Europe-Middle East-Africa Refugee Crisis General Thread

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I think America is partially to blame for this situation. I applaud European leaders for attempting to take on this necessary burden but America has the capacity to take a few million refugees. We've refused to do anything.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Xenophobia isn't inherent to "human nature", as Politicus disturbingly seems to believe. Societies can be educated to accept, and even actively promote, multiculturalism, if thier political and cultural leaders make the effort to endorse it, instead of pandering to irrational fears.

They should first explain what multiculturalism is though. Different cultures living side by side or the incorporation of non-native cultures into the dominant one? I.e. forcing people from different cultural backgrounds to accep the basic tenets of our western culture: freedom of speech and religion, gender equality... If it's the latter, I can most certainly sign up to that. The former - not exactly.

I think it's also perfectly acceptable for Danes to feel that their homeland should be the "Land of Danes" rather than the "Land of people who happen to live in Denmark." We tend to bemoan the disappearance of cultures and languages but when it comes to European cultures, efforts to preserve it are somehow frowned upon. Go figure.

How is this any different than saying "Europe for the Europeans" or "Diversity = White Genocide"?

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I feel the need to make a contribution to this trainwreck of a thread.

I'm pretty appalled by the moral reasoning expressed in this thread. Has anyone considered that Europe's stance towards refugees is unethical? In my view, this is the central objection to Europe's attitudes towards refugees. Popular sentiment, as expressed in this thread, dictates that some lives are simply worth more than others and polities are responsive to this view. If this means that refugees will be left to drown in the Mediterranean or off-loaded onto states less capable to care for them, so be it! This is acceptable because they are worth less. They are others. They don't get European values or European traditions or democracy or liberalism etc.

This is pretty ironic, isn't it? Apparently, Europeans don't understand their own values or their rich history of political thought, which gave the world the notion of universal political rights and obligations that transcend tongue, religion and culture. Now, I have my issues with Western political thought and European history but I've never been able to embrace Third Worldist garbage because I understand that Europe, that continent of imperialist oppressors, also bequeathed the very rhetoric used by anti-imperialist revolutionaries to topple their masters. Europe has a dark legacy rooted in its history, one that cannot be escaped; every nation and people is culpable. It also has a beautiful legacy, one that makes me proud of my European ancestry. There's a reason why Benito Juarez invoked the values of the French Revolution when he resisted the French, there's a reason why Toussaint Louverture did the same.


Return to these values or suffer the ignominy that comes with allowing refugees to drown in the seas. The latter cannot be justified by any moral compass that isn't guided by crude/hackneyed utilitarian reasoning.

 I guess you can continue to engage in whataboutery or claim that it simply isn't possible for Europe to handle refugees but the latter pre-supposes that Europeans are truly vile inhuman creatures that are incapable of empathizing with refugees. I don't believe that this is the case. It's very clear that Europe has the resources to accommodate refugees, it's a question of will.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Xenophobia isn't inherent to "human nature", as Politicus disturbingly seems to believe. Societies can be educated to accept, and even actively promote, multiculturalism, if thier political and cultural leaders make the effort to endorse it, instead of pandering to irrational fears.

They should first explain what multiculturalism is though. Different cultures living side by side or the incorporation of non-native cultures into the dominant one? I.e. forcing people from different cultural backgrounds to accep the basic tenets of our western culture: freedom of speech and religion, gender equality... If it's the latter, I can most certainly sign up to that. The former - not exactly.

I think it's also perfectly acceptable for Danes to feel that their homeland should be the "Land of Danes" rather than the "Land of people who happen to live in Denmark." We tend to bemoan the disappearance of cultures and languages but when it comes to European cultures, efforts to preserve it are somehow frowned upon. Go figure.

How is this any different than saying "Europe for the Europeans" or "Diversity = White Genocide"?

