This is often forgotten. And instead Belgians I know are now complaining about, what, some tens of thousands?, Syrian (and other) refugees entering the country. And yes, some of these Belgians even want to build fences to keep them out. Hmm, where did I hear this story before..
Refugees of Syria (and Iraq and Afghanistan and also all of Africa etc) have been flooding Belgium for 20-30 years now. Somehow they never depart in any of the other 360 degrees surrounding their countries. Or choose to stay in one of the many countries they pass through on their way. Only North West Europe will do: Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden.
On the plus side, last year Saudi Arabia did offer to help Belgium, not by taking up refugees until the war is over but by funding construction of more mosques.
Regarding that they only "flood North West Europe": in Spain, for example, the ~4 % of the population is Muslim (not all of them are immigrants but it's a decent indicator). In Sweden, it is ~5%, ~5-7% in Belgium, ~5% in Germany.
How many would be in NW Europe without the spreading plan? How do the ones that weren't even registered, or the ones that went missing move around the Schengen zone?
About the second set of figures. Total immigration is much higher than 7%, because not all immigrants are muslims. Even then, I’d say these numbers confirm that migration is much higher in NW Europe.
But you know, 7% of Belgium being muslim is not even the problem. The problem is that this is happening in a few decades time. In countries that have never seen immigration and were screwing it up big time long before the Syrian refugee crisis. Culturally and economically.
Au fond, immigration policy in Europe is completely reckless. There is no vision, just passively reacting to whatever happens and calling that being compassionate. And to go back to the original reason for my post: I’m especially sick of hearing specious, patronizing arguments like ”but 100 years ago Belgians fled to the Netherlands". We need to move beyond that sophistry. Especially if you live in Brussels.
Why don't they go to China, Japan, Russia, Kenya or New Zealand? Well, just look at a map. Syria -> Greece can be a long but doable journey. Except Russia (and that would be entering via Georgia, which doesn't seem to be like an easy route) all of those are pretty unfeasible.
About the figures, yes, they're not the best but they're an indicator and probably useful for comparison. And they do not confirm that immigration is higher in NWE. Sweden and Belgium have far less population than Spain (~10 vs 45 millions). If you add immigration percentages in France, Portugal and Italy, I'm pretty sure that it's not higher, and even if it is, it wouldn't be by much.
> The problem is that this is happening in a few decades time. In countries that have never seen immigration and were screwing it up big time long before the Syrian refugee crisis.
So what's the solution? Sweeping the problem under the rug? Because it's not an impossible task. It can be done. Spain has received a huge amount of immigrants in the last decade (2000 it was 2%, 2010 was 12%). The fact that a lot of them were spanish-speakers helped a lot, but you don't either see problems with the muslim population (12% of the foreign population is Moroccan, for example).
I see NW EU doing way too much. I see countries on the way to Europe (Greece, Macedonia, Serbia) doing even more. Btw as far as I’m concerned, that includes Turkey. I see other countries who are much closer culturally and/or geographically quite simply not doing that much.
You could say that a number of them do almost nothing. Or maybe a lot of the refugees actually choose to travel into specific directions. I.e. they want to use their refugee status for migration purposes into Europe.
About intra-European Syrian refugee numbers. You mention Spain a lot: 8,365 refugees on 46.5 million. Italy has 2,451 refugees on some 60 million people. Belgium has 14,850 on 11 million.
About intra-European muslim numbers. (You started mentioning those. They seem like a bad proxy for total immigration but anyways.) 7% (or 7+%) in Belgium. 10% in France. 5% for Spain.
About dealing with total immigration, beyond the Syrian refugee crisis. For the past 2-3 decades, Belgian society has been sweeping it all under the rug. That includes minimising and censoring events, coming up with dubious comparisons (like the WW1 canard), campaigns focusing on the racism of Belgians. There’s been a lot of social engineering and it’s not working well for anybody, immigrants included. Enough with the sweeping already. Let’s start with regaining control over the borders.
If the refugees were culturally similar - the attitude in Europe would be different.
There are few placec in which you are allowed to cross. You can be in need and cross there.
Well, in few years/decades you may have one more significantly influential group for your list :)