But a majority-male caravan is not the picture the liberal press presents to the public, preferring a more diversity-friendly portrait.

Saturday’s Washington Post rejected the invasion scenario and managed to find an appealing kid for its front page:

A more realistic representation is a photo of Honduran men carrying the flag of the nation they are fleeing.

The Post story was reprinted in Cedar Rapids’ The Gazette newspaper which also featured a warm and fuzzy kid pic:

At U.S. border, caravan will slow to crawl, The Gazette, By Joshua Partlow and Sarah Kinosian, the Washington Post, November 16, 2018


TIJUANA, Mexico — When the Central American caravan finally crosses onto U.S. soil – past the fresh coils of barbed wire, through the chain-link door – they will begin a closely monitored existence in U.S. custody, with showers every two days and guard checks every 15 minutes.

They will live in one of 31 holding rooms with painted cinder-block walls at the San Ysidro port of entry, the nation’s largest with space for 25 people per room, sleeping under Mylar blankets on rubber mats, watched by video surveillance. They will have two hot meals a day, a cold lunch, and possibly cereal before bed.

What the experience won’t be, for the several thousand migrants who are now pooling up in Tijuana, is fast.

“We have a process in place,” said Sidney Aki, the San Ysidro port director for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Please be patient.”

After more than a month and some 3,000 miles, the caravan has reached the end of its road. What had been a plodding slog through southern Mexico rapidly accelerated in the past week, as many migrants rode in buses, provided by local governments, along the route from Mexico City north to the border. More than 2,000 people have arrived in Tijuana this week, with another 7,000 not far behind, according to Mexican authorities. That doesn’t include the roughly 3,000 migrants who were already in Tijuana seeking legal entry into the United States.

For many in the caravan, the next step is to apply for asylum at the San Ysidro border crossing, and what that means is waiting. (Continues)

Below, invasive young men demand the border be opened or else some infidels will die.

Clearly there was never a Muslim counterpart to Dale Carnegie, who wrote “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Muslims don’t respond well to “No.”

As a reminder of what real refugees look like, here are some Belgian war refugees in 1945.

What’s happening is that Europe is trying to exercise a tiny bit of border control now after the big Free Stuff invitation went out across the third world months ago. Europe will need more than a few local cops to hold back the tide that has been building. Did the elites in Berlin and Brussels not understand that millions would come?

Chilling message from menacing migrants who demand ‘open borders or die’ at checkpoint, Express (UK), December 6, 2015

MIGRANTS attempting to march across Europe have been waving placards saying ‘open or die’ after being stopped by closed borders and barbed wire.

A group of men waving the menacing home-made banner grew angry as they were stopped in their tracks at the border between Macedonia and Greece.

Macedonia is the latest country to erect a border fence.

The tiny, landlocked state has begun building a fence along its border with Greece, blocking a key transit route for migrants travelling from Turkey to northern and western Europe.

Macedonia insists it will allow those fleeing war-zones to continue to pass through, meaning people fleeing from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq can continue to cross.

The UK is well-known to feature among the most favoured destinations for migrants from Africa and the Middle East because of Britain’s extensive benefits system and ready availability of work.

But many others, including Iranians, Moroccans, Pakistanis and Eritreans will have their journey’s halted.

The group clashed with authorities after being told they could not pass through the border.

Greek riot police struggled to maintain order and at least two people were injured on Thursday at the border as hundreds of people rejected by Macedonia clashed with the Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis who have been given the green light to cross the border.

Despite using tear gas, 150 riot police on the Greek side near the village of Idomeni failed to budge a small group of mainly Iranian migrants – some holding small children – who set up barricades to prevent refugees from entering Macedonia.

Tired of waiting, thousands of refugees then broke through a Greek police cordon, surging to the Macedonian border, which immediately closed again.

Earlier, police had distributed fliers warning the economic migrants that they must leave the border area within three days, and the government implied it would take more drastic action if necessary.

Police say about 6,000 people are stuck at Idomeni, sleeping in a shelter provided by charities, in hundreds of tents or in the fields.

About 3,500 are Iranians, Pakistanis and other nationalities not allowed in by Macedonians, while the rest are from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

At the same border, a man believed to be from Morocco was fatally electrocuted after touching high-power railway cable when he climbed on top of a train, prompting cries of Allahu akbar, or “God is great”.

The clashes came as Greece faces mounting pressure from its EU partners to ensure better control of its borders and register arriving migrants or face the prospect that passport checks could be reintroduced for Greek citizens in Europe.

