Comment on Norway is mulling building a fence on its border with Russia, following Finland's example
sonori@beehaw.org 1 month agoAgain, Norway is actually very close at just two nations away, one of which has regular race riots and has still taken in literally millions of refugees, while the other is the one that installed the regime persecuting them and is fucking Russia.
Most of the nations that are closer are either filled with religious persecution, so impoverished as to require vast amounts of western food aid just to feed their own people, or are already taking in orders of magnitude more refugees than Norway.
Why should the aid a nation provides the international community be based solely on geographical proximity? Does this mean that Norway should also not provide any aid to Ukraine, as it is also geographically far away? Why should it only the the poor nations that should do their part to take in people in distress and not the rich?
When so much of the world is impoverished and struggling to survive itself, why is it so ‘suspicious’ that when people are forced to start over from scratch they might try and do so in the lands of over abundance and where their children don’t have to worry about being beaten to death by a mob or living in Putin’s Russia?
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Lmao it’s whole North-South lenght of Russia. That’s like saying Finland is very close to North Korea since there’s just one country between us and them. You are being silly.
It just makes sense that if you are in need of acute protection from persecution or are temporary displaced and need a temporary shelter that you’d seek it close to you, instead of organizing a trip to where you’d think the quality of life is the best and skip applying in counties you’re passing through.
If you are just looking for a place with a nice quality of life to settle in, you do seem more like a migrant than an asylum seeker in need of acute protection.
I get wanting to live in a rich country but that’s not what the asylum system is about. It’s not a human right to get to live in Norway. At that point it’s just immigration and they should do that through proper channels instead of frankly abusing the asylum system. In the long run that will just fuck up the whole system.
sonori@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Given that it’s takes months of work to cross a border for a refugee but it’s only a three day drive from Sochi to the Norwegian border, yes, the number of borders absolutely matters more than physical distance.
Show me where in article 14 it says that this right only applies the geographically closest nation and all others are except.
Or, because you keep insisting that there are so very many safe nations with unlimited resources and food for people to wait out the collapse Russia and its puppets with only one nation between them and Syria, list them.
Note, these nations must not be a theocracy or limit the freedom of religion, not currently be at war, have an effective refuge program that does not limit the number of entrants, and of course not be in need of significant international aid themselves.
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 month ago
See, this is the shopping I meant. For some reason it has to be a wealthy land of plenty like Norway that they make their application in even though the point is just to seek protection, not to just pick a country that fits your bill for the best place to live. Nowhere in article 14 it is said that the asylum application guarantees that you’ll live in a wealthiest of wealthy European country while your status is processed. But somehow these people find the money and means to apply in such countries instead of accepting lesser conditions.
Jordan for example is right next door to Syria and understandably a lot of Syrians have went there. But these certain desperate people in need of acute protection skip over Turkey and whole of Russia to apply in Norway instead.
I don’t fault them for wanting a better life and Norway is an excellent pick. But of course it’s easy to see why them being serious asylum seekers is taken with a pinch of salt and they’re often just treated as migrants.
I think everyone does that to a degree.
sonori@beehaw.org 1 month ago
So that’s the one option then, and it’s a good option that a lot of Sunni Syrians (who are not subject to the same religious persecution as converts) take, and as such 30% of the entire nation are refugees or migrants from Palestine and Syria.
Naturally a small desert country, the influx has caused significant strain on the nations water infrastructure, and with a small economy, limited resources, and limited capital, Jordan is forced to sacrifice 6% of the entire nations GDP on the refugee program. Also worth noting that said national GDP is smaller than just the Norwegian government budget.
This on top of an already struggling economy, and the fact the nation is dependent on buying foreign food, and the limits placed on foreign dept by international creditors, the nation has been forced to undertake an extreme austerity program in order to prevent mass famine, which has of course further limited economic growth.
As such not only are people fleeing religious prosecution going to find similar prosecution in Jordan, but the nation is struggling hard to feed its own people and is in no position to take everyone even if it wanted to. As a result it has increasingly turned refugees away, and heavily pushes for non Sunni refugees to go to places where they will actually be safe.
Since most people arn’t dumb, many take said advice and travel to a nation where they will actually be safe, you know, the whole point of the asylum system.
The whole reason it needs to be a wealthy land is because the land needs to actually be able to support the refugees for them to all actually be able to go there without trapping the host nation in a cycle of poverty.