Unbiased pros and cons of EU membership 2 : Are the EU's actions towards Greece undemocratic? Would the UK leaving the EU help or harm Greeks?

Is the EU’s treatment of Greece democratic or not though? Unelected officials from the ‘Troika’ (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) were sent to oversee Greek government departments’ spending , with the stipulation that “No unilateral fiscal or other policy actions will be taken by the [Greek] authorities. All measures, legislative or otherwise, taken during the programme period, which may have an impact on banks’ operations, solvency, liquidity or asset quality should be taken in close consultation [with the troika]” (1)

The Greek electorate voted in a party – Syriza – whose manifesto included scrapping EU imposed austerity. Then they were told this would not change the agreements made with the Troika by previous Greek governments.

German and Hungarian government politicians argue that they were representing the electorate of their own countries who were paying for financial support to Greece.

The reality is a lot more complicated than that as Germany benefited most from a free trade zone and single currency with weaker economies like Greece.

Despite myths of Greeks being lazy and tax avoiders, they in fact worked longer average hours than any other country in Europe even before the crisis , with Germans working considerably less hours on average(2) – (3).

And tax avoidance by the very wealthy is hardly something unique to Greece with e.g Switzerland, Luzembourg and the British Channel Islands being notorious tax havens, and many British companies, banks and billionaires avoiding tax in tax havens.

Greeks also had the options of defaulting on their debts and dropping the Euro as a currency and going back to their own currency, so they could issue money themselves, rather than having to ask the European Central Bank to issue them with Euros.

The Syriza Finance minister Yanis Varoufakis favoured at the least threatening to do this, and if necessary, doing. However the Greek government did not do it as the majority of Greeks in polls were against it, fearing that if done during a crisis it would lead to more panic and hyper-inflation.

This is still an option for the Greek government though, if it believes the damage done by EU imposed austerity policies is so bad that the other risks couldn’t be worse.

What there can be no doubt about is that the refusal of the same 50% debt forgiveness that Greece approved for Germany after World War Two, and the austerity policies imposed on Greece are both unfair and completely counter-productive.

Severe austerity cuts on the scale imposed on Greece reduce the size of the economy as a whole by reducing demand for private sector goods and services, reduce growth, and so make paying off any of the debt impossible.

From 2008 on during protests and riots against austerity measures Greek riot police have killed dozens of protesters and rioters, starting with what seems to have been the unprovoked murder of a 15 year old boy by armed police in December 2008 (4).

The EU have demanded that Greece run a budget surplus of 3.5% of GDP by 2018, which is over five times as large as the largest budget surplus that Germany, the strongest economy in the EU has ever had, at 0.6% of GDP in 2015 (5) – (6).

Even the IMF – one part of the Troika – has now said this ridiculous and argues that debt forgiveness and a relaxation of austerity are required for Greece (7).

What they don’t say is that, as Syriza have pointed out, some of the 1 trillion euros of Quantitative Easing money which have been created by the European Central Bank to hand to private banks could be used to pay off much of Greece and Spain’s debt (8) – (9).

Some people would argue that the UK leaving the EU could lead to the collapse of the EU and that this would free Greece from EU austerity policies.

However some Greeks, like Yanis Varoufakis,  a leading critic of EU austerity policies, want the UK to stay in as an ally for reform , arguing that if the EU splits up the result will be chaos and panic, which will be even worse for Greece (10).

He has launched an EU wide movement for democracy and against austerity policies called Diem25.

And the majority of Greeks , while they are angry and unhappy at what the EU has imposed on them, believe they are not in a position to leave the EU or go back to their own currency at the moment.

(1) = Open Democracy 14 aug 2015 ‘Greece has become the EU’s third protectorate’, https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/jan-zielonka/greece-has-become-eu%E2%80%99s-third-protectorate

(2) = BBC News 26 Feb 2012 ‘Are Greeks the hardest workers in Europe?’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17155304

(3) = OECD Stat Extracts ‘Average annual hours actually worked per worker’, http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

(4) = BBC News 05 May 2010 ‘Three dead as Greece protest turns violent’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8661385.stm

(5) = BBC News 22 Jun 2015 ‘Greece spells out terms for debt crisis 'breakthrough'’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33228119 (scroll down to subheading  ‘Greece debt talks : main sticking points’ ‘EU officials say Greece has agreed to budget surplus targets of 1% of GDP this year, followed by 2% in 2016 and 3.5% by 2018; Greece says nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’ )

(6) = AFP 23 Feb 2016 ‘Germany notches up record budget surplus in 2015: stats office’, http://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1417803/germany-notches-record-budget-surplus-2015-stats-office

(7) = www.guardian.co.uk 23 May 2016 ‘IMF tells EU it must give Greece unconditional debt relief’, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/23/imf-warns-eu-bailout-greece-debt-relief

(8) = Greek Reporter 28 Jan 2015 ‘Greece: This is SYRIZA’s New Government Plan in Detail - See more at: http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/01/28/greece-this-is-syrizas-new-government-plan-in-detail/#sthash.ahNA2k1R.dpuf’, http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/01/28/greece-this-is-syrizas-new-government-plan-in-detail/

(9) = BBC News 22 Jan 2015 ‘ECB unveils massive QE boost for eurozone’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30933515

(10) = www.guardian.com 05 Apr 2016 ‘Yanis Varoufakis: Why we must save the EU’,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/05/yanis-varoufakis-why-we-must-save-the-eu

Unbiased Pros and cons of EU membership - Part One : The EU, Immigration and its Effects on the UK

Immigration is one of the big issues in the EU referendum debate, with a lot of claims about how harmful or beneficial it is to the UK. Some of this is based in fact. A lot of it is not.