More than 600,000 migrants have flooded into Greece this year, many fleeing conflict in Syria or Iraq.

Ioannis Mouzalas, Greece’s minister for migration policy, said his country was not to blame for the flow of migrants.

He said: “Greece is the start of the corridor. The door is in Turkey. Therefore if the flows are not controlled in Turkey, from the coast of Turkey, it is impossible to control the flows from Greece or any other European Union member.”

On Sunday, the New York Times reported on the walkers, and interestingly didn’t call them “refugees” at every opportunity. Perhaps the brilliant reporters there figured out that when all of the relocators are young males (as in the photo below), then they are likely economic migrants looking for “a better life” i.e. more money, rather than families forced from their homes by war or natural disaster.

Below, Syrian men traverse Serbia on the way to Hungary and points beyond in Europe.

Unsurprisingly, pockets of resistance are forming up among Europeans. Hungary is building a fence to block the intruders, which supposedly will be finished by November. Naturally the invaders are miffed, with some declaring ”This wall, we will not accept it”, showing their aim to conquer rather than immigrate.

A few weeks ago, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned that the massive influx was a national security threat. “It is obvious that we simply cannot filter out hostile terrorists from this enormous crowd,” he remarked in a speech.

Furthermore, the PM noted:

“For us, today Europe is at stake,” Orban said. “The survival, disappearance or, more precisely, the transformation beyond recognition of the European citizen’s lifestyle, European values and the European nations.”

“The question now is not only what kind of Europe we Hungarians would like to live in,” Orban said. “Rather, will all that we now call Europe exist at all?”

Below is a cheerful video item from Deutche Welle that follows the journey of one invader, a Syrian named Ahmad Shelabi, as he travels to Germany to start his “new life.” No mention that any job he finds will be one not available for a German citizen — unpleasant facts can ruin a diverse puff piece!

A lot more resistance from the people of Europe will be required for Brussels to come around to defending their culture from demographic defeat via illegal immigration, the 21st century’s more polite form of war.

Seeking Sanctuary, More Migrants Confront Land Route’s Perils, New York Times, July 25, 2015

SUBOTICA, Serbia. — They call it “the jungle,” but it’s really just a tangle of dirt paths through stunted trees near an abandoned brick factory.

Between 150 and 200 people — mostly men, with a smattering of young families — cluster in discrete groups in scattered campsites, most resting on dusty blankets, the earth blackened here and there by the remains of the previous night’s fires.

“We have people from Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Morocco,” said Mohamd, 42, a former truck driver for a factory near Aleppo, Syria, who hopes to reach the Netherlands. “Am I forgetting anyone?”

His cousin, Walid, 45, scratched his well-worn sandal into the hard clay. “Algeria?”

Mohamd waved him off. “That group went into Hungary two nights ago,” he said. “We have not seen them back yet.”

With war continuing to plague the Middle East and Afghanistan, and thousands trying to flee Africa’s grinding poverty, the swell of refugees and migrants hoping to reach Western Europe shows no signs of abating this summer.

For the last few years, the most popular route has been across the Mediterranean on boats run by Libyan smugglers that aimed for the nearest islands off the Italian coast. But as that route has become increasingly dangerous — the range of threats include drowning, abandonment by unscrupulous smugglers and crackdowns by European border patrols — the human tide is shifting. Increasingly, migrants are following a land-based route into Europe by way of Greece and the West Balkans.

But with the alternative crossing come other perils: violence, exploitation, intolerance. Though most European countries are overwhelmed by the tide, fueling an anti-immigrant backlash in many places, Eastern European countries like Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria are considered particularly hostile.

Still, the migrants keep coming.

Mohamd, like more than two dozen migrants interviewed at the brick factory and other sites along the border here with Hungary, declined to give his last name for fear of reprisals against relatives left behind and unwelcoming authorities on the road ahead. His was a typical story.

He left Syria on May 16, made his way through Turkey and slipped across the border into Greece.

Along the way, there may be short bus rides or miles covered by train. But for many of the migrants — including almost all of those interviewed at the brick factory — the journey was largely undertaken on foot. They follow rail lines or paths passed along by smugglers or passed down the communications chain from refugees farther ahead.

For a bird, the trip from Damascus, Syria, to Szeged, just across the Hungarian border, is 1,200 miles. From Kabul, Afghanistan, it is 2,700 miles. The migrant’s route, though, is rarely the most direct.