While I suspect you're hopeless cause (based on your post below the one I quotes) I'm going to answer anyway. Saying that a national state should be the home of the nation/people which it's based on, are like saying that children in American school should be taught English, they're free to have classes in other languages, but English should be taught. While saying " "Europe for the Europeans" or "Diversity = White Genocide" " are like saying it should be illegal to have classes in other languages at all.

I know this distinction are likely lost on you, but hope shines eternal.

lol classic salty ingemann

I fully understand this logic. I don't see why I should approve of it. After all, I understand European history. Isn't this logic the reason why millions were displaced from their homes after World War 2? Isn't this logic why millions died during World War 2?

Nationalism is a romantic myth, an invented tradition and it's a very destructive one at that. The common tongues, national traditions and customs that are tied to states were forged by public policy for the purpose of state-making. There are alternative models that can bolster state-making and alternative national models. The Americas have a rich tradition of nationalism rooted in civic values rather than cultural affectations.

As for the incomprehensible metaphor, I have no idea what you're saying so I can't comment on it.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

It's very clear that Europe has the resources to accommodate refugees, it's a question of will.

Agreed, but there are very good reasons why this will is lacking and it is unlikely to suddenly materialize.

You can not ignore the basic dilemma: Europeans do not want (further) mass immigration and since refugees can not be repatriated they are de facto immigrants. If there were a real possibility of repatriation later on there would be little resistance to taking refugees, but we know from experience this is not so. Even countries with IDPs are rarely able to "repatriate" them (see Colombia for an example).

With the population growth Africa has and the conflict  potential there is on the continent (incl. failed states) no other part of the world will be willing to take the refugee flows we will see in the coming decades. That is why we need to separate payment and hosting and accept that hosting will be on the continent itself (which also has a lot less population density and more potential for growth than Europe).

Solving the problem in Africa for Western (and ideally also East Asian) money would also help more people - including those that can not afford to pay traffickers (women, children, elderly and disabled over represented among them) in the long run.

It might be cynical to view the refugee crisis in such calculated terms, but when the numbers gets this big and the countries of origin are as "problematic", it is unavoidable.

I'm making a moral claim, not a prudential claim. I think it's unethical/petulant that Europeans are opposed to "mass immigration". I think it's bad behavior. The causes that explain this sentiment are manifold and I might be inclined to agree that European political constraints necessitate alternatives to housing refugees in Europe itself.

That said, I'm going to condemn the average European for opposing mass immigration. It's unethical that Europeans would rather dump MENA refugees into relatively stable yet still poverty-stricken countries. It's unethical that Europeans, who love to boast about their WESTERN VALUES, would rather dump MENA refugees on authoritarian regimes. These are moral claims.

I'm happy to discuss policy choices but I'm not going to empathize with petulant/racist children, I'm going to shake my head and hope that mass murder, whether indirect or direct, is avoided.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Nationalism is a romantic myth, an invented tradition and it's a very destructive one at that. The common tongues, national traditions and customs that are tied to states were forged by public policy for the purpose of state-making.

1) That is in itself a bit of a myth, or rather an exaggeration. There are strong elements of proto-nationalism dating back to high medieval times in several countries.

2) It does not in itself make them any less real or easier to absolve.

1. "in several countries"; in otherwords this is non-generalizable whereas my point is somewhat generalizable (all national identities were forged by the state).

2. sure but the attachment to the ethnic nation-state is despicable when it's understood that it's at the root of ethnic cleansing, mass population displacement and refugee crises. i can understand that it's difficult to deal with the detritus of history and weep at the same time.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I think America is partially to blame for this situation. I applaud European leaders for attempting to take on this necessary burden but America has the capacity to take a few million refugees. We've refused to do anything.

ftr, i mourn the moral failure of america as well and recognize that this is a problem of a poor distribution of refugees that could be shouldered by the nation of immigrants. oh well.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/reporters-notebook/migrants/serbia-belgrade?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Why do Saudi-Arabia, UAE or Iran not take in asylum seekers from Iraq and Syria? Why should it be Europe's responsibility to settle them?

Why do people who tout the superiority of "Western values" and the institutions of liberal democracy want migrants to take refuge within the borders of authoritarian regimes?

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Why do Saudi-Arabia, UAE or Iran not take in asylum seekers from Iraq and Syria? Why should it be Europe's responsibility to settle them?

Why do people who tout the superiority of "Western values" and the institutions of liberal democracy want migrants to take refuge within the borders of authoritarian regimes?

They are countries which have a culture much closer to the culture of the Syrians and Iraqis, thereby making it easier for them to integrate (Shias to Iran, Sunnis to the other Gulf countries).

Authoritarian regimes are what they are used to. By moving from one authoritarian state to another, they will avoid experiencing a culture shock.

Insightful point! Ashkenazi Jews from Byelorussia had no experience with democracy. Naturally, when they fled the pogroms, they came to the shores of New York City and started weeping, asking themselves "what is democracy? i can't comprehend this," before establishing the monarchy of New York Oblast.

Look, if you want migrants to die in the Mediterranean, just say it aloud. There's no need for the intellectual jujitsu where you avoid saying the immoral thing in favor of saying slightly less immoral things. We know what you're getting at.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Does it really matter why people refuse to treat other people with respect and dignity? When making moral or ethical judgments, one does not need to care about the motivations of other actors. In a vacuum, we'd agree that it would be quite immoral for hypothetical society X to allow refugees to drown or to be without shelter and malnourished in poorly-maintained camps in poorer/more authoritarian society Y. This really shouldn't be controversial.

It's only controversial because many Europeans, more so in some countries than others, are prejudiced. There are solutions that could be proposed with this in mind but I'd suggest that there's no escaping the fact that this is a fundamentally moral issue. It's not a question of economics or logistics. If refugees were spread between countries in a fair manner, it would pose a light burden for the continent.

If this can't be agreed upon, there's no point in continuing this discussion. The alternatives proposed by some posters in this thread are a bit ridiculous. No, MENA nations are not more equipped than France or the UK to handle migrants. They're poorer, they're not all that culturally similar and they're authoritarian. This burden cannot be transferred to Egypt or to Saudi Arabia or to the UAE. That's wish fulfillment. Furthermore, it's deeply immoral wish fulfillment because I'm well-aware that people on this forum know about the manner in which the Gulf States treat migrant workers.

tl;dr if there's going to be a debate about this crisis, it has to be about ethics and morality. at the end of the day, we don't disagree about the political constraints faced by european governments...

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Josh Earnest stated that Europe needs to solve the refugee problem itself. The US "will be glad to help Europe by giving advise" but will not take in refugees: "Europe has the capacity to solve the problem itself." He also said that European politicians shouldn't forget "that this is about human beings".

I don't think the US is under the obligation to take in refugees, but if they don't, at least I'd like the White House to refrain from taking the moral highground.

Yeah, that is hypocritical - especially with the very low level of Syrian UN refugees admitted to the US.

Then there is the matter of the indirect effects of the Iraq war on the Syrian civil war.

I agree that this is the height of hypocrisy.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Again it comes to this issue being treated as one glob. When each situation is triggered by different things, the people are leaving for different reasons. This is part of the reason why I'm finding the conflation of all people fleeing into one mass so grating.

This is hilarious, one side have generalised these people into one large unified faceless mass, and it's not the one side which you blame for it.

The refugees are routinely described as Muslim and possessing "anti-Western" views, even when said refugees are Westernized or Christian or Kurdish. It's much easier to claim that refugees are ill-suited for liberal democracy when they're portrayed as anti-democratic or ill-liberal, which is ludicrous considering that many of their relatives died because they dared to fight against an autocrat.

i don't care about what "side" did what because this isn't a poop throwing contest. will you at least acknowledge that some refugees are perfectly suited for life in europe?

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Sibboleth's replies are pretty illustrative for the tactics on the emotional side of the debate. If one doesn't think it is good for Germany to take in a whopping 800,000 immigrants, 1% of its population, then one must be a nazi. I, for one, don't think Helsinkian or Tender said unreasonable things, and your remark to Helsinkian regarding Europeans being white is a strawman, for he never argued along the lines of "race".

If nationalism is on the rise, I will be seen as a foreigner too. Many nationalists don't want me to be in Europe either, and I see enough disgusting Facebook pages to prove this over and over again. So it's not at all the case that I'm in bed with the extremist loudmouths, whom I absolutely loathe. However, it is simply not unreasonable for people to have second thoughts about taking in massive numbers of refugees and "refugees" (because no, an IT worker from Lahore is not a real refugee). Yes, we are all looking for happiness and a better life, but taking in tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people from countries with a radically different culture will inevitably have negative consequences. Emotional photos might make people forget about reality, and there might be a window of opportunity for politicians to push forward ill-advised policies just to look "humane", but eventually people will have to live with the results of these policies - and these results might not be that positive for Europe, rendering our societies even more polarized.

Oh the irony...

Yes, I would certainly claim that stringent opposition to an influx of refugees that constitutes ~1% of any nation-state's population demonstrates some sort of narrow-minded, ultra-nationalistic sentiment that's reminiscent of Nazism or fascism or whatever. Remember, the operative word is "stringent". There may be reason to oppose that scale of immigration for prudential reasons but I'd argue that those reasons would be highly contingent upon some sort of context that would tend to lead to softer opposition. I've seen no evidence for that. It seems to me that y'all would be stringently opposed to 1/5th or 1/10th of that number of refugees entering your country.

I also think it's ironic that you posit that an IT worker from Lahore cannot be a refugee. Note: it's a bit perverse to use an IT worker from Lahore as an example because most refugees are clearly from war-torn Afghanistan, Syria or Iraq or Libya but I'll humor you. Why do I think your claim is ironic? I think it's ironic because the contemporary movements of Jews from France to Israel are oftentimes framed as refugees moving to Israel. Now, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with this narrative but I think that the categorization of people between "migrants" and "refugees" necessitates the utmost caution. It's not an easy distinction and I'd argue that it would be far better to be liberal when categorizing people as refugees or migrants.

In short: I don't think it's for you to say that an IT worker from Lahore cannot be a refugee. This hypothetical person could be fleeing from discrimination based on sexual orientation or religious discrimination or a vendetta etc. I'd hope that I could achieve refugee status if I feared for my life for particular reasons that went beyond a more generalized famine or genocide.

edit: I've got something to say about your claim that the pro-refugee side is "emotional". There's a difference between "sentiments" and "ethics". I believe that it's unethical to avoid accommodating refugees.  This statement can either be cold and impersonal or warm and filled with emotions. Either way, it's founded upon an idea about what is "right" and what is "wrong"; some idea of morality. Most would say that this kind of claim is inherently founded upon "reason", that you cannot make these statements without some sort of basis founded upon reason.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

but I'll humor you. Why do I think your claim is ironic? I think it's ironic because the contemporary movements of Jews from France to Israel are oftentimes framed as refugees moving to Israel. Now, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with this narrative but I think that the categorization of people between "migrants" and "refugees" necessitates the utmost caution. It's not an easy distinction and I'd argue that it would be far better to be liberal when categorizing people as refugees or migrants.

I don't think I have ever said that Jews from France should be considered refugees, so I'm not sure why you are attacking me on that. You literally brought up this topic yourself.

Well, I actually do think I know why: because you want to be provocative. This is just trolling, and that makes me unwilling to discuss the rest of your post, because I think it's a bit low to try and play that game with me. And I won't reply to the people that show up just to say that Jews are totally safe/privileged in Europe either. Ain't got time for that bull.

?

1. I never claimed that you said that.
2. If you did, I'm not attacking you for saying that.
3. It's not a troll but it was intended to be provocative in the sense that it was supposed to provoke some thought on your end: what is a refugee? How do we classify what a refugee is? What do you think a refugee is? These are questions that should be considered, they haven't been considered in this thread.

If you don't want to talk about anything related to the Aliyah, that's fine by me but my post really isn't about the Aliyah. That was just an example meant to illustrate a point. I could have used something else. I decided to use the Aliyah because it seemed germane to your interests/experience. It can also be inferred that you think that Jews in Europe can be classified as refugees when they return to Israel to escape anti-semitic sentiment, which seems like a perfectly sensible claim to me. Why take offense to this? 

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I don't think Tender understands the concept of "desserts": no one "deserves" a certain standard of living just because they happened to be born to the right parents or in the right country. That's not how "dessert" claims work. I suppose that you could claim that Europeans are rightfully entitled to a more expansive welfare state but do they deserve a strong welfare state?

Suppose that Tender believes in the concept of "collective responsibility" and, therefore, believes that the accomplishments of his ancestors and his nation warrant some "just dessert". Doesn't that open the door to claiming that Africans deserve reparations from European imperial powers or that Syrian refugees deserve to be settled in France or Turkey in particular? I'm open to considering this but I don't think that Tender cares about whether or not his claims are rational are not. The types of people who invoke "collective responsibility" to justify narrowminded nationalism never consider the necessary consequences of that claim: that if citizens deserve goods on the basis of the actions of their ancestors, that they are also responsible for the wrongs of their ancestors. UKIP voters love to claim that they "deserve" more than refugees but would never consider the justice of paying reparations to Jamaica.

Anyways, I don't believe in the notion "collective responsibility".

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

They are entitled to these privileges because they worked hard to establish these welfare systems, contrary to the millions who are now lining up at the border and want to enjoy these goodies too.

Oh, I see, so Middle Easterners are just lazy freeloaders and that's why their countries don't look like Austria. Thanks for proving my point about racism.

Welfare states are a form of collective insurance. You pay into them with your taxes when you are working and you (or your children) can use them when studying, sick, unemployed, retired etc. It does create bad will when people who haven't paid the "insurance premium" gets ahead in the queue (so to speak) to fx housing or hospital treatment or too many non-payers use the systems and fx hospital waiting lists go up. You may find this selfish, but its a natural sentiment.

Tender didn't say anything about why most Middle Eastern countries malfunction (which is a complex issue).

That's an interesting view of the welfare state. While that may be the view used for electoral reasons, there's an entire philosophic tradition rooted in Anglo-American left-liberalism that has justified the welfare state on an entirely different basis. Furthermore, intellectuals in the socialist tradition have tended to make broader claims to welfare than "insurance", which is pitiful way to justify systems that are clearly not insurance but rather intended to promote "the common good" or a sense of justice.

The insurance premium argument doesn't really hold up. No one believes that a 22 year old who has suffered a terrible accident deserves care "because she paid into the system" but because she suffered bad luck. No one believes that young dislocated workers deserve unemployment benefits because "they paid into the system" but because they are human beings. I could offer more examples.

Furthermore, it's not self-evident that the sentiment that you're describing is "natural". For one, "the welfare state" isn't natural nor are nation-states or large political communities. The moral intuitions relating to these forms are obscured and hard to argue about: Germans are perfectly willing to accommodate "Volga Germans", who have never paid into the system, but are not willing to help third-generation Turks in the same way, even if "they've paid into the system". Again, there's no "natural" here, we're talking about abstract political terms and the reactions of people vary quite dramatically in every sense.

Basically, I'm calling you out for attempting to shut down a necessary conversation by using bad social science and bad political theory.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

What's worse, is that if you dare to have a different opinion on the topic, you're a racist.  Period.  End of discussion.  The well is fully poisoned.

Well, you are probably are a bit bigoted but I'm still willing to have a discussion with you.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

You seem to be under the impression that people have just randomly decided not to like immigrants and so they are using these numbers as justification.

It's the opposite. These numbers are the reason people are hesitant about allowing mass immigration.

If immigrants in general didn't commit so much crime, if they didn't use up so many benefits, people would not mind immigration as much.

Far from being "random", people dislike immigrants for understandable reasons, even if they're reasons that I, as the son of an immigrant, find to be distasteful. Of course the average "native born" citizen of a Western nation isn't going to be fond of immigrant communities that engage in different cultural rituals, speak different languages etc. That doesn't mean that immigrants commit more crimes or use more welfare benefits, that's inane and those claims are made to give chauvinism an intellectual veneer. For whatever reason, distorting facts to make libelous claims about the deviance of immigrant communities is more "politically correct" than stating that "someone wants Britain for the British".

I could post links to reams of data demonstrating these points but I've already done this in nearly every thread about immigration. The evidence doesn't matter.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

It says a lot about the current state of the European Union that an influx of ~1-1.5 million refugees, by all accounts a rather tiny proportion of the European population, has created a traumatic political crisis that's devouring the system. The United States managed to handle the Vietnamese and the Cuban refugees wave, which were on a somewhat similar scale relative to the proportion of the population, with relative ease in the past. Similarly, refugee crises in the past were handled admirably by Europe, of interest to this thread ought to be Greece's response to the influx of Albanian migrants in the 90s, the response to Somali refugees etc.

Sure, this latest wave is very substantial but it's not so substantial that it totally dwarfs refugee waves of the past. The issue is that there has been an utter breakdown of political capacity and will to do anything about the crisis. The response from the West has been inchoate, inconsistent and there has been little attempt to effectively coordinate to handle the crisis. Europe/the United States, for instance, could have forwarded a payment system to Jordan or Lebanon from the beginning or they could have set up a system to allocate refugees etc. None of this would have been easy but I don't think it would have been all that difficult either. In the past, there was effective coordination. In the present, it appears that the "Western" nation-states that once commanded great authority and respect could be plagued by crippling anxiety attacks if three fishermen on a boat were washed up on the shores of Cape Cod or Sicily, which the media would cover as a MIGRANT CRISIS.

I blame Merkel for all of this. These are the costs of destroying the EU's legitimacy time and time again by crippling the democratic process. It's also the cost of economic stagnation/decline. When social trust was much higher and there was more faith in "the powers that be", migrant crises were easy to deal with. Now that this isn't so, the specter of a dank kebab cart is "triggers" those in the European safe space.

edit: for all of my bluster, I am actually pretty sympathetic to those working class Europeans who are angry about the migrant crisis. In previous times, when things were much better, they resented migrants but did not lash out by joining fascist parties, which tells me that they are not inherently evil or malignant. They're simply angry and justifiably so.

As far as the sensational crime stories go, yes, out of a population that is over one million, there will be plenty of rapists and thieves and murderers. There's no justification for this behavior, of course. However, there are obvious issues when attempting to compile crime data on these populations and comparing them to the domestic population at large: there are going to be obvious reporting discrepancies that are accounted for by differing cultural norms surrounding crime and how it is conducted and done, more particularly surrounding rape/sexual assault.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

As far as the sensational crime stories go, yes, out of a population that is over one million, there will be plenty of rapists and thieves and murderers. There's no justification for this behavior, of course. However, there are obvious issues when attempting to compile crime data on these populations and comparing them to the domestic population at large: there are going to be obvious reporting discrepancies that are accounted for by differing cultural norms surrounding crime and how it is conducted and done, more particularly surrounding rape/sexual assault.

What dependencies? Can you be more specific? Non-consentual sex is non-consentual regardless of your ethnic background.

Many, if not most, victims of rape/sexual assault are victims of rape/sexual assault that comes from acquaintances, long-time partners and the like. These crimes are oftentimes not reported. Considering that rapists tend to be serial rapists, it stands to reason that those migrants who are rapists would stick out like a sore thumb considering that they come from places with different cultural norms surrounding their behavior and also know no one in the country they are migrating to, increasing the likelihood of the rape/sexual assault being reported.

Very easy to doubt that a woman's claim that she was raped by a long-time community member, it's downright hard to doubt that she was raped by a refugee, especially when that's a trope. This is pretty obvious imo. Obviously, it does not matter who is committing the vile act nor is there any justification for not taking action but there can never and will never be any clear-cut evidence on this subject. These issues are, well, difficult to collect accurate data on!

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

It says a lot about the current state of the European Union that an influx of ~1-1.5 million refugees, by all accounts a rather tiny proportion of the European population, has created a traumatic political crisis that's devouring the system. The United States managed to handle the Vietnamese and the Cuban refugees wave, which were on a somewhat similar scale relative to the proportion of the population, with relative ease in the past. Similarly, refugee crises in the past were handled admirably by Europe, of interest to this thread ought to be Greece's response to the influx of Albanian migrants in the 90s, the response to Somali refugees etc.

First of all both the Vietnamese and Cubans arrived in smaller number over a longer periode than the amount of refugees Germany alone received in 2015. Sweden have received more refugee than USA did in the Mariel boatlift, and it's a country with 1/30 of the American population. It's why we see the significant political crisis in those two countries over this, and moreso in Sweden than Germany.

Also right now USA take in 70 000 refugees annual. Which is why the American moral high ground on this point is built on hot air. In fact the numbers of Cuban and Vietnamese refugees USA have taken in are 300 000 and 800 000. As comparison Denmark received 7500 refugees in 2013 and 14700 in 2014 of which around half get asylum (3900 and 6100). Denmark have 1/60 the population of USA. When you make than calculation, it means that as percent of the population Denmark took around 25% more refugees (compared to populatio  size) in one year (before the refugee crisis) than USA have taken in Cubans over 50 years or 45% of the amount of Vietnamese USA have taken in.

...and here' the fun part Denmark are nowhere near Germany, Sweden or Austria in the amount of refugees these countries have taken.

Of course compared to the past Europe doesn't take many refugees. But it's because our treatment of those refugees in the past was cheaper and their future was clearer.. As example Denmark took in 250 000 Germany refugees in 1945 from Prussia (mostly women and children). They was placed in camps until they could be repatriated (which they mostly was by 1950).
Germany of course took in many more refugees, of course those refugees happened to be mostly Germans.

If we could place the refugees in permanent camps and be sure they could be repatriated in a few years (or at least leave Europe). Most European countries could take many more, but that's not what we're asked

Well, yes, that's my point. It's very unreasonable to expect Germany or Sweden or Austria to handle the amount of refugees that they've been receiving. However, the European Union was an attempt to, well, forge some sort of consensus on these matters and, as such, is clearly not functional nor purposeful if it cannot handle this kind of a "crisis" and distribute/share refugees in an equitable fashion. After all, it is a kind of state and there cannot be a common labor market with something approaching open borders without common agreement on refugee issues. That's all that I'm saying. I have no moral high ground, of course,  I'm just pointing out the obvious here, I suppose.

However, it is equally foolish to expect Saudi Arabia or Qatar to be able to handle the number of refugees that many far-right idiots expect them to handle. For one, I do not understand why the so-called advocates of "Western values" want to push refugees into the clutches of despicable states ruled by barbaric despots. Secondly, it would almost certainly be a disaster: why would pushing refugees into slum-like camps in Saudi Arabia or Qatar or the UAE where they'd be treated as third-class citizens and probably pushed into slave-labor result in anything good? In all likelihood, that would create further instability in the Middle East and could plunge the region into chaos, especially if the imams/clerics decided to break with the House of Saud, which could happen with recent economic proposals of the upstart princes. That would be no good at all!