As someone who is (relatively) neutral on the EU referendum, though tending towards reluctantly voting Remain, and knows a little about the EU, I’m  trying to provide some facts to help people looking for some unbiased information on the pros and cons of being in the EU.

EU Freedom of Movement

The EU does have a Freedom of Movement rule, but this rule only applies to  “workers” and citizens of EU member states and their families. It does not apply to refugees or other migrants coming from outside the EU. The only exceptions would be the minority of asylum seekers who are granted not only refugee status, but full citizenship in an EU member country.

Would leaving the EU end Freedom of Movement or not?

Norway and Switzerland, who are not members of the EU, trade with the EU through their membership of the European Economic Area or EEA (basically a free trade zone without political integration of the kind most of the Leave campaign back).

However EEA membership requirements include the same Freedom of Movement rules with the EU as EU membership does.

It is possible that the UK, which is a considerably larger country and economy than Norway or Switzerland, might be able to negotiate a special deal that granted it single market access without freedom of movement, just as it negotiated opt outs from the Schengen agreement and from adopting the Euro as a currency as an EU member.

It would however be one country of 64 million people negotiating with a bloc of 27 countries with 440 million odd people, so those could be tough negotiations.

And while some remaining EU member states might want to continue access to the UK for their exporters, Germany and France would have a motive to make an example of the UK to discourage other countries from leaving the EU. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble recently ruled out allowing the UK to stay in the single market if it leaves the EU (though of course he is just one minister of one EU government) (1)

A migrant crisis in the EU?

The scale of the “migrant crisis” in the EU, and how much it affects Britain, is also greatly exaggerated by much of the media. To see the full details, see the blog post on this link. In summary though, last year (2015) the total number of people coming to the EU from outside it was under 1% of its 504 million population spread between 28 countries. Many of the people who arrive each year leave or are deported. Only a small minority of these come to Britain. The UK gets a very small share of asylum applications relative to our population compared to other EU countries (2).

Open Borders?

There is a lot of talk of “open borders”. The EU does not have open borders with non-EU countries. Until last year some EU states – those that signed up to the Schengen agreement – did have open borders with one another. This has never included the UK or Ireland, which did not sign the agreement and have always required passports to be shown and customs checks for people entering or leaving the UK.

Several countries, including Hungary, have broken the Schengen agreement last year during the “migrant crisis”, by closing their borders with other EU countries.

British citizens living or working in other EU countries under Freedom of Movement

Another factor to consider is that somewhere between 1.2 million and 2.2 million British people are living or working in other EU countries, mostly under EU Freedom of Movement rules. And some of them do claim benefits (though, like citizens of other EU states in the UK, some of these are in-work benefits). (3) – (5).

If the UK did leave the EU, and did manage to get a special deal that meant Freedom of Movement rules didn’t apply, it seems massively unlikely that remaining EU member states would continue to allow British citizens Freedom of movement in their countries.

Some lawyers argue that under the 1969 Vienna Convention anyone who had lived in another EU country before the UK left the EU would retain “acquired rights” to stay there even after the UK left the Union (6).

But other lawyers argue the opposite, saying the Vienna Convention applies only to bilateral agreements between two states, and not to relations between the EU and former EU member states (7).

Either way UK citizens who wanted to go to live, work or claim benefits in other EU countries after the UK left the UK would have no legal right to do so.

And if the UK expelled citizens of other EU countries, they would almost certainly retaliate in kind by expelling British citizens from their countries.

Citizens of other EU countries living in the UK under Freedom of Movement

Most of the estimated 3 million citizens of other EU countries living in the UK under the same rules are in work (8) – (9).

Whether they would be able to stay in the UK if the UK left the EU would depend on the same factors are for UK citizens living in other EU countries outlined above.

It would also depend on what policies the UK government decided on and what agreements it could make with the EU.

What is certain is that if no deal was struck then most EU citizens currently in the EU would not meet the current UK government standards applied to non-EU nationals as required for a visa (10).

What percentage of immigrants to the UK are from the EU?

Roughly half. Net migration to the UK from the EU in the last quarter was 184,000. From non-EU countries it was 188,000 (click this link and scroll down to table 2). (11)

The number of people coming from EU countries has increased a bit faster than those coming from non-EU countries since 1990 though, probably due to the new member countries that have joined since then.

How does immigration from the EU benefit or harm the UK?

