Exodus of Iraqi spilling into Europe

[tocqueville]

By KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 41 minutes ago

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled the unrelenting violence in their homeland since the U.S. invasion in 2003 — a mass exodus directed primarily to neighboring Arab countries.

But a growing tide of Iraqis is seeking shelter and a new start in Europe, where Sweden is emerging as the destination of choice due to relatively lax immigration laws.

The number of Iraqis applying for asylum in the 25 countries of the European Union rose by nearly 50 percent to 7,300 in the first six months of the year, bucking a downward trend in the total number of asylum-seekers, U.N. statistics show.

One-third of them came to Sweden, a country of 9 million people with an Iraqi immigrant community of more than 70,000 which has so far resisted clampdowns on immigration seen elsewhere in the EU.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061024/ap_on_re_mi_ea/europe_fleeing_iraq

[smirkymonkey]

1. Interesting - I suppose you have seen that the UK & Ireland have

restricted immigration from Bulgaria and Romania. I wonder if that will apply to all immigrants or just new EU members. I also wonder if other European nations will follow suit.

[tocqueville]

4. So far only to the new EU members

But they still will take 20 000 a year. I suppose there will be similar laws in other countries. The Romanians have a very bad reputation due to the criminal gangs that came as "tourists" thez last years. The Iraqis won't meet major problems, because those coming now are the secular (or Christian) well educated elite. Those guys were the strength of Iraq. That's why Iraq has no chances in the current situation.

[Vidar]

2. I hope they are better received than most Jews who tried to flee Hitler.

[tocqueville]

3. WTF are you talking about ?

they LIVED there. Very few Jews made it out of Germany or Europe in time (because they didn't think it was going to be THAT bad). When Hitler took over the rest of Europe, it was too late. The Kristallnacht happened 1938 and the war broke out 39.

Besides the core of the Zionist movement (Stern-Lehi) was pro-fascist (more Mussolini style) and saw the British as their main enemy since they occupied Palestine. They even overtly proposed military help to the Nazis and attacked the British during the war. This is very well documented.

[Vidar]

5. Jews were turned away from virtually every country outside of

occupied Europe, especially the USA. Of course, scientists & literati were welcomed.

[tocqueville]

6. Most of the immigration after 48 was from Arab countries/Eastern Europe

Fact is that the biggest Jewish populations outside Israel/USA live in Europe (1,5 millions), because they never moved.

The Jewish population in the US is much older than WWII and goes back to 1850.

Later immigration

The immigration restrictions of the late 1920s prevented many Jews from coming to the United States, yet some 100,000 German Jews did arrive in the 1930s, escaping Hitler’s persecution. During the Holocaust, less than 30,000 Jews a year reached the United States, and some were turned away due to immigration policies. Immediately after the Second World War, some Jewish refugees resettled in the United States, and another wave of Jewish refugees from Arab nations settled in the US after expulsion from their home countries. The last large wave of immigration came from the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, where approximately 150,000 Jews emigrated from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_United_States

Of the estimated 8.8 million Jews living in Europe at the beginning of World War II, the majority of whom were Ashkenazi, about 6 million — more than two-thirds — were systematically murdered in the Holocaust. These included 3 million of 3.3 million Polish Jews (91%); 900,000 of 1.1 million in Ukraine (82%); and 50-90% of the Jews of other Slavic nations, Germany, France, Hungary, and the Baltic states. The only non-Ashkenazi community to have suffered similar depletions were the Jews of Greece.<19> Many of the surviving Ashkenazi Jews emigrated to countries such as Israel and the United States after the war

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews



So of the about 3 millions Jews left in Europe only a minority moved to Israel from WESTERN EUROPE after the war. If there is only 1.5 millions left it depends of the emigration 1992-1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

[Vidar]

7. tocqueville, I know this. My point was merely about many Jews

being unable to escape occupied Europe during WWII. I didn't refer to Israel at all.