SORRY, IGNORANCE IS NO EXCUSE

…Immigrants arriving in Europe from the Middle East

 

GOP Nominee:  “Don’t confuse me with the facts.”

 

In the president's commencement speech at Rutger’s University, President Obama made a direct shot at the current presumptive GOP nominee by saying that “ignorance is no excuse”.

 

Now it’s hard to tell exactly to which piece of ignorance that the president was referring, but one item is the GOP’s nominee’s understanding of what’s going on in Europe with their immigrant migration.

 

Just last month, the GOP nominee stated “Look at what’s happening all over Europe. It’s a mess and we don’t need it. … When you look at that migration, you see so many young, strong men. Does anyone notice that? Am I the only one? Young, strong men. And you’re almost like, ‘Why aren’t they fighting?’ You don’t see that many women and children.”

 

This individual uses this European migration issue for supporting his tough immigration policies along the US-Mexico border and, of course, for building his infamous wall.

 

If “Mr. Know-It-All” would just take a few moments to look into the facts, he would know that what he is saying is total crap.

 

Yes, it is true that when all this migration started back in 2015, 75% of those migrating were men.  But that data goes back to June of last year.

 

The nominee has continually been saying “…there were very few women, very few children among Syrian refugees arriving in Europe”.  At the time he made that statement, the actual numbers showed that there were about the same number of men to women and children.

 

However, at one of his recent big rallies, he made this same claim again of more men than women immigrants going into Europe, which hasn’t been that case for months.

 

As of March, the break-out of the number of men to women & children were as follows per the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees: 47% of those arriving in Greece and Italy were men, while 34% were women and 19% were children. 

 

The reality is that it has been approximately that way since November of last year.  But you sure wouldn’t know that from listening to “Mr. Know-It-All”.

 

Today, the number of unaccompanied children arriving by sea has been increasing.  Just last month, 35% of sea arrivals were children.  The percentage of children has been increasing in the recent months. 

 

Adults are classified as being 18 to 59 years old.  The majority of the young adult men are coming from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, according to the European Commission. Of the arrivals of young men of the recent months, they were Syrians and only 17% were 15 to 24 years old and 20% were 25 to 59 years old.

 

Among Afghans, which is the second-largest group arriving in Europe, only 26% were 15 to 24 years old and 21% were 25 to 59 years old.

 

The point here is that the GOP nominee gets one set of information and then doesn’t bother to keep it up to date.

 

This approach to running his campaign is all he seems to know how to do.

 

But as the president has truly said, “ignorance is no excuse”.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016