A look at the plan for resettling some of Europe’s refugees

Refugee and Migrant Crisis

Greece MigrantsAn Afghan boy hold a bottle after he and his family crossed from Turkey to Greece, on a dinghy on the Greek island of LesbosThursday, Sept. 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

As refugees and migrants continue to stream into Europe at unprecedented rates — many having done so after long, often perilous journeys from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan — the European Commission on Wednesday announced a proposal to resettle another 120,000 refugees across member countries, following a plan in May to resettle 40,000.

Proposal to resettle 160,000 refugees across the EU
The Commission’s plans would resettle refugees based on a equation of factors of member countries, taking in account unemployment, population size, previous asylum applications, and GDP. This is why richer countries like Germany and France would resettle more refugees within their borders than countries such as Latvia or Cyprus.

 

However, that’s only a fraction of the crisis

This circle represents the 800,000 refugees Germany is expecting to see cross its borders in 2015 alone:

800k-refugees

 

While this one represents the 160,000 refugees considered under the two European Commission resettlement plans:

160k-refugees