"The Perfect Storm Is Brewing": Goldman Warns Italy Has The Lowest Capacity To Absorb Migrants

While Europe"s economy and capital markets have been spared any major shocks in the past year, and in fact European GDP has been on a surprisingly resilient uptrend in recent quarters led higher by the relentless German export-growth dynamo (courtesy of the very, very low Deutsche Mark and a lot of broke Greeks), an old and recurring problem has re-emerged, one which threatens the stability and cohesion of the European Union itself: the latest surge of refugees which, arriving mostly from North Africa in recent months, has made Italy its primary landfall target resulting in a surge in migrant arrivals on Italian shores. However, with the rest of Europe largely shutting its borders to this refugee influx forcing Rome to deal with what many in Italy see as an unwelcome presence, a distinct sense of bad-will has been floating around Europe in recent months as Rome"s pleas for more solidarity from its European peers have been stubbornly ignored. Meanwhile, Italy has accepted nearly 100,000 refugees in the first six months of the year and the number is rapidly rising.

Now, a new report issued by Goldman Sachs will likely pour even more gasoline on the fire, as it finds that just as Rome alleges, "Italy has the lowest capacity to absorb migrants among the major EU economies. This is measured using three indicators of integration: (1) economic integration; (2) social integration; and (3) policy effectiveness."

While hardly new for regular readers, this is how Goldman lays out the problem:

migrant flows into Europe are changing and countries differ in their capacity to integrate new arrivals. An increasing proportion of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea come from sub-Saharan Africa rather than fleeing conflict in the Middle East. Increasingly, the destination countries are Italy and Spain, with reduced flows through Greece and the western Balkans towards Germany, largely as a result of the EU-Turkey agreement and the imposition of stricter border controls.

As a result of this constant migrant flow, successful integration is naturally a key objective for policymakers, who hope that the influx will boost output growth in the long run while seeking ways to mitigate the short-run costs caused by disruption to the labour market and wider society.

 Here, Goldman"s analysts take a broad view of the integration process and provide an initial comparison of countries’ capacity for immigration: "We focus on Italy throughout, which has become the main destination country of trans-Mediterranean migrant flows and faces a general election next May."  Goldman also adds that successful integration matters for the bank"s macroeconomic outlook two reasons.

First, the bulk of migrant flows into the EU this year have been in the central Mediterranean, oriented towards Italy. Second, the country already faces economic and political pressures from its struggling public finances and the rise of populism ahead of next year’s election.

And yet, what Goldman finds is that the nation that has been "tasked" with accepting the vast majority of migrants in 2017 is the one that is most unsuited to do just that. Here are the summary findings:

• Economic integration, measured by relative immigrant-native unemployment rates, appears particularly low in Italy, Greece, Spain and Hungary. These countries suffer from high unemployment across the population but immigrants bear a disproportionate amount of the burden. In contrast, the UK has the lowest immigrant-native unemployment gap.


• Social integration, roughly estimated using information on public attitudes towards immigration, is weakest in the countries most affected by the migration crisis. While the crisis shows signs of easing for countries such as Greece, it is intensifying in Italy.


• Policy effectiveness, measured by independent research by the MIPEX organisation, is lowest in Greece and Hungary.

Some additional details, first on economic integration:

Economic integration can be measured by assimilation to the labour market. Exhibit 3 shows the immigrant-native gap in unemployment rate for 1st and 2nd generation migrants across several EU countries. The immigrant-native gap in unemployment provides an initial and general measure of economic integration, with full integration implied by no gap at all. Looking at the change in this gap across generations provides a dynamic measure of the integration process: a smaller gap for the children of migrants relative to their parents implies integration over generations. In this way, Exhibit 3 illustrates two ways to analyse economic integration across countries:

• By considering the bars in levels, one can compare the level n of integration across countries (by generation).


• By considering the difference between generations, once can compare the rate of integration across countries.

