Fixing the Dublin Agreement

ARD  (German public TV, Channel One) had a good piece on the Dublin Agreement, which is fairly talked about structure for immigration.

Back in the 1980s....Europe talked about immigration and eventually came to write an agreement or convention....entitled the Dublin Agreement.  It basically said that when some immigrant just suddenly arrives on the shores or within some country....he is to sign in and go through their immigration process there.  He is NOT supposed to just grin....wave....and walk onto the country of his choice in Europe.

If you sit and think about it....this put most countries on the Med side in some problem area.  They needed to hinder or prevent folks from landing. Back in the 1990s....immigration wasn't a big deal.  In the past five years....it's become a big deal.  The two countries with issues now are Greece and Italy.

Two years ago....Chancellor Merkel admitted that the agreement is a total failure.

The key phrase in the solution crowd today is 'fair redistribution'.  What they hint is that the two problem countries....Italy and Greece....need a way to ship these migrants or asylum seekers out, and the EU has to become that vehicle.  So, the 27 members (excluding the UK)......need to cooperate and just take people.

Naturally, some folks ask.....when would the door close, or be set to a limit?  Well....the EU just grins when you ask that because they can't admit there is a limit, or that the door might close on people sneaking in.

Some nations look at this and would just prefer you apply at their embassy in the refugee's home country and show education or job potential.  They really don't care to get 10,000 burger-flippers or marginally educated individuals.  They also might ask why all 10,000 have to be young males (the typical thought process that people have when they see the rescue vessels and 90-percent of the crowd are male).

In a way, the replacement issue of the Dublin Agreement is now becoming the most important issue of the past twenty years (after creating the Euro) for the EU.  What the EU wants to do (primarily with France and Germany leading the discussion) is just force everyone to cooperate, and take some sum of people.  Countries like Hungary don't see 'force' as having much of an application.  The trouble is you might get away with this for a brief year, and then wake up in 2020 to realize that the next crowd have arrived in Italy, and you have to accept another 12,000 migrants, and repeat this in 2021, 2022, and 2023.

The other issue here, which few within the EU might discuss....is that migrants might sit down and get smart on benefit packages, and living conditions....then realize that half of the EU are not the places they want to arrive into.  At that point, the cards in the EU deck for playing this whole game are very limited.  Borders cease to exist.

If you were looking for the number one issue for 2018.....fixing the Dublin Agreement comes right after BREXIT.