Switzerland and Denmark Are Stealing War Refugees’ Property — How's that for a Greedy Europe that We Americans Are Saddled with Protecting?

© 2016 Peter Free

 

27 January 2016

 

 

Western Europe has some admirable virtues, but these two examples are not among them

 

Recreating some of its miserable behavior during World War II:

 

 

Like Denmark, Switzerland is stripping refugees of their assets to contribute towards their upkeep.

 

The arrivals are required to hand over any property over the value of . . . CHF1,000, $996 . . . prompting alarm from the UN's Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

 

© 2016 Romil Patel, Refugee crisis: Switzerland seizing assets from migrants to fund their upkeep, International Business Times (15 January 2016) (paragraph split)

 

Under the new Danish law, police will be allowed to search asylum seekers on arrival in the country and confiscate any non-essential items worth more than 10,000 kroner (£1,000) [$1461] that have no sentimental value to their owner.

 

The centre-right government said the procedure is intended to cover the cost of each asylum seeker’s treatment by the state, and mimics the handling of Danish citizens on welfare.

 

© 2016 David Crouch and Patrick Kingsley, Danish parliament approves plan to seize assets from refugees, The Guardian (26 January 2016)

 

You will notice that the Danes are slightly more "generous" than the money-grubbing Swiss.

 

 

Meanwhile, the United States is protecting these arguably excessively comfortable nations at enormous expense

 

As Colonel/Professor Andrew Bacevich pointed out yesterday:

 

 

Seventy years after World War II and a quarter-century after the Cold War ended, why does European security remain an American responsibility?

 

Given that Europeans are rich enough to defend themselves, why shouldn’t they?

 

Collectively, the European Union’s economy, at $18 trillion, equals that of the United States and exceeds Russia’s, even in sunnier times, by a factor of nine.  Its total population, easily outnumbering our own, is more than triple Russia’s.  What these numbers tell us is that Europe is entirely capable of funding and organizing its own defense if it chooses to do so.

 

It chooses otherwise, in effect opting for something approximating disarmament.  As a percentage of the gross domestic product, European nations spend a fraction of what the United States does on defense.  When it comes to armaments, they prefer to be free riders and Washington indulges that choice.

 

So even today, seven decades after World War II ended, U.S. forces continue to garrison Europe and America’s obligation to defend 26 countries on the far side of the Atlantic remains intact.

 

© 2016 Andrew J. Bacevich, Out of Bounds, Off-Limits, or Just Plain Ignored, TomDispatch.com (26 January 2016) (extracts)

 

 

The moral? — You wonder why some Islamists hold the collective West in contempt?

 

An imperialistically plutocratic United States — already responsible for radically destabilizing the Middle East and causing the refugee problem in the first place — is simultaneously protecting morally effete Europeans, who steal from the fleeing oppressed.