Spain and Greece show the lowest levels of economic integration, implied by the widest immigrant-native gaps. Italy and Hungary show the lowest rates of economic integration, with 2nd generation migrants faring even worse than their parents on average. These four countries also have the highest unemployment rates among the population as a whole. The point to be made is that within these countries, unemployment disproportionately affects the immigrant population and there is a clear lack of catch-up by the 2nd generation.

Ok, so Italy is hardly the place to park refugees if one hopes to see them integrated economically. What about socially? Here is the answer:

Social integration can be estimated by the public’s attitude towards immigration. Social cohesion is hard to measure but can be estimated from certain kinds of information produced by surveys. Existing research focuses on two indicators: the discrimination against migrants and the host country’s degree of acceptance of immigration. We choose to consider the latter. Exhibit 4 shows public sentiment in the EU toward new immigrants, based on the Eurobarometer 2017.

 

Prima facie, Hungary appears the most socially hostile to migrants, with Italy and Greece also expressing robust anti-immigration sentiment. In all countries, negative attitudes have been provoked by the migration crisis. Yet while migrant flows to Hungary and Greece have slowed, in Italy they are picking up. According to the Italian interior ministry, migration figures in Italy are on track to exceed the annual record of 181,000 immigrants set in 2016 and widespread violence in Libya has driven the number of asylum seekers crossing the central Mediterranean to surge by 44% compared with the same period last year

So far, Italy - along with Hungary - appears to be the most inhospitable nation in Europe when it comes to two key core verticals: economical and social.  How about the inverse: which European nations have the most effective policies, an indicator of a government"s ability to promote integration. Goldman"s answer:

The Migration Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) is an indicator produced by the Migration Policy Group and the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs. It uses a range of policy areas to evaluate and compare how governments are promoting integration. Exhibit 5 shows the overall score MIPEX has given each country. Greece and Hungary have the least effective policies for integrating migrants. In 2013, Greece passed legislation obstructing the right of immigrants to vote at the national level, while a repeal of birth-right citizenship laws has left many children born in Greece without equal rights. Italy performs moderately well against this indicator and MIPEX recognises that it has made the first steps towards legal integration and equal rights. However, the challenge of achieving this in practice remains; although most long-term migrants have found jobs, they are often below their level of qualification.

Which brings us to Goldman"s conclusion on which European nation is best suited to accept the thousands of daily migrant arrivals: in short - it"s not Italy, or as Goldman puts it "Overall, Italy has the lowest capacity to absorb migrants compared with the major EU economies."

From the indicators used, Italy appears the least economically and socially integrated, despite performing marginally better than the EU average according to the MIPEX score for policy effectiveness. Our findings are highly significant in light of this year’s surge in trans-Mediterranean migration to Italy and the country’s vulnerable public finances. Moreover, Italy’s handling of the migration crisis will be a central issue when the country goes to the polls in the general election next May, particularly as a driving force behind support for populist opposition parties.

And while Goldman reiterates the long-held conventional credo that "the influx of migrants to Italy has the potential to bring economic benefits in the long run and offers a means to counter the country’s demographic problems (Italy’s population shrunk for the second year running in 2017)" it admits that "realising these benefits is conditional on successful economic and social integration" something which most likely will not happen as Goldman"s "analysis casts doubts over Italy’s capacity to achieve this and suggests the ‘perfect storm’ is brewing."

How The Elites Are Divorcing From Reality: The Economist's "What If"

Via GEFIRA,

The Western globalist elites have not digested Trump’s victory or Brexit yet. They are having a hard time dealing with their ideological failures, and when the reality dares not to comply with their day dreaming, they go online and create a parallel world, where their “expert” predictions always turn right and their failures cannot be questioned.  

The Economist‘s portal named “what if”, a neo-liberal, wishful thinking echo chamber, is the point in case.

