There has been a lot written about the migration crisis or refugees crisis or whatever one might choose to call the crisis on European borders. I am not about to add to the continuously expanding literature on the subject (at least not yet).
But here are a couple of links / summary data tables worth checking out.
First, an excellent essay in the Foreign Policy showing the extent of discontinuity between the Central European self-interest-driven humanitarian values of the 1990s and the region's current attitude toward migration.
But then again, Eastern and Central Europe has been re-writing its own history at will, on one occasion after another, to suit one master or the other, one nationalist leader or the next... here's a good reminder from earlier this month from one side, and the same view from another, both valid (by the way).
So here's a table of facts on European attitudes toward refugees, so hard to re-shape to suit a particular political narrative:
There is a neat summary of key issues behind the current crisis in the Vox but for all the facts and all the good discussions, the Vox article just can't get itself around to one topic - the role of the U.S. in all of this (and the role of the U.S. allies), so for the sake of not re-writing history, here's an alternative angle on that too.
And for all the headlines about the current crisis being the worst in European history since WW2... there's this handy chart from Globe & Mail:
Nor is the problem tied into Syrian crisis alone as the following chart from the same Globe & Mail article shows:
Which leads to the conclusion. And an unpleasant one. Either the Schengen is going to go bust... or we are going to hear - pretty soon - a call for yet another *Genuine* Union, this time around a Genuine Migration Union or a Genuine Borders Union, for any solution to all European crises must always involve greater harmonisation of something.
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