. Nope – the migrants will all come and eventually be bottled up in Greece, living in slum cities, jungle camps or on the streets – crying to humanitarian organizations about their plight…
Faymann is an idiot. Without any doubt he’s the worst chancellor Austria had so far (no wonder he’s called Failmann by many). The only reason for his 180-degree-turn is that the vast majority of the voters – including most social-democratic party members – is against the unlimited access policy that was in place until now.
Last fall Faymann denounced the Hungarian premier, Victor Orban, as quasi-nazi for closing the border, now he has to announce (and defend) the very same actions. What a loser.
The social-democratic leaders were strictly against any limits, until they realized that the common people became increasingly infuriated with that stance.