Its latest piece attributes magical powers to the new hero of the elites, Emmanuel Macron, who soundly defeated “evil” Marine Le Pen in May. For The Economist, Macron is nothing short of Jesus as he was correspondingly depicted on the monthly’s cover walking on water:

The hypothetical scenario of Macron’s success is based on magical reforms that will somehow create enormous numbers of jobs after an initial friction and fix the out-of-control state budget. The text provides no answer how exactly all this is going to be done. The happy predictions do not stop there. Macron’s miracle, would turn France into another Silicon Valley, a paradise for start-ups. Does it not make us think back to the internet bubble of the 90s? After “making France great again” and defeating Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, Marine’s niece (who for the record has already retired from politics, but don’t tell The Economist, it’d break their narrative, they need an evil antagonist), Macron’s magic would next make Europe great again. Academic papers on the “French Renaissance” are beginning to appear, says the article’s author, an intellectual liberal himself and Macron’s flunky. He speaks of “EU-funded military operations in the Sahel”, because clearly that’s what Europe needs most. Why, destabilizing surrounding countries has worked very well so far, hasn’t it? Islamic terrorism isn’t even touched in the article, so we gather it will magically disappear as will the problems of the banlieu which do not deserve much mention either. Here, too, no solution is offered, just pure magic.

Another article,”If borders were open“, tackles immigration.According to the article, the world would suddenly become richer by 78$ trillion because “Mexicans in the US could make 150% more, Nigerians 1000% more”. Never mind the fact that basic economic logic says the infinite increase in labour supply sends wages crashing down to zero. It also claims that “a Nigerian in the United States cannot be enslaved by the Islamists of Boko Haram” because, clearly, mass migration to the West so far has not resulted in events related to Islamic terrorism nor separated communities. All our concerns about low wages and terrorism are are dismissed as “little besides conjecture and [have] anecdotal evidence to support it”. Reality is anecdotal evidence. The entire article is a massive exercise in intellectual dishonesty, ignoring or downplaying contrary evidence while highlighting potential and rather illusory benefits. Although it covers briefly the possibility that an ethnic group of a radically different culture could numerically overwhelm that of the host country and abolish democracy, no conclusion is drawn. And yet a “what if” scenario is important because a failure in creating a brave new world might result in an ethnic conflict the likes of which we are seeing in Syria now. But that’s not a politically correct answer and thus must be ignored. What matters is the alleged 78$ trillion, which for the record would never happen if ethnic conflicts and societal collapses erupted. The first line of the article says: “the potential gains are so vast that objectors could be bribed to let it happen” and that answers the pertinent question, who would get those 78$ trillion? The elites, and next they will bribe academics and intellectuals to post articles like that one. Indeed The Economist is owned by the world’s most elitist family, the Rothschilds. Very much like their puppet, Macron, who by the way worked for a Rothschild bank. Is this love a coincidence?

We surveyed The Economist‘s past articles. None of them actually predicted today’s world even remotely accurately. For 2015 there was a Russia break-up potential scenario a fantasy that resembles those spun by the late ideologist Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. Then there’s “The first 100 days” of President Hillary Clinton.

The prediction of Trump’s victory is the only accurate thing in the article. The conclusions drawn are all false. The subtitle hints that Trump’s inexperience would cause “real-world crises”. Once again, clearly, Hillary Clinton’s “we came, we saw, he died” about Libya did not cause a civil war, a collapsed society and an immigration crisis in the Central Mediterranean, very much like Obama and Hollande’s “Assad must go” approach towards Syria did. To say something like this would be dismissed as “anecdotal evidence”. There’s a claim that his first international visit would be to Russia; it turned out it was to Poland.

Hillary was supposedly toppled by “Russian hackers”, which only confirms that the fantasy was always present in the minds of her supporters. Too bad. The narrative has now shifted to “Russian collusion”. Russia would also be “shooting Estonian helicopters” because Russians are evil. The Russophobic narrative is The Economist‘s recurring leitmotif.

The other claims include Mexico, which would be now a “humanitarian” superpower because it won’t deport “unaccompanied minors”, also known as illegal immigrants to Central American countries, thus teaching Trump a lesson in morality. Oh no, wait, Mexico is actually considering building a wall along the border with Guatemala. What else did they predict?

Trump won’t pass his “Muslim ban”; the travel ban has actually been passed. There will be a trade war with China; there is none as yet. Deportations of illegal immigrants won’t happen; arrests are actually up 40%.

