The News
Tuesday 19 of March 2024

Miguel Ángel Ferrer: ‘Pointing to Europe’


An internally displaced Syrian girl who fled from Aleppo carries a red jacket in a refugee camp in the village of Batabo, northern Idlib countryside
An internally displaced Syrian girl who fled from Aleppo carries a red jacket in a refugee camp in the village of Batabo, northern Idlib countryside
Historical experience and demographics tells us that exoduses with a determined destination occur when there is a real possibility of seeking asylum

It is perfectly understandable that hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people seek to abandon their home because of war, economic ruin, religious persecution or imminent risk of death. It could be said that immigration, although difficult, painful and dangerous, is the only viable way to escape the hell which they are living in or which could soon arrive.

This is precisely what is happening in Syria. However, the war that is raging in the Arab country is more than two years old. Why is a mass exodus still occurring? Why have hundreds of thousands of migrants decided to go to Europe and, specifically, western Europe?

Historical experience and demographics tells us that exoduses with a determined destination occur when there is a real possibility of seeking asylum. The sign does not necessarily have to come from an official source, as was the case when General Lázaro Cárdenas (president of Mexico between 1934 and 1940) showed his willingness to take in Spanish republicans who had been defeated by Francisco Franco’s fascist regime in 1939.

The sign can come informally, in the form of a whisper. It can even present itself quite simply from the facts: the knowledge that a country receiving immigrants can spread like wildfire. Irrespective of conflicting reports, events show possible immigrants that there are no drawbacks to migration and no threat of deportation. How generous and humanitarian this skirt-wearing Satan, Angela Merkel, has become? Why this mass exodus now? Why this opening of European borders in general, but particularly in Germany?

Some might say that this European and German attitude is a result of the need for cheap labor given the decline in numbers of people of working age in their countries. This presumption, naturally, is perfectly valid. Immigration provides an extra pair of hands to an aging population.

But the aging of the European population is nothing new. It has been happening over the course of several decades. It is a social phenomenon which has been masked by the constant arrival of immigrants.

So the question remains. Why this mass exodus from Syria now? Why are they all heading to western Europe? Because politics is overrun with a lack of trust, it can be presumed that the Syrian exodus is a strategy devised by Washington and Berlin to further destabilize President Bashar Assad’s government and fast-track his removal from power. This is the primary objective of Obama and his European minions.

For the West, a widespread exodus from Syria to Europe would be an ideal pretext to justify direct military intervention in Syria, force Assad to flee and gently ease in a government which serves Washington.

The only problem is that these plans have not gone well. Something unforeseen happened: the direct involvement of Russia in the war against the Islamic State’s mercenary troops. Given this development, the Syrian exodus to Europe has lost its power as a pretext to intervention. As is now tradition, Vladimir Putin has showed his opportunist hand and has put the brakes on the U.S. appetite.

www.miguelangelferrer-mentor.com.mx
www.economiaypoliticahoy.wordpress.com