Interesting discussion macsga, I remain sceptical but I do see the truth in some of your posts, perhaps my view is jaded by living amongst so called 'integrated' minorities in London, I don't even have much positive to say about the majority of the native caucasians either so I am not writing from a position of 'supremacy'. I won't go into my racial heritage, being largely western I still have some middle-eastern blood way back in my family tree. I have nothing against waves of immigration (I'm British, and in general we are very tolerant of other cultures). I do think that the level of immigration will seriously affect integration though- we are talking millions, not tens of thousands as has been the norm. I don't think there is is a comparative example anywhere in recent western history (perhaps post WW2?). There are already a lot of tensions in Western countries do to multicultural immigration policies, it just seems to me that this will exacerbate matters further.
Perspective. This is what we need to understand what's happening in the EU right now. Let's see some facts:
1. Was the Syria/Iraq crisis pre-organized?
2. Were the migrants forced to leave their houses and cities?
3. Were they "indulged" by the Europeans to "join" their "promised land"?
If you answered all the above affirmatively, then we may have a basis to start a conversation. Let's please talk a bit of thermodynamics here. Don't worry, it will be only epidermic and nothing you could not understand.
You're a top scientist and want to observe chaotic particles within a closed thermodynamic box. You take an isolated box, full of "free" molecules of smoke into the inherent air. Everything is thermodynamically "controlled" and (somewhat) "predictable". After some time, the entropy of such a chaotic environment is maximized. As a top scientist in thermodynamics you knew that, and it's being predicted since the very beginning.
When there's taxis, there's no chaos though, so, you cannot observe chaotic phenomena. Which means you should "maintain" the chaos. That will keep the experiment rolling, thus you will keep your job. Now let's broaden our minds.
What EU is all about? Could we perceived it like a "closed thermodynamic system"? The answer is "yes". It has all the characteristics. The first "boxes" where the countries that primarily formed the EU. First only a few were interconnected; then, more countries were added and more connections were established. After 29 countries and 29 years from the Schengen treaty, we had reached the maximum entropy of the enclosed "chaos". There was a form of taxis, so, the experiment lost its intrinsic cause!
We are now at the crucial point where we open the box to add more smoke molecules inside. More chaos - more experiment - more time... What's gonna be next? I'll leave it to your imagination. If this passes on without major public unrest, guess what comes next...