In short, none of The Economist‘s predictions have come true. It must be Russia’s fault or anecdotal evidence.

Liberal intellectuals are too busy living in a parallel world to notice their miscalculations. Are they then worth listening to?

Italy Furious After Austria Deploys Troops, Armored Vehicles To Border

An angry Italy summoned Austria"s ambassador after the government in Vienna announced it was ready to re-introduce border controls and deploy troops and armored vehicles along the border to block any migrant influx out of Italy. Austrian Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil told Kronen Zeitung daily that troops could go to the Brenner Pass and that four Pandur armoured personnel carriers had been sent to the Tyrol region with 750 troops were on standby.

“We need to prepare for the migration development in Italy, and I expect very promptly that border controls will have to be activated and assistance requested,” Hans Peter Doskozil told the online edition of the Krone daily, adding that a military deployment at the busy Alpine pass would be "indispensable if the influx into Italy [across the Mediterranean] does not diminish". While Austria has border checks with Hungary and Slovenia, elsewhere - such as on the border with Italy - it adheres to the EU open borders system.

Doskozil explained that “these are not battle tanks. These are armored vehicles without weapons which could block roads. These were already used during the refugee crisis 201/16 at the Spielfeld border crossing [with Slovenia],” just in case Italy got the impression that its northern neighbor was preparing to invade.

The Austrian border check point at Brenner.

The border controls will include the Alpine Brenner pass, which forms the border between Austria and Italy, one of the main mountain passes in the eastern Alps. There isn’t a strict time plan for the step-up in border security, but, according to Doskozil’s spokesman, “we see how the situation in Italy is becoming more acute and we have to be prepared to avoid a situation comparable to summer 2015” according to Reuters.

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said that Vienna is prepared to "protect" the frontier with Italy "if necessary," as he spoke with the Austria Press Agency. Later Italy"s foreign ministry said it had summoned Austrian Ambassador Rene Pollitzer "following the Austrian government"s statement about deploying troops to the Brenner (pass)".

The latest turmoil inside Europe"s customs union comes two years after Germany admitted over a million mostly Syrian migrants, as part of Angela Merkel"s "Open Door" (since shut) welcome, and just days after Italy"s interior minister demanded other EU nations "step up" and relieve Italy of the sudden flood of inbound migrants.

The Italian governor of South Tyrol, Arno Kompatscher, sought to defuse tensions. According to BBC, he said Austria had issued similar warnings about the border previously, and the situation there remained "quiet and stable". Austria was gearing up for a general election in October, Mr Kompatscher noted. The anti-immigration Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) is expected to poll strongly.

People-smuggling gangs have been exploiting the violence and chaos in Libya. The shortest crossing from Libya to Italy is only about 460km (290 miles). Nearly 85,000 migrants and refugees arrived in Italy in the first half of this year, across the Mediterranean. The UN refugee agency UNHCR says that is about 20% more than in the first half of 2016.

To be sure, the UN joined Italy"s appeal, with Vincent Cochetel, the UNHCR"S special envoy for the central Mediterranean, saying that “this is not sustainable. We need to have other countries joining Italy and sharing that responsibility." So far, nobody in the European "Union" has stepped up to "share the responsibility" of Europe"s generous refugee acceptance program.

The latest report by the UNHCR, revealed another troubling statistics: few of the migrants coming to Europe will granted asylum: 30% of them are fleeing conflict or persecution, while 70% of those arriving in Italy are economic migrants. Most migrants and refugees are young, single men with little or no education, and almost 15% are unaccompanied minors.

Meanwhile, Italy has also warned that the current scale of migrant arrivals is unsustainable and that it could even close its ports and impound aid agencies" rescue ships. In other words, yet another refugee crisis in Europe is imminent.

It will be the second time this has happened in two years. In 2015, the EU"s Schengen system, or the free movement across most European borders,  was overwhelmed by an influx of migrants and refugees, whoe reached Central Europe via the Balkans, and most sought asylum in Germany. Since then, tighter border controls in the Balkans have reduced the numbers heading north from Greece. Most of the influx to Austria was via Hungary. Many of those who came by train or on foot were refugees from Syria, Iraq and other conflict zones.

