Send Syrians back from Europe?
Observe how to date Europe’s most visible response to the crisis in Syria has been . . . to try to send Syrians back from Europe.
The Syrian civil war, which started in 2011, was the trigger for the massive wave of illegal migration that has addled European politics for nearly a decade.
Nearly 7.7 million people from outside the European Union filed such applications between January 2015 and August this year, around 2.4 million of those in the first two years.
Of those, some 20% were Syrians—in most years, the largest national cohort.
Europe’s political class, incapable of securing its border and deterring or deporting illegal migrants over the past decade, now hopes the faraway events of the past week offer a deus ex machina.
Syria hasn’t been liberated from the Assad regime so much as it’s been overrun by competing militias that may or may not harbor sympathies for extreme Islamism.
Governments will have to litigate the safety or otherwise of the new Syrian regime exhaustively (and exhaustingly) before anyone can be refused entry, let alone sent home.
Joseph C. Sternberg Wall Street Journal 12 December 2024
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