Lithuania (one of the Baltic States) is eager to accept refugees but refugees are turning a cold shoulder to this small yet pretty European country.
Lithuania’s offer of welcoming refugees is sincere given that the country’s young people are emigrating at such a fast clip that there are fears there might eventually not be any Lithuania at all. Refugees here will be not a burden but valued contributors.
Lithuania has been working hard to make itself more attractive to migrants, and I hope the efforts pay off. I’ve been to Lithuania, and it’s a very nice place. Beautiful nature, great architecture, good health care, passable food. It suffers a bit from uniformity and insularity but that’s precisely what refugees can help turn around.
Clarissa's Blog 
Well, “refugees” is the wrong term. Most of the mob crashing the gates of civilized Europe aren’t fleeing a war zone. They’re uninvited immigrants seeking generous welfare benefits and a better life for themselves and their families (and I don’t blame them for seizing the opportunity, after Merkel stupidly threw open the gates).
Why settle for the limited benefits of goodhearted but tiny Lithuania, when you can go straight for the throat (and the wallet) of German taxpayers?
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I don’t get the classification where a refugee is a beetle thing to be than an immigrant. I am an immigrant, and that’s something I’m very proud of. I made a choice to change my life completely, and not just once but twice, while others just accepted whatever fate assigned them, meekly and mutely.
And unlike refugees, I wasn’t fleeing hardship and wasn’t propelled by necessity. I obviously wasn’t fleeing a war zone but, rather, tossed away a very cushy lifestyle and accepted poverty instead as a result of emigration.
And what, this is somehow worse than being a victim of a cruel fate?
I really don’t get this debate over the use of the terms “refugee” and “immigrant” as if a claim of victimhood were somehow more respectable than a claim of self-sufficiency and strength.
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The difference is that you went to a country that more or less welcomed you, and didn’t kick the gates down while you were part of a mob.
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As I said, Lithuania wants and needs these refugees
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Isn’t that the point though? They want the refugees, but the REFUGEEs don’t want to go there because they aren’t getting enough free stuff.
It is uncomfortable for many democrats / liberals (which again you are bucking hre on this issue. which is great!) to acknowledge that some new people are desirable. You are / were desirable because you got a college degree then a PHD. You weren’t long-term going to be a resource drain on our economy.
People who are opposed to open borders (unlimited immigration) basically rank immigrants this way.
1) skilled, can bring value to the economy, and a net financial plus
2) unskilled, may be an economic drag, but if a refugee of war or severe violence / political strife it is right to help them
3) unskilled, likely to be an economic drag, and coming here to take advantage of our wealth and prosperity – general consensus is to heavily limit this set.
Again, nobody in america “earned” their parents procreating in this great country, shich is why some people think its racist / xenophobic / wrong, to limit any type of immigration. The other side basically thinks that yes we are fortunate, but we also have done a ton to make such a great society and we get to limit who comes into it, while hopefully helping many other nations have their own better socities, wealth, economies by emulating our country as much as possible.
Hope this helps
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And refugees are desirable because they are (at the moment) easy to pity and condescend. The problem with your analysis is that it’s too Marxist. You see economic motivations but fail to notice any other, similarly potent ones.
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The problem is that Europe (more or less the EU) wants to reward suffering and actively discourages innovation. This is due to an antiquated asylum system that a bunch of muddle headed but well-meaning politicians thought they’d never have to use.
Asylum in the liquid present is a product and the market is highly sensitive to the current market value of refugees.
Germany says it wants to take in Syrian war refugees so it can feel better about itself and voila! Suddently there are hundreds of thousands of nouveaux Syriennes.
If Germany said they wanted just Middle Eastern Christians then we’d see mass conversion (until they’re safely established in Germany and assume its safe to ‘convert’ back to Islam).
Sweden some time ago said it had a special commitment to refugeee minors and voila! got a bunch of six foot balding “teenagers”.
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Exactly. That’s exactly it. Refugees are consumer goods that are modified to serve the needs of a customer.
Brilliant insight.
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Yes, refugees do not want to go to poor countries. But the idea that Lithuania is particularly welcoming is a myth. It is part of, as you once said, the official narrative of “Europeans awaiting migrants at the trains stations with flowers”. Or something like that. 🙂 Your second link is to the paper by vice-speaker of Parliament… Of course there are many people welcoming immigrants in Lithuania, as everywhere else. But they are not even near the majority.
All East-European countries are relatively intolerant of immigrants. First because they are poor and resent the migrants getting more social benefits than the locals. Second, due to the trauma of the Soviet occupation (or belonging to the Soviet sphere of influence), they did not get to play with the nation-state at the appropriate development stage. They hoped that after joining the EU they get to develop their states as homogeneously “European” (read – white, but preferably as non-Russian as possible), and here some super-national entity is dumping all those Muslim migrants on them…
These are the cosmopolitan capitalists who are happy to populate the empty areas by any new workers/consumers/taxpayers…
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First of all, let’s not exaggerate about “all those refugees.” For now, Lithuania is open to accepting a little over 1,000. And I’m talking specifically about governmental policy here, not about the feelings of the people in the street.
I wish Ukraine followed Lithuania’s example. This is something that could be spun into a major PR victory.
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My assumption that this is signaling. They want to let Germany know they’re not like the other nasty Eastern Europeans while knowing full well that they are not an attractive immigrant location and are not likely to welcome very many people.
The language barrier alone is pretty steep, Lithuanian is not a walk in the park for the most eager and gifted language learners, let alone people who are barely literate in their own language. And I’m not sure what kind of teaching programs they have.
It might be nice to have some kind of muslim presence in Vilnius again (once known as the Jerusalem and Mecca of the region for its Jewish and Muslim populations) but those muslims were relatively laid back Tatars who drank vodka and ate pork and not angry, jittery Arabs eager to show how non-European they are.
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And Swedish? That’s one crazy language. And German defeated even me.
European languages other than English or French will all be prohibitive to the refugees but France and the UK are precisely the two countries that are the most reluctant to accept anybody else.
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Yes, I agree, it is signaling. From a position of relative safety, because most of the migrants officially assigned to Lithuania (or any other East-European country) will not stay anyway. Typical political BS – making statements in the hope that one will not have to pay for them.
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I think Lithuania really needs these refugees. Even more than they might need Lithuania. I see no reason to conclude that this offer of a welcome is not sincere.
Just like I think that Merkel is sincere when she welcomes the refugees. Of course, everybody is acting rationally and welcoming refugees because they think it will be beneficial to them (those who are welcoming.) Ultimately, everything we are doing for others is done because it benefits us. But so what?
What I find attractive about Lithuania, in this regard, is that it needs these refugees. And that will shift the balance of power from the kind we are seeing in Germany where the refugees are an object of beneficence and nothing else.
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I actually can sort of an anecdote to that. I have family heritage from latvia, and I know their population has struggled. As I was told (surely anecdotal, but seemingly backed by facts) by a few people from there that any young person with skills / means to leave is doing so. There population has declined i believe 10-20%, and so they probably do want / need more bodies, just like lithuania.
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To summarize – the purpose of those articles is to make Clarissa and the Bosses or Brussels and Berlin think “Lithuania is such a nice country!”, and hopefully have this positive image stored somewhere in the backroom of their subconscious until the moment they are making some investment decisions, for example. 🙂
But should someone really take it seriously and introduce any sizable numbers of migrants…
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Yes, as we discussed recently, politicians don’t run charities and make calculated decisions. But a thousand refugees is a very small group of people. Even Lithuania could have the resources to resettle them to everybody’s benefit.
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Great, we already got from “want” to “can” accommodate. 🙂
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