The big area where EU membership does have an effect on immigration in the UK is immigration from other EU member states to the UK increasing our population. Is this harmful to the economy and existing population of the UK, beneficial, neither, or a mixture though?

Does immigration increase unemployment and /or push down wages?

It’s often claimed by anti-immigration campaigners that immigration is pushing down wages and increasing unemployment in the UK, as well as overloading public services like the NHS and schools with more people than they can handle.

A London School of Economics study looking at wages, unemployment and levels of immigration in each of England’s counties between 2004 and 2012 found no connection between levels of immigration and unemployment or wages (12).

Some other studies found a small increase in unemployment caused by immigration from the EU, especially during recessions, but overall found there has not been enough research to say for certain (13).

The idea that immigration just causes unemployment and lower wages is based on missing out half the picture though. Yes immigration increases the supply of labour, but any population increase, whether due to immigration or not, also increases demand for goods and services from the same extra people, not only from the public sector but from private companies too. More people means more sales of products and services for lots of businesses, meaning more profits and more jobs.

If that was not the case then every time a country’s population increased for any reason – whether immigration or more people being born than are dying, it would immediately get poorer. The UK’s population has been increasing for centuries – and it’s been getting richer all the time.

So the overall effect on the unemployment rate and wages from any population increase should be roughly zero, all other factors being equal.

The exception of course is that some migrant workers send or take much of the money they earn working in the UK back to their home countries, which would reduce the wealth of the UK and demand for goods and services here compared to if people born here or staying here permanently had that job.

Strain on public services?

A rapid increase in population may well put strain on public services in some areas, especially as more immigrants settle or work in London and the South East, where most of the jobs are, and where they are more likely to be able to make contact with family members or friends who came before them.

Citizens of other EU countries make up about 5% of NHS staff, about the same proportion of the UK’s population who are citizens of other EU countries, but they make up 10% of NHS doctors (14) – (15).

Immigrants and the EU are easy to blame for national governments looking for someone to blame for the effects of their own policies. The NHS and schools have been under considerable strain for decades due to the “internal market” introduced under Thatcher, and the exorbitant cost of Private Finance Initiatives or PFIs brought in under Major’s Conservative government in the 1990s, expanded under both New Labour (who renamed them ‘Public Private Partnerships’ or PPPs) and then by the Conservatives again (renamed ‘PF2s’) under Cameron and Osborne.

For more on this see e.g the Migration Observatory link here  (which basically says the statistics to decide this have never been collected),  Full Fact on this link and the anti-immigration Migration Watch page on this link

Housing shortages and immigration

It’s often argued that immigration is the cause of the shortage of housing and high rents and rising house prices in the UK. How true is this though?

Most studies show 60% or more of immigrants in the UK rent privately owned properties, and that immigrants are more likely to rent houses from private landlords than people born here (16) – (17).

Studies also show that house prices actually fall in areas where immigrants live, as less people who aren’t immigrants want to live there (18).

While about 12.5% of the UK’s population were born in another country, figures from pretty much every neutral source show about the same percentage of immigrants as people born here are in social housing. So the common claim that immigrants get to “jump the queue” for social housing is false (19) – (21).

The shortage of social or council housing is largely caused by governments from Heath’s on selling off council houses at a discount price in order to get votes, without providing local councils with anything like enough money to build or buy replacements for most of them. This, along with a fall in the percentage of new houses that are publicly owned, has depleted the UK’s stock of social housing massively.

There are also over 1 million privately owned properties which no one lives in. So inequality is probably another cause (22).

The rate of population increase (mostly driven by increasing immigration in the last few decades) can’t be ignored as a factor, but it’s far from the only one – and not as high as many people believe. The net increase in population of 336,000 last year for instance was an increase of just over half of one per cent on the existing population of 64 million (23).

Population increase resulting in harm to environment and quality of life
Versus Immigration helping with our ageing population

The one area where immigration might be more harmful is that any population increase when population is already high can lead to damage to the environment and to peoples’ quality of life by more of the country becoming urbanised as more trees are cut down, more fields built over with houses, more roads are built, more cars are driven etc.

Immigration is certainly the main cause of population increase in the UK and most other developed countries, with birth rates among people born here lower than those among immigrants. The net increase in population last year was around 336,000, added to an existing population of 64 million, an increase of slightly over half of one per cent (24).

It’s also certainly true that the long term trend of immigration since the UK joined the EC and then EU has been to keep increasing, especially since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty which established Freedom of Movement within the EU, though even before we joined the EU the trend was to increase (25).

It seems likely that that trend will continue.

I would argue that the damage population increase can do to the environment and quality of life is the one area that EU membership and Freedom of Movement could be harmful overall to the UK.

But this has to be balanced against the way that immigration from the poorest countries can help the poorest people in the EU, and their families. Money sent home by migrant workers dwarfs all foreign aid combined.

This , of course, means some of the money earned by immigrants in the UK is not spent here, so does not increase demand for goods or services here.

The people who are migrant workers sending money home though, are also the ones who go home after earning some money, so those people don’t increase the UK’s population in the long term.

