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Refugees under pressure in Europe: Pundit

Friday, 29 January 2016 1:25 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 29 January 2016 1:26 PM ]

Refugees queue up next to a tent at the State Office of Health and Social Affairs in Berlin on January 27, 2016. (©AFP)

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jim W. Dean, managing editor of the Veterans Today from Atlanta, to discuss the situation of asylum seekers in Europe.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How hard is it becoming for refugees to seek asylum in Europe and why?

Dean: Well, it depends on how they come in. You don’t have destitute poor people getting in because you have to buy your way in with smugglers. So, these are people that have some means.

You do have real people trying to escape that have large families where they’re passing ahead around to try to say get a young person in who can establish themselves in Europe.

And then later you have families reunification program to bring their family members, grandparents over. So, this is a way for them to get out entirely. So, the number is being revealed now, a lot of these people are actually economic refugees.

The numbers are up to possibly about 60 percent. So, and Germany is really having a crackdown and made a very open arms to let all these people in. So many came in and just absolutely overwhelmed them and then they’ve had the crime problem.

And I’ve just read today that Germany now has have one under their gun stores. Everyone is scared to death. They can no longer blame on that rightwing extremists and neo-Nazis. People are genuinely afraid of what’s happening to their country.

Press TV: How complicit is Europe for the problems these refugees are facing back in their homeland?

Dean: Well, they’ve set up the fence and watched the West – US primarily – and the [Persian] Gulf state countries continue this war of attrition on Assad and the Syrian people. They watch the dead grow from ... and nobody in Europe was screaming that we have to stop this. We can’t let it go on.

And then Turkey and the Saudis got together and they said what we can do now to really put the pressure on them is just threatening all these people into Europe and really I think the numbers kind of surprise them.

So, we’ve got the pressure on now and now is this coming on with the talks. And we’re going to see everybody should have put the money together to keep these refugees in the arena because it’s much cheaper to keep a refugee in Turkey or in poor Lebanon, which has been left to hang out to dry and taking care of these refugees.

It would have been a lot less money, a lot less disruption to Europe for them to fund it some of the damage that they’ve set by and which happened to Syria.

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