tinydancer
Diamond Member
Well that's fine and dandy. But these other people are migrants and have nothing to do with the very real and very true refugee crisis.
In other words these slugs are piggy backing true refugees.
"The traffickers were selling them identity cards, either stolen from us Syrians, or faked, ready to show the Germans.’
Trade in these documents — produced by trafficking gangs in forgery factories — is booming.
In the Greek capital Athens, a dealer and people smuggler nicknamed ‘Abu Karem’ (it means generous one) sells Syrian and European passports from a cafe down an alleyway. Some, costing £150 each, are brand new, printed in Bulgaria, and are unlikely to pass muster.
We first realised back in Turkey, when we waited to get a boat to Lesbos in Greece, migrants from other Arab-speaking countries were claiming to be Syrian
Ismail Gannom, Syrian refugee
Others, stolen from Syrian migrants, bear official registered numbers and sell for £2,000 or more, ready for their new owner to place a photo inside. Abu Karem’s sales pitch is that these will ‘guarantee’ entry into Austria and then Germany.
As Fabrice Leggeri, head of the European border agency Frontex, last week told French radio: ‘Trafficking in Syrian passports is an extremely lucrative trade for smugglers. People who use them mostly speak Arabic, they may come from Africa or the Middle East, but they have the profile of economic migrants, not refugees.’
He added: ‘A lot have fake Syrian papers because they know they’ll get asylum in the EU more easily."
Witnesses claim fewer than a third of refugees actually fleeing war