So far 101,000 migrants have entered Europe in 2017 via the Mediterranean and according to the latest figures, 2,247 people have died or are missing at sea.

Italian Ports Bombarded With Migrants; Interior Minister Demands Other EU Nations "Step Up"

More than a year after the BREXIT referendum shocked the world, the various EU member nations are seemingly no closer to a consensus on how to deal with Europe"s migrant influx.  The lack of a coordinated plan and disproportionate distribution of migrants across the continent has Italy threatening to close their ports to privately-funded aid boats until other nations "step up."   Per Yahoo News:

With arrivals in Italy up nearly 19 percent over the same period last year, Rome has threatened to close its ports to privately-funded aid boats or insist that funding be cut to EU countries which fail to help.

"There are NGO ships, Sophia and Frontex boats, Italian coast guard vessels" saving migrants i the Mediterranean, Minniti said, referring to the aid boats as well as vessels deployed under EU border security missions.

"They are sailing under the flags of various European countries. If the only ports where refugees are taken to are Italian, something is not working. This is the heart of the question," he said.

"I am a europhile and I would be proud if even one vessel, instead of arriving in Italy, went to another European port. It would not resolve Italy"s problem, but it would be an extraordinary signal" of support, he said.

Of course, in the face of the ever-growing crisis, the interior ministers of France, Germany and Italy got together to do what politicians do best: talk.  And while we"re sure that European citizens are very happy that "the talks went off very well," somehow we suspect the continued "all talk, no action" approach to the crisis is not entirely satisfactory for a continent that has been devastated by terrorist attacks of late.  

The French and German interior ministers met with their Italian counterpart Marco Minniti in Paris on Sunday to discuss a "coordinated response" to Italy"s migrant crisis, hours after Minniti had called on other European countries to open their ports to rescue ships.

The working dinner at the French interior ministry -- also attended by EU Commissioner for Refugees Dimitris Avramopoulos -- was aimed at finding "a coordinated and concerted response to the migrant flux in the central Mediterranean (route) and see how to better help the Italians," a source close the talks said.

The four-way talks between Minniti, Thomas de Maiziere of Germany, Gerard Collomb of France and Avramopoulos will also prepare them for EU talks in Tallinn this week.

"The talks went off very well," a member of the Italian delegation told AFP after the Paris meeting, with the "Italian proposals being discussed". The source offered no other details.

"We are under enormous pressure," Minniti had said earlier Sunday in an interview with Il Messaggero.

Meanwhile, over 2,000 migrants have died this year alone in their attempts to cross the Mediterranean.

More than 83,000 people rescued while attempting the perilous crossing from Libya have been brought to Italy so far this year, according to the UN, while more than 2,160 have died trying, the International Organization for Migration says.

Italy"s Red Cross has warned the situation in the country"s overcrowded reception centres is becoming critical.

"What is happening in front of our eyes in Italy is an unfolding tragedy," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on Saturday.

Minniti said Rome would be pushing for a way to shift the asylum application process from Italy to crisis-hit Libya, and safely bring to Europe those who win the right to protection.

"We have to distinguish before they set off (across the Mediterranean) between those who have a right to humanitarian protection and those who don"t," he said.

Perhaps, at some point, politicians will learn how to act rather than just talk...but we won"t hold our breath.

Soros-Linked "Undesirable NGOs" Fund ISIS-linked Refugee Boats To EU

Authored by William Engdahl,

Investigations by Italian authorities and others have found that NGOs funded by among others George Soros, are actively financing private ships to smuggle tens of thousands of illegal North African refugees into the EU via Southern Italy. The human trafficking is reportedly linked to ISIS smuggling networks. If confirmed by authorities, it could potentially open the NGOs to criminal charges .