Plus the UK, like all developed countries has problems caused by an increasing average age. The proportion of pensioners, who require both pensions and more health care, is rising. The proportion of people of working age is falling. If we reduce the number of immigrants the proportion of pensioners may increase faster as the average age of immigrants and refugees is lower, most of them being of working age (26) – (27).

There are other possible ways to counteract this – for instance in France the 35-hour week and benefit incentives for having two or more children have given it a higher than average birth rate of 2 per woman (28).

But then population increase of any kind – whether due to people born here having children, or due to immigration, is just as harmful to the environment and quality of life.

So there are benefits and costs to either increasing or reducing population, though at some point we have to face up to the need to reduce the entire world’s population and the amount of pollution created per person.

The Real Scandal?

The biggest scandal (in my opinion) surrounding people coming from outside the EU to all countries in the EU is that the EU and its member governments (including the UK) are sending so many refugees back to countries which are clearly not safe, like Turkey, which has been sending Syrian refugees back to the civil war in Syria for years and is not really even a democracy any more (the President has stripped opposition MPs of their immunity from prosecution in preparation for jailing some of them). On top of that the Turkish government has restarted a civil war inside Turkey with its own Kurdish minority, and the UN has had to cut off food aid to many refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan as governments in the EU and other wealthy countries haven’t donated enough money to fund it.

Corbyn Vs Cameron : What’s Worse? Promoting peace talks to save lives? Or knowingly arming people who are killing civilians including children?

Prime Minister David Cameron is making a habit every few months of accusing Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn of being a “terrorist sympathiser”  for having (unwisely in my view) referred to some Hamas and Hezbollah representatives as “our friends in Hamas and Hezbollah”  (1) – (2).

This is pretty rich stuff, especially considering what David Cameron himself has done in continuing to actually arm people who are killing civilians.

Even Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, has been calling for the Israeli government to accept Hamas’ offers of talks on a long-term peace deal for some 8 years now (3) – (4).

So suggesting talks with Hamas is not an endorsement of everything Hamas has done, nor beyond the pale.

Corbyn is similarly trying to bring about peace between the entire elected Israeli and Palestinian governments – which includes Hamas, who won the last Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. You don’t do that by disowning your contacts (5).

David Cameron meanwhile is approving arms sales to governments and militaries involved in killing civilians, including children, in war crimes, on a large scale. These include the governments of Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain among others.

While Hamas’ armed wing have certainly been involved in terrorist attacks targeting civilians in some cases and making no attempt to avoid killing them in others, Israel’s military have done the same over and over again to Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, and, since they are much better armed, killed far more.

Cameron has been not only approving arms sales to the dictatorships of Egypt, Saudi and Bahrain but actively promoting them .

At the height of the Arab Spring protests when Mubarak’s forces, the Saudis’ and those of the Bahrain monarchy were jailing, torturing and killing democracy protesters, Cameron brought a delegation of arms salesmen with him on his tour of this countries  (6).

The Saudis have been bombing schools and hospitals in the civil war in Yemen, in attacks described as war crimes by Amnesty International (7).

Months after Amnesty’s report on this, Cameron was still describing the latest arms deal he had negotiated with the Saudi monarchy as “brilliant” (8).

This is the man with the gall to criticise Jeremy Corbyn for refusing to torpedo the chances of peace between Israelis and Palestinians by disowning Hamas.

David Cameron, a man happy to not only call war criminals and murdering dictators his friends, but not only approve, but actively promote and negotiate arms deals with them.

Jeremy Corbyn meanwhile only tries to get Hamas and Hezbollah involved in peace talks to end the killing.

(1) =  www.guardian.co.uk 07 Oct 2015 ‘Cameron on Corbyn: were the PM's attacks on Labour's leader justified?’, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/07/david-cameron-attacks-jeremy-corbyn-conservative-conference

(2) = Independent 04 May 2016 ‘David Cameron attacks Jeremy Corbyn over Hamas and Hezbollah 'friends' comments’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-jeremy-corbyn-hamas-hezbollah-friends-pmqs-labour-antisemitism-row-a7012821.html

(3) = Independent 10 Jun 2015 ‘It's time for Israel to talk to Hamas, says former Mossad head’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/its-time-for-israel-to-talk-to-hamas-says-former-mossad-head-10311651.html

(4) = Mother Jones 19 Feb 2008 ‘Israel's Mossad, Out of the Shadows’,
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/02/israels-mossad-out-shadows

(5) = BBC News 26 Jan 2006 ‘Hamas sweeps to election victory’,  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4650788.stm

(6) = guardian.co.uk 21 Feb 2011 ‘David Cameron's Cairo visit overshadowed by defence tour’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/feb/21/cameron-cairo-visit-defence-trade

(7) = Independent 12 Dec 2015 ‘Saudi Arabia bombing Yemen's schools, Amnesty International claims’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-bombing-yemens-schools-amnesty-international-claims-a6770551.html

(8) = www.guardian.co.uk 25 Feb 2016 ‘David Cameron boasts of 'brilliant' UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/25/david-cameron-brilliant-uk-arms-exports-saudi-arabia-bae

No, Turkey is not a safe country for refugees

So sending refugees back there to
“discourage others from making the dangerous journey”
is hypocrisy

Many politicians have been claiming that they are refusing refugees asylum and sending them back to Turkey in order to “discourage others from making the dangerous journey” to the EU. There are a few problems with that story.

