Serious question: When will the US start taking in asylum seekers ?

[ag]

Time for the US to send charter planes to Lebanon, Turkey and Kabul to pick up the millions of asylum seekers that are now coming to Europe.

After all, the US created all this mess and mass migration because of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and the destruction of Libya.

But we* should foot the human and financial bill now ? Yeah, right ...

First bombing these places into the ground, then stealing yourselves out of responsibility.

(By "we", I mean mostly Germany/Sweden and Austria - who are taking up the bulk of the US-induced war/economic refugees).

If you mean refugees from Asia/Africa arriving without pre-clearance, than the US will be equally accessible to them as soon as EU finishes draining the Atlantic.

[ag]

"We" have been taking in refugees for decades, not to mention all those refugees that came over due to a little war that Austria had a hand in during the 1940s, or did you forget about that?  I thought this was a serious question.

Really, did you have to Godwin the thread on post five?

True. It should have been Godwined on post 2.

[ag]

Oh, Tender, that's ridiculous, the US is talking taking asylum seekers, since decades. Don't believe all the lies of your beloved Strache.

Sure, but measured per capita only about 1/10 of the European countries with the highest numbers of asylum seekers, such as Austria (and that is excluding Sweden, which takes roughly 25 times as many).

You forget the simple fact that who called a refugee is endogenous to national legislation. US, whatever its deficiencies, has many other categories of immigration that are accessible. And, of course, US has a gigantic number of "illegal"economic (and, frequently, political) migrants that are not classified in any of the legal migration categories. Comparing numbers of "refugees" between the US and Europe is comparing apples and oranges: the numbers cannot be easily compared at all.

[ag]

Hate trolling dumbsh**ts. Message boards should have votes on whether to ban them for lacking the education of a 15-year-old.

The OP may be trollish, but it points out an actual problem worth debating. Or are you talking about ag? He is among our most highly educated trolls.

Taking a bow, flustered.

[ag]

This is a very real issue. There is an annual refugee cap set in law, which is 70,000 for 2015. I agree that it ought to be raised.

In general, immigration issues aside from the legalization of illegal immigrants get surprisingly little attention in US politics.

Yes, this is something that needs to be talked about. But not with a mocking German rightist.

[ag]

This is a very real issue. There is an annual refugee cap set in law, which is 70,000 for 2015. I agree that it ought to be raised.

In general, immigration issues aside from the legalization of illegal immigrants get surprisingly little attention in US politics.

Yes, this is something that needs to be talked about. But not Especially with a mocking vocal German Austrian rightist centrist/center-leftist.

The two are empirically and morally indistinguishable.

[ag]

This is a very real issue. There is an annual refugee cap set in law, which is 70,000 for 2015. I agree that it ought to be raised.

In general, immigration issues aside from the legalization of illegal immigrants get surprisingly little attention in US politics.

Yes, this is something that needs to be talked about. But not Especially with a mocking vocal German Austrian rightist centrist/center-leftist.

The two are empirically and morally indistinguishable.

Do you know who was of the same opinion?

And we too conveniently forget that his belief was amply sustained in practice.

[ag]

Most Western countries should take more asylum seekers, the US included.

For once we are in full agreement.

[ag]

Isn't "asylum seeker" a genuine European judicial status, that doesn't apply to the US? Or are there similar terms and states?

The status is regulated by the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. So, a version of the status exists in most countires of the world. If a person, arriving into a country claims the refugee status, s/he is entitled to a substantive consideration of her/his case. And, the fact is, if that person comes from Syria, or Afghanistan, or Yemen, or.... it is pretty likely to be a valid claim.

The main difference between Europe and the US here is purely geographical.

It is pretty hard for most Mexicans to demonstrate persecution that would entitle them to a refugee status (there are exceptions, but, mostly, Mexico is reasonably non-persecuting of its own citizens). Of course, the same is true of most Turks. But whereas US almost only has Mexico and a few Central American/Caribbean countries to deal with - pretty much everyone else would have to first get TO Mexico or Canada, and that is a tall order for purely geographic reasons - Europe also has much of Asia and Africa reasonably close.

Previously, Europe was isolated from the flow by a bunch of reasonably stable dictatorships, which blocked off the coasts. But that has now changed. Much of the discussion that we are seeing here, in fact, is reducible to trying to figure out how to reestablish the old isolation. Well, I guess, setting up a bunch of dictatorships along the Mediterrainean coast is the most realistic prospect.

[ag]

The US has now agreed to take in 8.000 Syrian aslum seekers next year.

8 friggin' thousand.

The US took 1.3 mln. Indochinese refugees. How many did Austria take?