The journey from Aleppo to Szeged is 1,100 miles on a direct route, but more than 1,500 miles by roads, and more than that to skirt risky checkpoints and follow meandering forest paths and railbeds.

“I took a few short trains and a bus,” Mohamd said. “But mostly, we walked.”

It took 10 days to get through Greece. Macedonia was crossed quickly, but he has been stuck in Serbia for a month. Twice he had sneaked into Hungary and was quickly arrested, spending 16 days in jail the first time and five the next. He also earned an official document that bans him from entering the country for three years.

“I will try again either tonight or tomorrow,” he said, shrugging. “What else can I do? There is no life anymore in Syria, only bombing.”

In a report this month by Amnesty International, the organization acknowledged the dangers of the land route. “Refugees face considerable obstacles in accessing asylum in any country along their journey,” the report said.

“Refugees and migrants alike are at constant risk of exploitation, arbitrary detention and ill treatment.”

Echoed in interviews, reports of abuse by smugglers and border guards are plentiful. So are the constant dangers of bandit gangs and the police demanding bribes.

“Police in Hungary, no good,” said Sachid, 36, a Kurdish refugee from northern Iraq hoping to meet up with a cousin in Germany.

He crossed his wrists behind his back to indicate how he had been handcuffed, then pantomimed being punched.

“In Serbia, the police say, ‘Give us 50 euros and you can go,’ ” he said. “In Hungary, it is not money, it is just arrest.”

The Hungarian town of Asotthalom sits, invitingly, at the point where the national highway dips closest to the border, not far from the brick factory. Its mayor, Laszlo Toroczkai, a former activist in an anti-Semitic youth group who has since joined the right-wing Jobbik party, has drawn national attention for his fierce opposition to the migrant tide.

“I really respect Islam,” he said, seated in his small, sparsely decorated office in the town hall. “But Europe is not a continent of Islam. That’s why we fought them in the Middle Ages, to get them out.”

While Hungary has a responsibility to care for genuine refugees, he said, he believes that many crossing into Hungary are just illegal immigrants angling for a better life in a more open society.

Mr. Toroczkai is credited with first proposing the idea of building a fence along Hungary’s entire border with Serbia, which stretches more than 100 miles — something that the current government has begun to do.

“It is not important who had the idea first,” he said. “To me, the important thing is to protect the village, the country and Europe.”

The actual border near Asotthalom, a short drive from the mayor’s office, is little more than a narrow concrete bridge over a reed-choked creek, crisscrossed with steel cables to stop cars from passing.

“It’s become part of daily life here to see migrants,” said Barnabas Heredi, one of three locals hired by the mayor to act as “field police” and help patrol the border.

After checking the border bridge, he drove to an abandoned farm complex nearby, where migrants sometimes rest.

The yellow house was alive only with a frenzy of flies orbiting dozens of abandoned backpacks, sneakers, blankets and plastic bags.

“I don’t really feel sorry for them,” Mr. Heredi said. “Maybe the money we are spending to take care of them should be used to take care of Hungary’s poor.”

In the small Serbian town of Kanjiza, several miles east of Subotica, a slightly more affluent cluster of migrants gathered in a park beside the bus depot.

The walk across the border to Szeged, Hungary’s third largest city, is just 20 miles.

Many of them said they, unlike the campers at the brick factory, still had enough money to sleep in hotels, and to pay premium prices to trusted smugglers.

Annas, 26, a mechanical engineering student from Damascus, took shelter in the stifling shade. “The Syrian military wanted to take me for military service,” he said, “so I escaped.”

Serbian gangs stalk small groups of migrants in the borderlands, he said.

“If you are just four or five, you lose everything. That is why we travel in groups of 50.”

He described the plan: They would leave in less than an hour and try to arrive in Szeged shortly after midnight. A certain taxi stand is known to have cars waiting every night between 3 and 5 a.m., to drive anyone with 100 euros the two hours north to Budapest, no questions asked.

From there, minivans would continue the journey into Germany for another 400 euros a person.

“It is possible if you know where to go and you have enough money,” Annas said.

A young man with a pointed beard barked an order and the group rose, gathered its belongings and shuffled across a nearby street.

Slowly, they ambled through a block of townhouses, across an empty park and up the hill to a shimmering lake. They went past a playground where children hammered a soccer ball against a metal door, and along an earthen berm toward a distant stack belching smoke, before turning and vanishing into the woods.

