Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

The repeated attacks, heavy immigration of refugees...I'm hoping for the best, but I feel like there is a powder keg here. Whether or not it is based in any fact, how this is handled and plays out is a serious concern.

What do people think the refugees were running away from? Exactly these people.

Not European but travelling in Asia at the moment. Have had a couple of discussions with run-of-the-mill Europeans concerned that the refugees areproportionally made up much more of young men than women/children with the implication that these guys are up to no good. I'd say the subtleties of the humanitarian crisis is going to be lost on the average European Joe in the wake of this

The refugees who have travelled to Europe to seek asylum are disproportionately young and male. Because if you have a family group in a refugee camp in Turkey, you don't send your grandmother to take a dangerous boatride across the Med and then traipse around the countryside of the Balkans trying to find a way to get to talk to a German government official about the possibility of making an asylum application for your family.

If I had a wife, grandmother, kids, etc. in a dangerous war zone or refugee camp, there is no way in hell that I would leave them behind. Not gonna happen.

Oh you would, if that was the only way to ensure survival and/or a better future for them. It would be painful, but you would feel you have to do this.

No, I would not. Absolutely not. No way.

I would send the wife and kids first before going myself.

You seem to misunderstand what displaced people want. Why would you send them away and stay in a refugee camp? Refugee camps are precisely the first relatively safe place displaced people find. They are attended by aid agencies, and provide basic needs. They are temporarily a place of shelter and food. Traveling on the road from border crossing to border crossing around Europe is less safe than staying put in the refugee camp. You'll need to find food and shelter in different places each night. You will be hassled by authorities. You might end up living rough on the streets of Ljubljana for the winter. But if you make it to Berlin you might be able to apply for asylum, find a job, and get enough money together to bring your family (if you have papers, they will be able to use trains or planes - they won't have to walk 800 miles). That seems a rational calculation for a young man.