First Turkey is not a safe country for refugees in any sense. Turkey has been deporting Syrian refugees back to Syria since January , including many children (1) – (2).

On top of that Turkish border guards have actually begun shooting Syrian refugees as they try to cross the border  (3).

And since the middle of last year there has also been civil war in Turkey itself, between the Turkish government and military and Kurdish separatist groups. There was a peace process between the two and negotiations were close to a breakthrough. Then left-wing Kurdish pro-peace HDP party won enough seats in an election to take away President Erdogan’s AKP party’s majority in parliament (4) – (5).

At the same time in Syria,  Syrian Kurdish groups with the support of the PKK (a Turkish Kurdish separatist group) took territory in Syria, on the border with Turkey. This raised Turkish fears of a Kurdish state (6).

Erdogan responded by restarting the war with the PKK and other Kurdish separatists in Turkey. Kurdish civilians in Turkey are among the casualties of Turkish military sniper fire and there is some evidence of war crimes against Kurdish civilians (7) – (8).

This means Turkish Kurds aren’t even safe, let alone Syrian Kurdish refugees.

What’s more there has been no food for many of the Syrian refugees in camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon since the middle of last year, when the UN was forced to cut off food aid to many of them due to lack of funds. Wealthier governments simply haven’t donated enough money to buy that food (9).

Nor is Turkey even a proper democracy for people born there – journalists and even opposition MPs who criticise the government are often jailed.  Insulting the President is a criminal offence with a sentence of 4 years or more in jail. So refugees can forget about having any rights at all (10) – (11).

Libya is even more dangerous, with the many sided civil war still going on.

Why aren’t The Muslim / Arab countries Taking Their Share?
They are – EU countries aren’t

The Gulf states including Saudi, despite some mistaken media reports, have been taking in some Syrian refugees, but given Saudi is a hardline Sunni Muslim dictatorship with religious police, no Christian, Shia Muslim, secular, or moderate Sunni Muslim Syrian refugee is likely to want to go there. (see the blog post on this link – scrolling down to bolded sub-heading ‘Are the wealthiest Arab states refusing to take in any Syrian refugees?’)

The reality is that Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon have each taken far more refugees per capita and relative to their size and wealth than any EU country. (also see comparison of the UK and Jordan on the post on this link under bolded  sub-heading ‘Is the UK taking more than its share of refugees'). (12)

The EU and the UK should take more. And as long as both are sending refugees, including children, back to Turkey, pretending it’s a “safe country”, it is impossible to be proud to be either British or European.

True, David Cameron did do a partial u-turn on his government’s refusal to allow any unaccompanied child refugees from Calais to be granted asylum in the UK. But this only allows children who arrived before 20^th March to apply for refugee status – and there is no guarantee of any who reach their 18^th birthday soon being allowed to stay after that (13).

Why are they coming here illegally?
Because They’re Given No Other Option

As for the outrage over migrants and refugees “coming here illegally” what choice are they given? The vast majority of them have none. Other than the pitiful number of 4,000 a year being selected by the UK from refugee camps in Turkey, out of millions of Syrian refugees, to one of the richest and largest countries in the EU, they have to the EU or UK illegally to make an asylum claim (14) – (15).

The obvious alternative would be for governments like the UK’s to tell their embassies in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon (and also countries bordering Libya, like Tunisia) to accept applications for asylum from people in those countries. Those whose claims were judged genuine would be granted refugee status and helped to travel safely to the UK, meaning they wouldn’t have to make dangerous journeys, pay people smugglers who are often violent criminals, or do anything illegal.

 

(1) = BBC News 15 Jan 2016 ‘Turkey 'acting illegally' over Syria refugees deportations’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35135810

(2) = Amnesty International 01 Apr 2016 ‘Turkey: Illegal mass returns of Syrian refugees expose fatal flaws in EU-Turkey deal’,
https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2016/04/turkey-illegal-mass-returns-of-syrian-refugees-expose-fatal-flaws-in-eu-turkey-deal/

(3) = Independent 31 Mar 2016 ‘Turkey 'shooting dead' Syrian refugees as they flee civil war’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkey-shooting-dead-syrian-refugees-flee-civil-war-a6960971.html

(4) = Newsweek 04 Aug 2015 ‘Turkey's Erdoğan calls on other parties to be 'realistic' after his party loses its majority’, http://europe.newsweek.com/turkey-war-kurds-pkk-331163?rm=eu

(5) = Independent 08 Jun 2015 ‘Turkey's Erdoğan calls on other parties to be 'realistic' after his party loses its majority’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkeys-erdo-an-calls-on-other-parties-to-be-realistic-after-his-party-loses-its-majority-10304127.html

