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

[Tender Branson]

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).

[Tender Branson]

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

I am not aware that Strache has said anything about the US taking in too few asylum seekers.

That is what I found out, looking at the asylum statistics:

* The US takes in 80.000 asylum seekers each year, population: 320 million
* Austria takes in 80.000 asylum seekers this year, population: 8.5 million

If the US were to take in as many asylum seekers as Austria, it would have to take up 3 million each year ...

But I'm not just attacking the US, it's other European countries as well that are stealing themselves out of responsibility. They are only for the EU and its policies if they are getting a financial benefit out of it. Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) today said exactly the same what I said for months now. This situation (=that we have to bear the burden almost alone) is becoming crazy.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/burden-sharing-on-asylum-a-disgrace-says-sigmar-gabriel-1.2312683

[Tender Branson]

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.

[Tender Branson]

This is just fundamentally untrue Tender.

The numbers speak the truth though:

The US is not doing its fair share in taking up asylum seekers during this crisis (which they helped to create, by constantly meddling in other countries business - such as in Iraq/AfPak/Syria/Libya).

The US takes in only 80.000 asylum seekers a year, the same amount as Austria this year. But: The US is 40x bigger than Austria. So, something is wrong ... don't you think ?

[Tender Branson]

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.

No, that's wrong and (I hope) you know it: Both Austria and the US have comparable high rates of [legal] [economic] immigration - per capita.

But what we are facing right now is something more extreme: On top of the legal immigration (50.000 a year, which is huge) - there are now 80.000 asylum seekers coming in.

Our population is expected to increase by 1.5% this year ...

That's equivalent of the US taking in 3.2 million asylum seekers a year - ON TOP of it's legal immigration of 1 million.

Just to get the facts straight ...

[Tender Branson]

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

8 friggin' thousand.

That's what Austria now takes in each month, a country with the population of New Jersey ... on top of the regular high immigration (that's similar to the US level on a per capita basis).

Where's the Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama when you need him ?

[Tender Branson]

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?

Austria took 300.000 refugees from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

That's equivalent of the US taking 12 million refugees on a per capita basis.

And this is just one example: Austria also took in 100.000s of asylum seekers during the 1950s and 1960s when the Soviets invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

The thing is that the US isn't doing its fair share now: Just stirring up the hornets nests in AfPak, Syria and Iraq - but then stealing themselves out of responsibility when the human toll comes up and leaving that to the Europeans (or some of these countries) ... that's not how it should work. Obama did not get his Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing.