The Scenic Isle Where the World’s Chaos Comes Home to Roost

Where are the rich and underpopulated States of the Arab brethren of these refugees when it comes to their plight? Why do these refugees flock to Europe and North America when the the cross land tracks to other Arab lands exist and are much safer to navigate?

These “refugees” did not get permission to go to Greece, so, they don’t belong there. They need to go fight for their own country.

All lives matter. But not all cultures are equal. Now, what to do?

I feel for the native Greeks living with this chaos in their community.

How come no detailed discussion on Turkeys involvement in creating this crisis by intentionally sending refugees to Samos . No one is willing to hold Erdogan responsible.

A few questions that should be asked, looking at a map: How do "refugees" from countries with no common borders with Turkey get into Turkey and why Why these people are entitled "refugee" status, since at best (Syrians) they are one country removed from Greece (or any other in the EU) and are not entitled to refugeed status (they are entitled refugee status in Turkey, the Syrians that is) What Algerians, Tunisians (high GDP countries) doing there How about sub Saharan Africans? its a lomg way from Kansas What Turkey gains from all this Note that Syrians are the minority (about 20% in Greece)

Interestingly, or not, AirBnB shows 300+ places to stay on Samos. I suspect this is an opportunity to go over and help without having to suffer too much while doing so. Just make sure you're not going to be blamed for whatever goes missing.

After 5 years of climate change driven drought, grain prices rose, the Arab Spring erupted, Syria collapsed and extremism flourished. I doubt we would have seen so much chaos if we curbed our emissions 30 years ago. Welcome to the age of desperate migration.

I think this is the beginning of catastrophic population movements. Catastrophic, in the sense that these large inflow will never be assimilated and will create discord in the destination counties. I am sure that in time, maybe within 100 years, Europe will be unrecognizable, so will the United States. Europe will become a cross between the Middle East and Africa and the US a lot like South America. Good news is, I will be dead by then so I don’t have to see it.

My view on this issue, of mass irregular migration, is that the main cause is the 1951 Refugee Convention. They come because they can, because they know there is a possibility they will have access to a better future than what they had. They also know/expect to be provided with accommodation/food/health care/ education, etc. Mention is made in the article of an Afghan asylum seeker who was brought up in Iran. Why did he not stay in Iran? Iran is not a signatory to the Convention, and neither are the wealthy Gulf States. The 1951 Refugee Convention was written in a different time and for a different era. The original intention was to address the movement of displaced people in Europe after WW11, it was never intended to include people from vast swaths of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle-East, South-East Asia, and the entire population of Central America. The problem with the 1951 Refugee Convention is that it is unsustainable (if you put the "problem with the 1951 Refugee Convention" into Google search you will come up with a research paper, written over 20 years ago - that details why). Add to the mix the recent proposal by some politicians and migrant advocates that those displaced by climate change should be included in the Convention. The modern era with jet travel, the Internet, cell-phone usage, facilitates the movement of mass irregular, or the politically incorrect term illegal migration. Refugee entitlement+cellphone/internet= mass migration.

Several have noted the unsustainable population growth of the people-exporting countries, Syria for example went from about 8.77 million in 1980 to over 22 million at its peak before the wars. Yet our President, pandering to crazed religious fanatics, is doing his best to shut down birth control clinics everywhere. But a point missed: those who understandably sympathize with distressed refugees should be promoting a better solution which is to send them to Saudi Arabia and other oil kingdoms where they have plenty of land and oil money, and, have similar language, religion, climate, and culture as much of the refugee flow.

If you are a refugee, it should be because you are afraid of certain and immediate death in your home country. You are not entitled to a job, a work permit, free healthcare, free education, to integrate into the host country's society, or even freedom of movement; you are there to exist without being murdered, until such time as you can return to your home country, or another country graciously decides to accept you, and that's it. If the government of the host country does not provide free food and shelter to its own citizens, then you have no right to expect these things either. It is appalling that Greeks should have to bear the brunt of this with only token EU support. If Turkey got 6 billion Euros, how much more should an EU member get?

If all those humanitarian agencies handed out contraceptives as freely as they now hand out food, there wouldn’t be these billions of migrants that no one wants. There also wouldn’t be all the wars, either. In the past Europe had massive poverty. When contraceptives became freely available, the extreme poverty eventually ended. Make contraceptives free - or better yet make foreign aid contingent upon the acceptance of contraceptive technologies.

If we the readers are to understand the facts and issues, and come to fair conclusions, please stop massaging the facts. The photos of the soccer pick-up game, and the huddled migrants demonstrate there are very different factors at play here. Sure, many of the migrants are from the mess of the Middle East. The Arab Spring had quite a few poisonous nettles in it. Now the rich oil regimes want no part of these people, and are happy to make them Turkey's burden, and that of Greece. Europeans, as free citizens have said no thanks. You can quibble with that but it is their right to determine migration policy. Then we have those who are not refugees but economic migrants from the Sahel countries of Africa and even some from countries further south. Conflating them with desperate people who have been bombed, gassed, or threatened with mass murder is unfortunate.

I don't know what I would do if I had been born in a war torn country and had to flee with nothing to places where nobody wanted me, and only saw me as a problem. Anyone reading this article is the same as me. It was merely luck and chance that led us to our comfortable and safe lives now. I wish everywhere in the world people can say that they were lucky to have been born there. I think the best solution is for peace to return to their countries and for them to rebuild societies where anyone can thrive. But I know this is a naive wish as the engine for war is as strong as ever and there are many men who want other humans to die so they can profit. I leave you with these Wiki facts: The two largest exporters of arms in 2018 were the United States and Russia. The world's biggest importer of arms in 2014-18 was Saudi Arabia.

Will reporting ever become objective, tell both sides of the story, the good and the bad? While the articles may be articulate, they are in fact deceitful, creating one point of view, steering sentiment and leaving large gaps open to conjecture. Half information/reporting is misleading and tantamount to being useless/bad information/reporting.

The problem lies with uncontrolled population explosions in corrupt countries. The populations understandably want to flee to the West, but if all that wanted to come were allowed, the West would very soon become like the third world countries they were escaping. The only, only, solution is for those fleeing to stay and improve their own countries.

The EU doesn't give a fig about Greece's warehousing of uninvited refugees and migrants, which is unsustainable and the Greek's are ill equipped to feed and house. (My relatives in Greece have lost almost everything and are barely getting by despite having a college education.) Greece's continuing nightmare is a result are Markel's open door invitation to the Middle East. Germany should be sending Greece billions of dollars to feed and house these people and set up a coast guard to stop the further migration of people fleeing the Middle East and Africa.

I searched in vain to find any mention of US responsibility in this article. It is undeniable that the 'chaos' in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria that forced these people to flee their homes is a result of US policy - and aggression - in their countries. But somehow, it isn't America's responsibility to do anything about it. No, that falls to Greece (?!), which did not invade Iraq or Afghanistan, did not displace the Sunnis in Anbar, then arm them, helping them form ISIS and pour across the border into eastern Syria. They did not invade Iraq because of phantom 'weapons of mass destruction' or their supposed involvement in the WTC attack. It's the EU that has been left to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess left by revenge-mad Americans. Thanks a lot, guys.

Oh there is an answer but, it's not a popular one. Colonization of their home countries, by EU/US/China/ etc...

People become migrants, not unreasonably, when they leave a dysfunctional place to improve their lives. At issue is the divide between the prosperous countries and the poor ones. History has shown that prosperous countries may desire (for many reasons, not all of them purely selfless) to assist the non-prosperous countries, but that seldom succeeds, not least because some interests in the prosperous countries seek financial gain while providing minimal assistance. So the dysfunctional countries remain dysfunctional, the prosperous grow more prosperous, and migrants want to migrate. Not unreasonably, those in the wealthy countries fear that the migrants will doom their prosperity. Humans generally crave self-determination, but truly achieving it requires a set of skills that have difficulty succeeding in dysfunctional places. The line between assistance and exploitation can be a fine line, easily crossed. Moreover, human nature craves self-determination and sometimes resists the assistance that is needed. In a connected world, it is increasingly impossible to keep populations from knowing there is someplace better and wanting to go there. Rich countries could, theoretically take over poor ones in order to assist them, but one doesn’t have to imagine strenuously to see that failing disastrously. Or, the rich can simply build better and stronger barriers, but those also invariably have fault lines. There aren’t easy answers, only a need to face hard questions.

isn’t there an international organisation capable of emergency education projects? Not “flying experts in” but providing supplies and helping to set up a robust system (eg simple, cheap and self-sustaining - older teaching younger, etc.) for the young people to be educated. Yes, survival is a first priority, but educating youth should never be far behind.

Uncontrolled migration will always lead to chaos and a long lasting problems for any society, irrespective of how rich or well governed it might be. Mere goodwill and big heart would not solve almost any of those issues. Displaced people should have taken more interest in social issues and politics than believing in religious gurus and politicians who exploit raw human emotion regarding religion and/or race. They must not expect that they have every right to burge on other better governed countries and always blame that proverbial "international community" for thier own apathy/failure/corruption in Govt and also individually.

Considering that 99% of "asylum seekers" are young men, their media enablers should face the reality and acknowledge that they are actually job seekers. Everybody knows it.

