«Security and migration, while they overlap in timing, they should not be confused. Those people who arrive on our shores are precisely fleeing the same terror that has struck us right here in the heart of Europe. To antagonize those seeking protection would mean giving in to the hatred and division that terrorists seek to shove». Well said Dimitris!
A clear massage voiced this morning by Dimitris Avramopoulos, EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship following a mounting escalation of anti refugees and anti Schengen messages backed by politicians and pundits who are trying to exploiting the terrorist attacks in Eu to push the anti migration agenda. And let’s not exclude from the anti Schengen aficionados those who associate extreme danger to migrants by default according to their nationalities and religions. Just to be blunt: Syrian and Muslims.

The anti Schengen and anti migrants voices and forces are definitely gaining momentum. Their demands, instances and point of views are gaining ground in the electorate. More and more politicians are siding with them. Iason Athanasiadis, a Greek political analyst and expert on the Middle East, calls this response an expression of “chaos theory’s butterfly effect,” in which one event can cause a series of disparate and seemingly illogical consequences. The terror in Brussels, he says, “will likely intensify the trend of further fortressing Western societies".

"The Brussels attacks may increase xenophobic and anti-immigration sentiment across the EU, which has already been rising in light of the refugee crisis" said Mujtaba Rahman, director of European analysis at the Eurasia Group in London. "That has implications both for the survival of the passport-free Schengen area championed by Merkel and the outcome of the U.K.’s in-out referendum on the EU in June".

Russia and Finland, indeed, have agreed to temporary restrictions at two Arctic border crossings following an increase in migrants seeking asylum there this year; Just this morning, Poland PM Szydlo said migrants cannot be settled in Poland;Locals in a northwester Greek town blocked the national highway to stop refugees being accommodated in their area.
As widely reported, Belgium is setting up border checks along its frontier with France to avoid migrants bound for Britain choosing the country as a transit point. Hungary declared a state of emergency in early March and threatened to deploy 1,500 soldiers to reinforce the border. Balkan states, meanwhile, have begun implementing border checks that require EU visas.
Within hours of the attack, US, GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz said the US needs to "immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant ISIS or al-Qaeda presence."

Shutting off Schengen and cracking down on refugees will solve no security concern. Building fences and walls won’t make us safer.
Let’s face reality: most of the Paris terrorists were EU citizens. Salah Abdeslam is a Belgian-born French citizen. Abdeslam’s suspected accomplice, Najim Laachraoui, was also a Belgian citizen.
As Vox's Michelle Hackman notes, Brussels "is home to a well-oiled underground jihadist pipeline that has sent more than 400 fighters to Syria, making the nation Europe’s largest per capita source of fighters to Syria». They are not refugees. They are Europeans.

So now try to answer this question? How tougher immigration measures would have prevented the attacks in Paris and Brussels?

While you are thinking, maditate on this.

Cover Photo; Getty/ Christopher Furlong