Carmelo Zuccaro, the Chief Prosecutor of Catania, Sicily, has testified to a committee of the Italian Parliament in March that an official investigation into the funding of a fleet of modern refugee boats in the Mediterranean by private NGOs is warranted. He cited evidence that the human traffic smugglers in Libya and other North African coastal states, often reportedly linked to ISIS or other criminal bands, were coordinating the traffic into Italy of tens of thousands of illegal refugees. Zuccaro reported evidence that the human traffickers either on land, or on board smaller migrant boats, call the larger NGO-financed rescue vessels directly to arrange transfer of refugees. That implies a very close level of coordination between the human smuggler bands and the NGO-funded fleet of ships.

Zuccaro announced that his office is investigating what he called the “abnormal” amount of funds that allows even small agencies to hire ships. Italian authorities have so far uncovered at least ten private Non-Governmental Organizations involved, among them several NGOs financed by US hedge fund speculator George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

Zuccaro also told Italian press that, “the facilitation of illegal immigration is a punishable offense regardless of the intention.” He said that Italy was also investigating Islamic radicalization occurring in prisons and camps where immigrants are hired, illegally or off the books. European Immigration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos stated that some 80% of the North African migrants arriving in Italy had no legal right to asylum. Many were reportedly from criminal gangs that sprang up after the 2011 US-backed bombing of Libya and killing of Gaddafi that threw the country into anarchy.

Over the course of the past year as the refugee human trafficking route through Greece has been all but closed down, the route into the EU from North Africa has shifted to southern Italy and to use of modern chartered vessels to carry the thousands of refugees to Sicily and other parts of Southern Italy. In the first two months of 2017 illegal refugee inflows from Libya into southern Italy have risen by as much as 40% over the same period a year earlier.

NGO Human Trafficking

The official EU European Border and Coast Guard Agency, FRONTEX, in its 2017 Risk Analysis report, states that “the Central Mediterranean has become the main route for African migrants to the EU and it is very likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Specifically, 89% of migrants arrived from Libya.”

The FRONTEX report went on to note a dramatic shift in 2016 from 2015. Earlier the major migration flow went from Turkey into Greece and the Balkan states on to Germany and other EU states: “NGO rescue operations (into southern Italy-w.e.) rose significantly to more than 40% of all incidents. Since June 2016, a significant number of boats were intercepted or rescued by NGO vessels without any prior distress call and without official information as to the rescue location.”

Frontex raised the possibility that traffickers were putting migrants out to sea in a prearranged collusion with the private NGO ships that recover them and then bring them to Italy “like taxis.” What the EU agency described is a human smuggling operation, in effect, operations of international criminal organizations including ISIS, being run by ships chartered or owned by various Non-Governmental Organizations among them Soros-financed NGOs.

Italian admiral Enrico Credendino, commander of the EU’s anti-trafficking Operation Sophia, said the NGOs’ ships come close to the Libyan shore to attract migrant boats in the dark. “At night they use large floodlights; the traffickers see them and send the dinghies (carrying migrants) towards the lights,” he stated. Then they are taken aboard the larger NGO ships for the journey to Italy.

Soros NGOs working with ISIS?

If the Italian investigations into the NGO funding of the fleet of charter ships are confirmed, this would suggest that the NGOs, several of them linked to foundations or organizations financied or controlled by George Soros, are colluding illegally with human trafficker bands, in many cases bands controlled by ISIS in Libya.

A 2017 report by Quilliam, a private UK think-tank, claims that ISIS or the Islamic State (IS) is involved in the human trafficking operations into Italy. Their report states: “While some refugees may have to pay smugglers up to $560 for passage towards the Mediterranean coast, IS, capitalising on this route, offer free passage to those willing to join IS…To those reaching the Mediterranean coast, IS offer potential recruits up to $1,000 to join the organisation. ” Not exactly humanitarian.

US human rights investigator and lawyer William Craddick has discovered that several of the NGOs chartering the human smuggling boats ware linked to financial patronage of George Soros

and his Open Society Foundations including avaaz.org of the Soros-funded Moveon.org; Save the Children, and Médicins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) which charters a Mediterranean ship called Aquarius.

