The Russian tourist is a security risk, but the migrant unable to integrate is not?

Written by András Biró for 888.

The EU agreement on visa restrictions for Russian citizens further increases the list of unnecessary, virtue-defying sanctions. According to Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, this decision was necessary because "Russians entering EU member states pose a security risk." Interestingly, in connection with the hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving in Europe illegally and aggressively without any documentation in 2015, European leaders were not nearly as worried about the "security risks" as they are now. Meanwhile, according to the ISIS terrorist organization, more than 4,000 terrorists were smuggled into Europe with the refugees who carried out several successful terrorist attacks.

Morally based collective guilt
As is known, on August 31, EU foreign ministers reached an agreement regarding the complete suspension of the EU's 2007 visa facilitation agreement with Russia. Although the EU has already repealed the part of the document concerning Russian government officials and entrepreneurs, now the freezing of the part concerning tourists will mean that visa applications will not only take much longer to be processed, but will also become more expensive. Among other things, Borrell referred to the need to end the practice of "Russian citizens traveling and spending their money in the territory of the Union as if there were no war", but he also emphasized that Russian touriststs represent a "security risk".

The collective punishment of the Russian people is not morally justifiable either, it is still not clear why it will be a problem for wealthier Russians that a visa will cost 80 euros instead of the previous 35 euros, or that it will be much more difficult to obtain a visa for re-entry. In addition, the measure will probably not cause much social dissatisfaction either, since 70 percent of Russians have never been abroad, and among those who occasionally go on vacation, Turkey, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are considered the most popular destinations.

Sitting upside down on the horse
It is worth contrasting this with the fact that when 1.3 million people of foreign culture arrived in Europe in 2015, and less than a third of this crowd (330,000 people) were entitled to apply for asylum, then, in addition to certain European leaders, the Brussels elite also burned with the Willkommenskultur fever. Enthusiasm for the reception of "refugees" was not dampened by the fact that

1. it was proven that nearly 1 million people arrived as illegal migrants without any documentation,

2. based on intelligence information, it was clear what security threats all this entails for Europe.

It should not be forgotten that, despite everything, the Brussels elite wanted to impose mandatory quotas on the member states, which was ultimately prevented by the V4 led by Hungary. We can remember that pro-immigration organizations, such as the Kein Mensch ist illegal (No Person Is Illegal) international network, are still campaigning today so that illegal migrants cannot be deported, even though this is not an ideological but a legal issue. Migration is quite simply not a human right, even though pro-immigration forces have been trying with all their might to blur the legal boundaries ever since.

While Islamic radicalism and jihadism are rampant in the parallel societies that have developed in Western countries, since 2015 not only multi-generational immigrants who are unable to integrate - that is, already born and socialized in Europe - pose a security challenge, but also the migrants who arrived in 2015 and indeed in many cases the refugees as well (without claiming to be exhaustive, there were examples of this in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Turku, Würzburg, and London, among others). Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, famously said in 2017 that "terror is part of big city life" as terrible as it sounds, it is increasingly difficult to deny that "diversity" and terror go hand in hand.

According to the EU bureaucrats, however, it seems that the security threat posed by Russian tourists who come with their families and who may be Putin sympathizers is even greater than the crowds with a foreign culture - and often arriving illegally - who are disrupting the cohesion of European societies. It is not even worth talking about the fact that until the average Russian returns home after his European vacation - having spent himself well - he is unable to integrate, and as a result, Western citizens are forced to live permanently with migrants who often pose a terrorist threat.

Source: 888