(6) = Telegraph 25 Jul 2015 ‘For Erdogan, Turkish assault is about containing the Kurds as much as fighting Isil’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/11762210/For-Erdogan-Turkish-assault-is-about-containing-the-Kurds-as-much-as-fighting-Isil.html

(7) = Guardian 08 Sep 2015 ‘Kurdish civilians hit by snipers as Turkey cracks down on militants’,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/08/kurdish-civilians-killed-snipers-turkey-cracks-down-militants

(8) = Independent 22 Jan 2016 ‘Video shows Kurds waving white flag 'shot by Turkish soldiers'’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/video-shows-kurds-waving-white-flag-shot-by-turkish-soldiers-a6828416.html

(9) = Guardian 06 Sep 2015 ‘UN agencies 'broke and failing' in face of ever-growing refugee crisis’,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/06/refugee-crisis-un-agencies-broke-failing

(10) = New Yorker ‘Turkey’s jailed journalists’, http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/turkeys-jailed-journalists

(11) = BBC News 16 Apr 2015 ‘The problem with insulting Turkey's President Erdogan’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32302697

(12) = Amnesty International 03 Feb 2016 ‘Syria's refugee crisis in numbers’, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/02/syrias-refugee-crisis-in-numbers/

(13) = guardian.com 07 May 2016 ‘Should David Cameron’s U-turn on unaccompanied child refugees be celebrated?’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/should-david-camerons-u-turn-on-unaccompanied-child-refugees-be-celebrated

(14) = BBC News 07 Sep 2015 ‘UK to accept 20,000 refugees from Syria by 2020’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34171148

(15) = See (10) above

Migrant Myths 2 : The "Flood" of migrants and refugees to the EU and UK - There isn't one, but if Syrian refugees continue to be left to starve there soon will be

Summary: While there is a lot of talk of a “flood” of refugees to the EU or a “migrant crisis” the numbers involved are pretty small compared to the population, size and wealth of the EU – around 0.6% of the existing EU population in 2015 for instance. (This figure includes all migrants estimated by the EU border force Frontex to have entered undetected, and of all nationalities). More a growing trickle than a flood.

The proportion of these coming to the UK is even smaller as the UK gets less than 5% of asylum applications to EU countries. Ninety-five per cent of Syrian refugees are in Syria and neighbouring countries.

The real crisis is for countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Jordan, for instance, a country the size of Cornwall and much poorer than the UK , has about 1.2 million Syrians, an increase in its population since 2011 of 25%.

The widespread reports that the richer Arab Gulf states have taken in no Syrians are also false. In fact they have taken in about 1.3 million Syrians and in Saudi’s case given them rights to free education and healthcare, but as they are not signatories to the 1951 UN refugee convention, none are reported in UN statistics as refugees.

Since Saudi for instance has an extreme version of Sharia law, and oppresses non-Sunni Muslims, many Syrian refugees – who include Christians, Shia, Alawites and secular or moderate Sunnis, as well as non-Arab Kurds, will not want to live there either.

Many of the Syrian refugees in countries bordering Syria are receiving no food aid or medical treatment or education for their children, because wealthier countries have not donated enough to the UN to pay for this.

The £1.3 billion over 4 years that the British government boasts about having given to refugees is about £400 million a year out of annual public spending of around £700 billion. It is only “generous” compared to the even smaller amounts given by other countries. Its latest pledge only increases this to around £500 million a year (around 0.07% of the UK’s annual public spending).

Unless EU governments , the US and the Gulf states donate a lot more money to the UN to feed Syrian refugees , there really will be a flood of them into Europe soon – especially with the governments of countries neighbouring Syria having started deportations of Syrians, and the Turkish government’s restarting of its war with Turkish Kurdish separatists, which makes Turkey even less safe for Syrian Kurd refugees.

A flood of migrants and refugees to the EU and UK?

Only 5% of Syrian refugees have been taken in so far by countries outside the Middle East. The other 95% are in Syria itself (about 18 million internally displace people forced out of their homes but still somewhere in Syria) or refugees in refugee camps in neighbouring countries. The numbers granted refugee status in neighbouring countries are over 2.5 million granted refugee status in Turkey, over 1 million in Lebanon, about 600, 000 in Jordan , 250,000 in Iraq (which has a civil war itself) and 100,000 in Egypt (a military dictatorship) . However the total numbers of Syrian refugees in these countries are higher, as many have not been granted formal refugee status. Lebanon and Jordan are small and fairly poor countries. (1).

Lebanon alone has taken in probably more Syrian refugees than the entire EU combined at 1.1 million (or 1.2 million including those not granted refugee status), a 25% increase on its pre-Syrian civil war population of 4.3 million (which already included 450,000 Palestinian refugees).