I think this story should also include the impact of the Greek debt crisis on Greece - which adds to the dysfunctional govt. Millions of professional Greeks - including Doctors left Greece - Hospitals cut down on staff to skeleton crews - and Hospitals ran out of supplies (check out the the Guardian's "'Patients who should live are dying': Greece's public health meltdown" - published in 2017, but things have not improved). Greece would have been in a better position to deal with this great influx of people, if they had been allowed some debt relief.

How to help the destitute peoples of the world? What is the best answer? Does anyone know?

Having spent two weeks on Leros a few years ago as a physician to a bout 700 immigrants, I’ve come to believe this tragedy can only be solved by peace in their nations, be it Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria or even countries like Sierra Leone where I met a young man, barely twenty, who had to leave because of threatened imprisonment as he was from the “wrong” tribe. The more leaders of the world who visit camps and talk (but will they go?) with migrants, the faster peace will be attempted and finally found. Then these great people can return home where they really want to be. Who wants to leave their home if they are safe and can live a life they were meant to live? Until this peace arrives,, is forged out of wisdom and sweat, these people’s lives, their futures, hang in a balance that none of us would want to experience.

The problem is two-fold. Europe needs people, or their societies will collapse. Also, countries exporting these refugees are dysfunctional and need to be “fixed”. Now, they can’t solve their problems on their own but need to be helped so that they can help themselves. No doubt past and yes present day exploitation are a major factor but all sides need to sit down and construct long term solutions or this will only get worse, for all sides.

"Others came here to video-chat with their families because they didn’t want them to see their living conditions and get upset." Why, are living conditions much better at home? Why leave then?

In all the pictures of migrants there are almost never any women; in the articles an occasional mention of a woman sweeping or cleaning something. It's as though all the migrants were men, except that's not the case. What about the women?

I was in Greece a few months ago and heard almost nothing but complaints about the hordes of foreign “invaders” who were placing substantial stress on an already fragile Greek social system and economy. In fairness, there were some Greeks who were willing to accept limited and controlled migration, similar to those Americans who welcome LEGAL immigrants, but do not want ILLEGAL immigrants. They recognize that the US cannot afford (or choose not) to support our own citizens: the poor, the ill, elderly, disabled, veterans, et al., and that they and other US taxpayers cannot possibly support the 20 million illegal immigrants already in the US, much less the hundreds of millions of foreigners who would like to come here. US laws allow foreigners to seek entry and citizenship. Those who do not follow these laws are in this country illegally and should be detained and deported; this is policy in other countries, too. The cruelty lies not in limiting legal immigration, or detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, or forcing those who wish to enter the US to wait for processing. What is cruel, unethical and probably illegal is encouraging parents to bring their children on the dangerous trek to US borders and teaching the parents how to game the system to enter the US by falsely claiming asylum, persecution, etc. Indeed, many believe bringing children on such perilous journeys constitutes child abuse. No other nation has open borders, nor should the US.

The island of Samos has 35,000 residents according to Wikipedia. 6000 refugees is huge for it. Greece is a poor nation. The EU has over 500 million people. The US, 350 million maybe? And generally wealthy. Why can’t burdens be distributed for fairly? Even if it’s just money and resources to Samos.

"Together, the locals and asylum seekers bear the shared brunt of forces beyond their control — Greek government dysfunction, the cold shoulder of the European Union, the chaos in the Middle East and the geopolitical calculations of Turkey." Greek governments have for decades been dysfunctional; but no government can deal with hordes of migrants on their way elsewhere, indeed an elsewhere that had welcomed them, when elsewhere doesn't want them anymore. And Greece is not a country -- not in terms of terrain or the way its people eke out their livings -- that can accommodate hundreds of thousands of migrants. Olive groves shorn of their branches; family homes whose roofs and walls have been pried off; furniture, laundry drying on a line, children's toys lifted from property -- angry demonstrations in the town square -- how much more can the Samians take? It is to the Samians' credit that their response to such depredations is as civilized -- and, indeed, generous -- as it's been. Africa and the Middle East are bursting at the seams. The Western world would do better both to insist on birth control in return for aid, and to set up industries. And keep corrupt rulers from stealing any more than they have already. Even an enormous outlay of money would be better than trying to integrate young men (and they are mostly men despite the Times evoking a few children and an Afghan woman) into societies whose social mores are antithetical to them.

Oh for God’s sake I can’t read anymore. We glorify billionaires? They could solve this unendurable problem very quickly - integrate these people into society with new housing and services and businesses - master business people certainly can do this. Politicians love nothing better than money — throw some their way — save Greece and humanity. The shame is on the rich — spread it around.