The European Union may accept up to 20,000 refugees a year and set up an automatic redistribution program for migrants overcrowding southern European states, under plans currently being developed in Brussels.

This doesn’t address the problem at all; it just encourages the current freshet to burgeon into a raging torrent.

True enough, as one anonymous EU official said,

We have to start somewhere. Agreeing on refugees outside the EU may be easier, because they are the most in need. Then, we may move on to relocation within the EU.

Indeed, the EU must start somewhere.

How about starting at the source of the refugee flow: here, the “unrest” in Syria and in northern Africa? Resolving the situations there on terms that leave the locals feeling safer and with some chance to prosper would take a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of resources in men and money, but it would yield far more permanent and moral results.

But there’s that work part. These EU persons would rather just take the easy way out, a way that gives short term feel-good and prompt personal political benefit. They don’t actually care a farthing about the refugees in their own right.