Update April 28th: Be sure to see what a reader is reporting about what the French media is saying about this, click here.
The article tells us they have been moving around Africa and Europe indicating that they are asylum shoppers. International asylum protocol says that “refugees” must apply for asylum in the first safe country in which they find themselves, and the European Union has that principle codified in law. Yet, clearly, this Paris group is roaming around looking for a better deal.
From The Local:
Around 150 Syria refugees are living a desperate existence in a small park to the north of Paris. NGOs and France’s Green party are urging authorities to do more to help the families while they wait for their asylum requests to be processed.
They ended up there penniless after wandering from country to country for months.
Yahya, Aziz and 150 other Syrians swapped the brutality and death of a war zone for hand-to-mouth survival in a small park in a working-class suburb of Paris, squeezed in behind a hotel just a few metres away from a busy ring road.
[….]
The 44-year-old, who refuses to give his surname, “abandoned everything” along with his wife and children after Syria erupted into violence in 2011, leaving behind a pretty villa and relinquishing any hope of returning.
Lebanon, Algeria, Egypt, back to Algeria, Morocco, Spain and finally France: “We knocked on every door,” he says, grey hair cut short, black jumper worn out.
It’s a similar story for Aziz, 54, who left Syria at the end of 2012 with his six children and wife.
The family criss-crossed Europe before ending up in the park, which has become his “headquarters.”
Not satisfied with Muslim countries they passed through—“Fortress Europe” is the goal.
Amnesty International said late last year that just 55,000 Syrian refugees had managed to get to what it called “Fortress Europe” and claim asylum in the EU, many heading for Germany or Sweden.
For its part, France has taken in around 3,000 Syrian refugees since the beginning of the conflict.
Meanwhile, security is shaky in Jordan’s largest Syrian camp, here. And, the presence of so many refugees in Lebanon is bringing terrorists into the country where the Lebanese Sunnis and Shiites are taking sides in the neighboring civil war, here.
Bringing large numbers of Syrians to America will solve none of this, it will just bring those problems here.
Oh, and put some more money in the pockets of the refugee contractors!