The EU by comparison got asylum claims from a bit over 200,000 Syrians in 2015 – or just 0.04% of its 504 million population, or 270,000 total since 2011, around 0.05% of its 504.5 million population on the first day of 2011. Of course there were other migrants and asylum seekers from other countries too. The European border agency Frontex estimates the total number of migrants coming to the EU  illegally in 2015 was around 1.5 million, including those likely to have avoided border controls. The numbers who enter legally each year have been similar from 2010 at about 1.4 to 1.5 million a year. So for 2015 the total number of legal and illegal migrants would be around 3 million, or a 0.6% increase in the EU’s population if all were allowed to stay (which they will not be as, while applications may take a long time to process, many applications are rejected each year and around 40% of rejections result in deportation in the same year as they are rejected) (2) – (5).

Multiplying by 4 for the years since the Syrian civil war started in 2011 it would come to a 2.4% increase in population from all forms of immigration. (This will be a significant overestimate as there were more migrants and refugees in 2015 than in previous years)

These figures don’t include the number of non-EU nationals who leave the EU (emigrate from it) every year, from around 700,000 in 2010 to over 800,000 in 2013. That would make the overall growth of non-EU national population in the EU about 2.5 million in 2015, or 10 million over 4 years maximum or around 0.5% per year, or 2% over 4 years (again likely an over-estimate) (6).

So the total increase in the EU’s population from immigration from outside the EU is not so much the “flood” the media often talk of as a rapidly growing trickle relative to the size of the lake it’s flowing into.

And of course immigration and emigration aren’t the only factors affecting population growth. Birth and death rates also affect it. Looking at total population growth for all the countries that are now EU members since 1960  there has not been any significant increase in the rate of population growth. Birth rates have fallen significantly over that time, while people are also living longer due to improved living standards and medical care. The result is a growing population, but with a growing percentage of elderly people (7).

Without either immigration (with immigrants being younger on average) or other measures to increase the birth rate (e.g the 35 hour week tried in France), or both, we may end up with not enough people of working age to pay the taxes to fund healthcare and pensions for pensioners.

But ever increasing population results in increasing pollution, deforestation and environmental damage, including climate change. This is a difficult circle to square.

The rate of population growth in the EU has actually been falling for decades though and is considerably lower than it was in the 1960s.

Are the wealthiest Arab states refusing to take in any Syrian refugees?

The Gulf states – Sunni ‘monarchies’ (dictatorships) allied to the US and who are funding and arming many of the Syrian Jihadist Sunni rebels (including Al Nusrah, the Syrian wing of Al Qa’ida) are refusing to take in any Syrians as refugees, as they are not signatories to the 1951 Refugee convention.  However some Syrian refugees have been given residency permits to live in Saudi and granted free education and healthcare (the Saudi government claim over 100,000 though this is not an independently verified figure) (8) – (9).

World Bank figures gave the total for all the Gulf monarchies as over 1.3 million Syrians living in them in 2013 , 1 million in Saudi, but the UNHCR figure in 2015 was just 500,000, possibly due to definitions of who was being counted (10).

However even Saudi citizens have no real rights not to be imprisoned or executed without fair trial. Immigrants working in Saudi are exploited ruthlessly.

And Saudi Arabia has an extreme version of Sharia law based on the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. Syrian refugees include Christians, Alawites and Shia, all of who face persecution in Saudi, along with moderate and secular Muslims who do not want to live under Sharia law. So many refugees would rather avoid Saudi Arabia and other dictatorships with religious laws.

Is the UK taking more than its share of refugees coming to the EU? No, far less

The UK’s population has grown steadily too, around a 20% increase in the last 50 years. The rate of increase has gone up and down over that period, but is currently higher than at any point since the 1950s (11).

The UK, with over 10% of the EU’s population, and one of the richest countries in it, gets less than 5% of asylum applications for refugee status from people who are not citizens of any EU country. So the people at Calais are not a flood either, but an even smaller trickle. For instance in the second quarter of 2015 the UK got just 3.5% of applications to EU countries. In the  third quarter it got just 2.86% (12).

And that trickle is not higher than ever before either – the number of asylum applications in the UK in 2014 was about the same number as in 1990. And overall about 52% of asylum applications processed in 2014 in the UK were refused (13) – (14).

The UK actually gets very few asylum applications relative to it’s size and wealth – one of the lowest rates in the EU relative to our population.

Source : BBC News (15)

The UK, twice as wealthy as Lebanon in GDP per capita and a much larger country in terms of population and land area, had granted just 5,102 Syrians the right to remain as refugees by August 2015 and offered to take just 4,000 a year in future. (Total numbers will be higher as some will be waiting for applications to be heard, but still likely in the thousands compared to Lebanon’s millions)

Graphic : http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/GB/LB

The real refugee crisis is in Syria’s neighbours, not the EU, but unless the EU provide more money to feed and house refugees, it may be an EU crisis soon

The EU and UK are not suffering a refugee “flood” or “crisis”, but manageable numbers both in terms of their exsiting population, their land area and their wealth. The real refugee crisis is in Syria and for its neighbours. But if the wealthier governments continue to fail to provide enough money to feed and house refugees in countries neighbouring Syria, there may soon be a real flood.

