Emotion of the refugee crisis catches Europe off guard

Humanitarians have united to assist the stream of refugees entering the continent — while politicians bumble over policy and right-wing extremists turn up their anti-migrant rhetoric, writes Tej Parikh

“They are refugees, not terrorists,” read one late summer Facebook status at the height of Europe’s “migrant crisis.” With evidence that Ahmad Almohammad, one of the eight Paris attackers, masqueraded as a refugee en route to Europe, and given BBC interviews with ‘migrants’ expressing concern about phony refugees, a light has been cast upon Europe’s pro-refugee activists.

The European psyche on migration has been caught off guard by the sheer pace of events — the European Union’s statistics agency, Eurostat, estimates that the 700,000 asylum applications in 2015 is just the tip of the iceberg.