Europe's Refugee Crisis

Image Via PamelaGeller.com
Is Europe lost? Is the U.S. Next?

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: The refugee crisis bedeviling Europe has dominated headlines for the past week. European nations are struggling to manage the flood of humanity and they have responded in varying ways. Last week, President Obama committed America to taking in 10,000 more refugees from Syria, but there are hints the figure could be closer to 100,000.

Here are some brief observations on this crisis:

• The media are focusing on women and children, but according to one U.N. report, 72% of the "refugees" are men. That is totally different from any refugee experience in modern history.
• Many are leaving camps in Turkey, where there is no fighting. Given that the vast majority are men, some now question whether these refugees are actually migrants looking for work.
• In a brilliant column, Walter Russell Mead writes that the current crisis represents the collision of two great failures: The failure of the Islamic world to adequately govern itself and the failure of Western Civilization to adequately define and defend itself.
• Some European voices are beginning to question the wisdom of admitting millions of Muslims. Most of those voices are coming from Eastern Europe, which experienced a long occupation under Soviet communism. In recent years, these nations have begun reasserting their Christian roots. Now they are asking fellow Europeans if they have thought about the consequences of this mass migration.
• Hungary is a good example of this. It has launched an emergency project to build a border fence, protecting it from the influx coming through Serbia. They are going so far as to take prisoners out of the jails and turning them into chain gangs to finish the fence as quickly as possible.

By the way, Israel is also building a security fence to protect its people.

These steps are not outrageous. This is by definition what a nation does to protect its territorial integrity and its citizens. Nations, not those trying to enter them, decide who and how many get to enter.
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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