Mass Migration Woes: 'Family Reunions' bring 350 Kids per Month to Vienna, Austria
Doing so requires building--and staffing--a new school building every month, which is clearly unsustainable
Before you go, ‘aw, what shalls, this isn’t affecting my country’, please read on: it is, if you’re living in any ‘Western’ country thus badly governed (all are), with perhaps the exception of Japan and South Korea as regards a somewhat stronger regard for one’s own culture. (Disclaimer: having never been to either, my judgement is based on less ‘political correctness’ with regard to foreigners.)
Earlier today, Vienna-based tabloid Heute has published the below piece after it has surfaced that approx. 350 children from currently not-so-war-torn Syria are moving to Austria every month due to a policy called ‘family reunion’ (Familienzusammenführung).
Before we proceed, a few definitions that are as mainstream-establishmentarian as they come (i.e, via Wikipedia; links omitted, emphases mine):
Family reunification is a recognized reason for immigration in many countries because of the presence of one or more family members in a certain country, therefore, enables the rest of the divided family or only specific members of the family to emigrate to that country as well.
Family reunification laws try to balance the right of a family to live together with the country's right to control immigration. How they balance and which members of the family can be reunited differ largely by country.
Keep this in mind as we look at the brief piece; translation and emphases mine, as are the bottom lines.
Vienna’s Schools At the Breaking Point: 350 New Students Arrive Every Month: ‘Collapse is Imminent Soon’
Via Heute, 28 March 2024 [source]
Hundreds of children and young people from Syria are currently coming to Austria through family reunification. Around 350 of them stay in Vienna every month. For schools, principals and teachers, this further exacerbates an already tense situation. Thomas Krebs, chairman of the Vienna teacher’s union, warns in Heute: ‘Our system cannot handle this, politicians must finally take action, otherwise there is a risk of collapse.’
School Places Have Been Used Up for Ukrainian Children
City Councillor [orig. Stadtrat, but here is meant the State Secretary] for Education Christoph Wiederkehr explains in the ORF Wien interview that the ‘considerable’ buffer of school places was available for the 4,000 children and young people from Ukraine—in all approx. 200 new school classes—has been ‘used up’. Family reunifications were planned [by whom and for what?], but the Ukrainian refugee children could not be expected [because no-one considered the possibility? Gimme a break]. Therefore, short-term solutions such as container classes have to be used, despite major protests from parents and schools [so much for representative democracy and the ‘consent of the governed’].
‘They didn’t take us seriously in the first place’
City Councillor for Education Wiederkehr is convinced that this solution will make it possible to keep the classes as small as possible and to staff them appropriately. However, teacher union chair Thomas Krebs sees it differently and reacts angrily: ‘Politicians have not taken us seriously for years, we have always warned that we are already at the limit. We were able to massively cushion social consequences for years, now we are approaching the breaking point.’ [well, having grown up in Vienna, I consider whatever a pampered teacher’s unionist says with a couple of salt mines, however, that was in the 1980s and 1990s when a different breed was making such claims—and given the ongoing crapification of everything, well, Mr. Krebs may be right].
Orientation Classes as a Solution [sic]
Around 7,000 children of recognised refugees came to the country last year, 90% of who hail from Syria. Immigrant children and young people will then be looked after in special orientation classes for eight weeks before they can take part in regular classes. This is becoming impossible now, says Krebs, because the children then come to the classes with different levels of education and can only participate minimally in class due to language barriers [wasn’t this the same with Ukrainians? I mean, there’s no argument here].
Many teachers are already no longer able to cope with the situation, because due to the shortage of teachers, career changers and [advanced] students also have to step in. Krebs calls for more support for teaching staff, social workers in schools, and external offers for learning German.
Demand for an Open-Ended Discussion
When asked by [state broadcaster ORF’s national radio station] Ö1, the ÖVP-led Federal Ministry of Education does not consider itself to be responsible for this matter as this is a matter pertaining to the federal states [talk about left (Vienna gov’t) vs. right hands (teacher’s union) not knowing what to do is one thing, but let’s not forget both are ‘governed’ by an empty suit, Education (sic) Minister Polaschek] City Councillor for Education Christoph Wiederkehr refers to the short-term school space created by the container classes at five locations in Vienna [nothing says ‘refugees welcome’ as much as being placed in ‘special’ makeshift quarters].
However, this alone is not a solution for the trade unionist, because a concept is still missing. ‘And it's not up to us teachers to find solutions here. That's the job of politicians [God forbid they bring in ‘the Experts™’, too]! We teachers want to teach, but the conditions have to be right. Children have to have social and linguistic skills in order to be taught [here, Mr. Krebs appears to intimate that ‘refugees’ are lacking social skills, whatever that means], otherwise lessons don't work.’ He calls for a discussion without taboos in order to find a sensible solution.
