First, I have to explain my blog post title to those who don't already know. A few years ago, Trinity Methodist Church, where we attended at the time, started a new contemporary service called the Refuge. They put up a sign to direct people to the service and it read "Refugites". It apparently never occurred to them that the correct term was refugee. Since then we refer to refugees as refugites.
It's headline news here. Sudden mass migration - 350,000 to date - into the EU. It's important when you know where they're coming from and why they want to leave.
Some are migrants wanting a new life somewhere better than their economically impoverished country - which is generally not considered a reason for asylum.
The bulk of them are actually not migrants, but "refugites" fleeing violence and war in their own country which IS a reason for asylum. There's a difference, but it's all the same - people are people. And by international law, countries are responsible for helping refugees.
Once you're in the European Union, travel from country to country is easy. Borders are open and passport checks are rare. You hardly even notice you've passed into another country. It's as easy as moving from state to state in the U.S.
The Schengen Treaty, signed back in 1985, requires passport checks only at the EU external border countries.
So just where are the external borders?
Here's a fun map to give some perspective on the size of Europe. It's not that big.
So most of those people trying to get into the European Union are coming from places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the Middle East and we all know why that is.
There's a big meeting scheduled for September 14 in Brussels to decide just how to handle what has, no doubt, become a crisis, but perhaps not to epic proportions just yet.
If you'd like to read more, here is a good article from a couple of weeks ago in a British newspaper, The Guardian, that may help put it all into perspective.
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