“I am really interested in them,” said Tibor Varga, an evangelical Christian minister whose Eastern European Outreach Mission in Subotica has been gathering food and water for the brick factory migrants. “I want to know their story.”

Europe has entered into a post-Christian era, he said, and Islam is part of the evil, along with homosexuality and abortion.

“The punishment is coming,” he said.

But with luck and decent treatment, the migrants might well embrace “European values,” Mr. Varga said.

“We all make our own decisions about how we will react to them,” he said. “It is a test of humanity. In this way, you see, everybody is passing their exams.”

One frontline is Vienna, which has been a battleground before in the 1400-year assault of Islam upon the West.

Turkey’s Islamic Ambitions Grip Austria, CBN, April 6, 2010

VIENNA, Austria — Turkey is today considered a rising power in the Middle East and Europe.
But just a few centuries ago, the Turks ruled large chunks of both regions under the banner of the Ottoman Empire. Turkish-led forces drove deep into Europe, even reaching the gates of Vienna twice before being defeated.

Now they’re back.

Thanks to heavy immigration over the past four decades, at least a half a million Turks now live in Austria, with many settling in Vienna.

Here to Dominate
When you think of the cradles of Judeo-Christian, Western civilization, Vienna is certainly at the top of the list. But some residents say this city is changing–and becoming increasingly influenced by Islam.

“They are here to dominate,” said Vienna-based counter-jihad acticist Harald Fiegel. “And of course, knowing a little bit about Islam, you can read it there. They are are here to dominate all the world, not just Europe.”

Fiegel monitors Islamic growth in Austria. He says Turkish Muslim immigrants are not assimilating.

“What they are trying to do is segregation,” he told CBN News. “To maintain Turkish national and religious identity.”

There may be a larger hand behind that strategy.

Global Vision?
The Turkish government is home to a religous affairs office called “Diyanet” that approves imams and mosque-building inside Turkey.

Turkish officials say Diyanet has a “global vision.” It’s influence on Turkish immigrant communities across Europe is growing.

In Austria, Diyanet has established a Austrian/Turkish cultural organization called ATIB that reports directly to the Turkish government.

“They are the organizations building the mosques inside Austria,” said Christian Zeitz of the Association of Vienna Academics think tank. “A lot of mosques are organized by ATIB.”

Violating Austrian Law?
Austrian national law mandates that outside organizations and entities cannot implement Islam in Austria. Yet as CBN News discovered, ATIB financed a multi-million dollar mosque in the tiny Austrian town of Bad Voslau.

It is also behind plans to expand a large mosque in Vienna.

“Therefore, the activities of ATIB are in general not compatible with the Islam law of Austria,” said Zeitz.
But some in official circles tell CBN News that ATIB is playing a positive role.

“The municipal authorities work very well together with ATIB,” said Andreas Kohl, former president of the Austrian parliament. “It’s all legal.”

Kohl told CBN News that “the Austrian state appreciates ATIB. And appreciates this good relationship between Austria and Turkey.”

Strong Islamic Stance
Kohl, however, does not deny ATIB’s larger goal.

“They are catering for the link between the Turkish community and the mother country,” he said. “Their objective is to get religious teaching organized. Which is a funny thing in a secular state.”

But what isn’t funny is the strong Islamist stance — and turn away from secularism — taken by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan has harshly criticized Israel while drawing closer to Iran and Syria, and has made his views clear on Turkish communities overseas.

He has called the assimilation of Turks in Western countries “a crime against humanity.” And he has said recently that Turkish-only schools should be opened for immigrants in Germany.

Kohl told CBN News he has met with Erdogan and supports his initiatives.

“I think we have nothing to fear from this mild pro-Islam, pro-religious attitude of Erdogan,” he said.
Vienna Muslim Concerns

But some Muslim leaders in Vienna are concerned about the growing influence of the Turkish government in their communities.

“The question is fair–and I’d like to ask it,” said Carla Bahgajati of the Islamic Community of Austria. “Is it possible, on the one hand, to make people feel very much linked to Turkey as a country, and on the other hand, help in integration?”

So far, Austrian officials have yet to comment on the Turkish government’s expanded influence.

“They close their eyes because they want to be elected again and the growing Islamic population is for them a target group for the next election,” said Zeitz.

Given Turkey’s history with Vienna, which included a brutal siege of the city as recently as the 18th century, some find the the current turn of events tough to accept.

“It’s hard to believe,” said Feigel. “But it’s a good explanation for everything: we’re just giving in.”