Bottom Lines
We’re coming full circle on the topic of mass migration, which is very much distinct from ‘immigration’. Having been an ‘immigrant’ to three different Western countries over the past 15 years—Switzerland, the US, and Norway—I can assure everyone based on my ‘lived experiences’ of moving across borders with children, too, that ‘immigration’ requires copious amounts of paperwork, patience in dealing with often humourless bureaucrats, and a other things, most notably funds to tide you over periods ‘in-between’. All of this is absent.
What the above ‘article’ is missing is yet another crucial question: why would some 6,300 Syrians be permitted entry into the country in 2023 after their (presumably mainly) fathers migrated to Austria before that point in time? I mean, being a refugee from Syria in 2010-15 is one thing, but claiming a ‘right to family reunion’ in 2023…?
Moreover, we’re also missing crucial context here because Mr. Wiederkehr, as recently as mid-December 2023 (!) said the following:
We assume that we will have around 300 additional children and young people per month who need a school place...
According to Wiederkehr, refugee children come from Syria, for example, who had previously been in Turkish refugee camps for years and neither speak German sufficiently nor had ever attended school. It is often unreasonable for other school children, but also for schools, for these children to start school straight away, says Wiederkehr…
Not only does Vienna exceed the quota when it comes to basic services [orig. Grundversorgung, i.e., public services offered upon arrival], most of those affected would also come to Vienna immediately after completing the asylum procedure…[the reason is simple: Vienna gives them more goodies than other federal states]
Three years after completion of the procedure or if subsidiary protection is granted, one should have to live in the federal state in which the procedure was carried out, Wiederkehr is calling for a corresponding federal regulation. The centre of life should be there, and social benefits should only be paid out in this federal state…
Constitutional law expert Heinz Mayer believes this plan is unenforceable: ‘In any case, this is contrary to European law because those entitled to asylum must be treated the same as nationals. This means they can make use of the freedom of movement that is constitutionally guaranteed and must not be concentrated in one federal state.’
And thus we’ve come full circle: legacy media has conflated the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker/grantee’ (this was done by constitutional law expert Mayer, of all people), with the Federal Education Minister refusing to consider himself responsible.
If neither the state nor the federal gov’t feels responsible, who is?
Mr. Mayer blames the EU, which is likely not wrong, but it shows how disenfranchised the electorate in the EU bloc has become by now.
In another ORF piece, Mr. Wiederkehr—as recently as 21 Feb. 2024—sounded a bit different:
According to the city councillor for education, the City of Vienna has created around 1,200 new classes for compulsory public schools in the past ten years. There will be 103 new rooms in the coming school year. But the trend continues: recently, crisis and war events or an increase in demand in the area of special education have led to an increase in students, it was said.
Due to these ‘multiple challenges’, the space available in the city’s schools is currently no longer able to accommodate additional increased needs. However, the high increases from the area of family reunification would represent such a situation…
The costs given by Mr. Wiederkehr for these additional measures are given as 14 billion euros in 2024.
Wiederkehr: ‘Massive imbalance’ in the question of distribution
Once again, Wiederkehr also criticised what he saw as the ‘massive imbalance’ in the distribution of refugees among the federal states: ‘Nationwide solutions are needed here so that the infrastructure in the federal capital remains viable.’
Well, we’ve been warned, isn’t it?
I’ll conclude here by quoting, once more, from the detailed study ‘Borderless Welfare State’ (2023) by Jan Van der Beek et al.:
Maintaining the existing legal framework, in particular regarding the right of asylum, does not seem a realistic option under these circumstances…
Changing the ‘existing legal framework’, however, according to constitutional law experts (sic) is ‘impossible due to EU law’.
This is the present-day equivalent of the Egg of Columbus.
And to resolve the problem of EU-facilitated mass migration into EU member-states, equally ‘creative’ solutions are warranted.
But one cannot make an omelette without breaking the eggs.
I diverge from this post only to the extent that it somewhat minimizes the difficulties in Syria today. While things have certainly quieted down from the height of the post-2011 war, the U.S. continues to punish Syria by:
• starvation sanctions
• occupying with Kurdish proxies the eastern part of the country, depriving Syria of most of its oil revenue and much agricultural land
• occupying the border crossing with Iraq at al-Tanf and a radius of some kilometers around it, obstructing commerce and reportedly giving safe haven (and possibly more) to anti-government, Islamist fighters
• being at best hands-off with (and possibly continuing clandestine support for) the Islamists still in place in Idlib governorate.
The mass-migration pump into Western countries has both push and pull. To stop it efficiently and humanely will require not only stopping the pro-migrant policies pulling these people in, but also the Western policies of immiseration pushing them out.
I can sum it up in two words for you: Trojan Horse.