[Osem]

Allowing large numbers of economic migrants to be held for long periods of time against their will is a recipe for disaster. We have to prevent as many of these people as possible from getting into Europe in the first place. The rules need to be tightened and the process of separating/removing the genuine from the illegal speeded up but it's going to be difficult to do any of this without resorting to the use of armed forces and the conjuring up of all sorts of unpleasant images. Germany has a particular problem with such images I'm sure and they're going to face very severe problems enforcing anything like an effective asylum policy without reminding people of Nazism. Maybe Merkel should have thought about that...

Until economic migrants start to believe it's not worth the cost/risk of heading to Europe they will continue to do so in ever increasing numbers. We need to start showing them that they can't effectively 'force' their way into the EU and hope to get away with it. The relevant international borders need to be strengthened and only those in the greatest need allowed in. Then something needs to be done about those who've been kept out and maybe that will have to involve taking them straight back from where they came when that is possible. We have to make that choice preferable to the alternative.

Nobody should be in any doubt that, even if the flow stopped tomorrow, there are huge challenges ahead in processing, dealing with, then trying to assimilate those who've already made it into Europe let alone the millions more who are and will be heading in this direction if we don't sort this out. Allowing this to go on will end in serious trouble I believe and quite probably a serious rise in the sort of extreme right wing political parties and policies we'd all hoped would be a thing of the past.