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Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico

Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, says his country will accept only Christian refugees as it would be “false solidarity” to force Muslims to settle in a country without a single mosque. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s hard-line prime minister, calls the influx a “rebellion by illegal migrants” and vows a fresh crackdown this week.


Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban

The discord has further unsettled a union already shaky from struggles over the euro and the Greek financial crisis and now facing a historic influx of people attracted by Europe’s relative peace and prosperity.

When EU representatives meet again Monday to take up a proposal for allocating refugees among them, Central and Eastern European nations are likely to be the most vocal opponents. Their stance — reflecting a mix of powerful far-right movements, nationalism, racial and religious prejudices and economic arguments that they are less able to afford to take in outsiders than their wealthier neighbors — is the latest evidence of the cultural and political divides that persist between East and West.

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Few migrants, in fact, are particularly interested in settling in Eastern Europe, preferring to head to Germany or Scandinavia, where social-welfare benefits are higher, employment opportunities greater and immigrant communities better established. In that sense, migrants are aligned with leaders in Eastern and Central European capitals, who frequently argue that the 28-member bloc should focus first on securing its borders and figuring out a way to end the war in Syria before talking about mandatory quotas for accepting refugees.



But as often as not, the political discourse has quickly moved toward a wariness of accepting racial and religious diversity.

“This refugee flow has outraged the right wing,” said Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch. “If you scratch the surface, why are they so upset? It’s not about jobs or the ability to manage them or social welfare. What it is really about is that they are Muslim.”

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Talking by phone while driving from a conference in Poland, Robert Biedron, the mayor of Slupsk, said he was ashamed of the reaction of many to the plight of the migrants.



“Here I am, driving on a road that was built with European Union money,” Biedron said. “It was built with money taken from taxpayers in Italy and Germany and France. Now we refuse to do our part? I am really ashamed.”

RICK LYMAN

http://www.seattletimes.com/
images from various online sources

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All is changing now on the perceptions of Illegal immigrants in Europe.Some of EU member countries erected fences on their boundary to keep them outside their territory. 

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