International Migration Initiative

Soros’ Open Society Foundations, which also has been reported to receive money from the US Government through the CIA-linked USAID, also funds something it calls the International Migration Initiative, an NGO Soros’ Open Society Foundations set up in 2010. Clearly the idea behind creation of Soros’ IMI was done with an eye to what would soon unfold in Europe as well as the USA refugee crises. The website of the Soros International Migration Initiative openly states that it has a “strategic corridor approach, facilitating coordinated action in countries of origin, transit, and destination.” The same website identifies what it terms three strategic migration corridors: Asia/Middle East, Central America/Mexico, and Eurasia, which centers on Central Asia into Russia. That almost sounds like a geopolitical grand design of someone.

In September 2016 the same George Soros announced he was “donating” $500 million to the European and US refugee cause. He declined to say where and how the money would be used. Was part of that earmarked for financing the fleet of modern NGO ships that bring tens of thousands of refugees from Libya? A relevant question to be sure for the Italian and other investigations.

In August, 2016 DCLeaks, a US website similar to Wikileaks, released 2,576 files predominately related to George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. One memo by the Soros foundation dated May 10, 2016, argued that Europe’s refugee crisis should be accepted as a “new normal,” and that the crisis means, “new opportunities” for Soros’ foundations to influence immigration policies on a global scale.

Soros and the ‘Merkel Plan’

The pawprints of Soros’ foundations are all over the EU refugee crisis that is upending social and economic stability across Europe since August 2015 when German Chancellor Angela Merkel surprised many even in her own party by declaring in a comment since become infamous, “we can do it,” followed by her decision on September 5, 2015 to accept thousands of refugees who had set out to walk from Keleti Station in Budapest to Germany, announcing that all refugees were welcome with open arms, no questions asked, no limit set. More than one million refugees, not only from Syria, flooded into Germany and other EU countries. As domestic opposition mounted against Merkel, in late 2015 Merkel went on a popular German TV talk show where she announced, “I have a plan.”

Indeed she did. It was even named by its architects, “The Merkel Plan.”

The plan was drawn up by a think tank with offices in Berlin, Brussels and Istanbul by the name The European Stability Initiative (ESI). Under that Merkel Plan, in addition to the over 1 million refugees of 2015, in 2016 Germany should, “agree to grant asylum to 500,000 Syrian refugees registered in Turkey over the coming 12 months.”

The Merkel Plan for accepting hundreds of thousands of refugees without question into Germany and other EU states with no number limit, “the new normal,” the term used by Soros’ International Migration Initiative website, was a product of the Soros networks as well. The author of the Merkel Plan and head of the ESI is an Austrian sociologist, Gerald Knaus. Knaus is a member of the George Soros-financed European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), and an Soros’ Open Society Fellow. Knaus’ European Stability Initiative was financed, according to the German Die Zeit, by among others the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Washington-based German Marshall Fund, as well as Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

Rome on brink of War

The recent explosion of illegal refugees into Southern Italy, aided by a fleet of ships chartered by NGOs linked to Soros and others, is no innocent humanitarian good samaritan deed. In December 2016 Virginia Raggi, the Mayor of Rome, said that the city was on the verge of a “war” between migrants and poor Italians. In southern Italy, the Sicilian Cosa Nostra had declared a “war on migrants” in 2016 amid reports that the Italian mafia had begun fighting with North African crime gangs who entered the EU among migrant populations.

The allegations of Soros NGO financing of a fleet of boats to illegally smuggle refugees or other migrants from North Africa into the EU suggested at the very least that the Washington-tied Soros networks were doing more than charity. It suggested that his NGOs were at least indirectly complicit in projects that were destroying the social stability of the EU much as Soros’ NGOs did in Ukraine in 2014 and before.

The impression is difficult to avoid that the entire current mass refugee phenomenon, together with the NATO wars that trigger them in places like Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, is part of a far larger and far more sinister design and that the money of George Soros, the character behind virtually every US State Department and CIA-backed Color Revolution since the 2000 toppling of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, is right in the middle of it.

Little wonder that the foundations and operations of “philanthropist” Soros are increasingly under attack around the world, including in Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Soros’ country of birth.