RE: Authorities Conflict Over Immigration as the EU Fights for Dominance

This is, in my opinion, a rather myopic way to view the issue, and it ignores the fundamental underpinnings of what it means to be a confederation.

Being a confederation is all about being stronger together, and that part of the exchange makes perfect sense to most people. We are stronger if me team up to make better trade deals, if we connect our infrastructure so that our citizens can travel easier, spend easier, get an education easier, invest easier, and generally grow our collective economy better. We share a defensive network that increases security, have each other's backs in negotiations with outside parties so that our negotiations carry significantly more weight, all of this is fairly intuitive. But another part of teaming up, of confederating, a part that is just as important, is sharing burdens, and distributing the load of bad or undesirable things so that no individual member collapses under the weight or is crippled by it.

The refugee crisis is one such burden, a burden that must be shared. There are simply far too many refugees, and the cultural, job sector, and financial burden is just far too large, for any one member to reasonably bear. Therefore you divide the burden and collectively carry it.

To be a part of the EU for decades, part of the less formalized European community for the better part of a century, to reap the substantial and vital benefits that have come from that, and then refuse your part of an unwelcome burden when it comes along, is bad form of the worst sort. It should be ethically reprehensible on it's face, but even if we set ethics aside, from a strictly utilitarian standpoint, it is a terribly idea. If nations simply refuse to shoulder their portion of the burden, leaving the last good actor left holding the bill, what does that do to the union? What does it do when your good actors get buried under a burden the others refuse to help lift? That does nothing but weaken and divide and strain the alliance, and compromise all of those benefits for future generations that previous generations were happy to enjoy.

But this is how people are, they are willing to compromise and endanger unfathomable amounts of long term good to avoid short term discomfort and change. It's one of the worst traits of our species.