Those Syrians in refugee camps in the Middle East are not getting enough food, and often no medical treatment for illnesses and wounds, as donations from governments around the world have been too low. Syrian refugees in Turkey and Lebanon currently get under 50 cents or 35 pence worth of food a day, not nearly enough. The Turkish government has begun sending many back to Syria. Jordan has closed its border with Syria leaving thousands of refugees stranded in the desert. Lebanon has also begun deporting Syrian refugees . The governments of the three countries are saying they can’t take any more refugees
(16 )  – (19).

The UK’s supposedly “generous” aid to Syrian refugees in the Middle East comes to about £1.1 billion over 4 years since the Syrian civil war began, or a bit under £300 million a year, out of annual public spending of around £700 billion (thousand million) a year. The fact that other EU governments have given even less is nothing to boast about. Even Cameron’s latest pledge to increase it to around £510 million a year from the UK and ask other EU countries to increase similarly is far too little. It amounts to under 0.07% of the UK’s annual public spending of over £700 billion a year (20) – (22).

Sources

(1) = UNHCR 19 Jan 2016 ‘Syria Regional Refugee Response - Inter-agency Information Sharing Portal’, http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php

(2) = BBC News ‘Migrant crisis: Migration to Europe explained in graphics’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34131911 (200,000 asylum applications from Syrians EU 2015; Frontex 1.5 million migrants estimate for 2015)

(3) = Al Jazeera 22 Dec 2015 ‘One million 'refugees and migrants' reached EU in 2015’, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/12/million-refugees-migrants-reached-eu-2015-151222100045573.html (270,000 Syrians applied for asylum in EU countries since 2011)

(4) = BBC News 09 Sep 2015 ‘Migrant crisis: Who does the EU send back?’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34190359 (only 39% of rejected asylum claimants deported from the EU in 2015)

(5) = BBC News 13 Aug 2015 ‘What happens to failed asylum seekers?’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33849593

(6) = Eurostat 10 Jun 2015 ‘Immigration in the EU’,
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/e-library/docs/infographics/immigration/migration-in-eu-infographic_en.pdf

(7) = Eurostat Jul 2015 ‘Population and population change statistics’,
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Population_and_population_change_statistics

(8)= Huffington Post 23 Sep 2015 ‘Western Media's Miscount of Saudi Arabia's Syrian Refugees’,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anhvinh-doanvo/europes-crisis-refugees_b_8175924.html

(9) = Guardian 12 Sep 2015 ‘Saudi Arabia says criticism of Syria refugee response 'false and misleading'’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/12/saudi-arabia-says-reports-of-its-syrian-refugee-response-false-and-misleading

(10) = News Week 12 Apr 2015 ‘The Gulf States Are Taking Syrian Refugees’, http://europe.newsweek.com/gulf-states-are-taking-syrian-refugees-401131

(11) = ONS 26 Jun 2014 ‘Changes in UK population over the last 50 years’, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-estimate/population-estimates-for-uk--england-and-wales--scotland-and-northern-ireland/2013/sty-population-changes.html

(12) = Eurostat News Release 10 Dec 2015 ‘Asylum in the EU Member States More than 410 000 first time asylum seekers registered in the third quarter of 2015’, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7105334/3-10122015-AP-EN.pdf/04886524-58f2-40e9-995d-d97520e62a0e

(13) = Migration Observatory , Oxford university, 13 Aug 2015, ‘Migration to the UK : Asylum’, In 2014, 59% of asylum applications were initially refused. 28% of appeals were eventually approved,
http://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/migration-uk-asylum

(14) = Migration Observatory , Oxford university, 13 Aug 2015, ‘Migration to the UK : Asylum’, Figure 1 - Asylum applications and estimated inflows, 1984-2014,
http://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/migration-uk-asylum

(15) = BBC News ‘Migrant crisis: Migration to Europe explained in graphics’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34131911

 (16) = Observer 06 Sep 2015 ‘UN agencies 'broke and failing' in face of ever-growing refugee crisis’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/06/refugee-crisis-un-agencies-broke-failing

(17) = BBC 15 Jan 2016 ‘Turkey 'acting illegally' over Syria refugees deportations’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35135810

(18) = Independent 22 Jan 2016 ‘Jordan blocks Syria border leaving thousands of refugees in the desert - including hundreds of pregnant women’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/jordan-blocks-syrian-border-to-leave-thousands-of-refugees-trapped-in-the-desert-including-hundreds-a6828471.html

(19) = CBS/AP 07 Feb 2016 ‘Turkey: We're at end of "capacity to absorb" refugees’,
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/turkey-has-reached-the-end-of-its-capacity-to-absorb-refugees/

(20) = DFID Syria Crisis Response, https://www.gov.uk/government/world/organisations/dfid-syria-crisis-response

(21) = http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/total_spending_2015UKbn

(22) = www.theguardian.com 04 Feb 2016 ‘David Cameron calls for billions more in international aid for Syrian refugees’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/03/david-cameron-calls-for-billions-more-in-international-aid-for-syrian-refugees