The Schengen Agreement was a treaty originally among five European countries, signed in 1985, that effectively abolished border control between those countries. During the next ten years a whopping 26 additional countries signed the agreement.
In theory this agreement sounds really nice. If you are inside one of these countries, ie. in the Schengen area, you can freely move to any of the neighboring Schengen countries with no border checks of any kind. You can freely visit and travel other countries, you can for example easily have a job in a neighboring country on the other side of the border, you can easily visit friends and family at the other side. More beneficially, imports and exports, and all kinds of material transport, between these countries become a lot easier, simpler and cheaper because everything can move freely between them. If tourists arrive at one of the countries, they can visit neighboring countries on the same trip without having to worry about acquiring travel visas for every such country. You can make a whole European tour visiting a dozen countries, without requiring any paperwork from each. This entices tourism, with all the income to the countries that comes with it.
In other words, there are many economic benefits, and there's just the benefit of people being able to visit other countries without much hassle (eg. for work, or to simply visit and travel).
However, there's one thing that I doubt any of the countries thought of, when they signed. That is: What happens if, let's say, twenty million economic migrants somehow suddenly gain entry into one or more of the Schengen area countries?
Suddenly a country might find itself flooded with literally millions of migrants from a neighboring country. With zero border control there's just not stopping the flood. Suddenly town and city streets may be just flooding with homeless people, begging for social benefits and, probably, becoming violent when they don't get what they want. Suddenly the police forces with their very limited resources may find themselves having to deal with literally millions of non-citizens arriving and staying in the country, draining it of its resources and harassing and taking advantage of its people. People who pay for all of it with their tax money.
I'm somewhat convinced that if the people who were making the decision on signing the agreement had been asked that question prior to the signing, they would have probably just dismissed the whole idea as ridiculous. Why would tens of millions of migrants suddenly arrive inside the area? That's not logistically possible. What a ridiculous idea! That just doesn't happen! And even if a significant amount of migrants arrived at one of the border countries of the Schengen area, well, that country has outside borders. They would take care of it, for certain.
Yeah... why would tens of millions of migrants suddenly arrive in Europe? The idea might have sounded completely ridiculous in 1985. Yet, not so ridiculous in 2015, when a particular ideology has invaded most countries that hates these countries and their people, and think that millions of migrants, as many as possible, without limit, from other countries are the panacea to all the perceived problems. An ideology that just waited to take some random war in some random country as an excuse to grant almost unrestricted access to tens of millions of people from all over the world, from countries that have absolutely nothing to do with that war.
Suddenly, we are seeing the negative side of the Schengen Agreement. Suddenly countries are being flooded with millions of migrants, and because of the agreement there's no way of stopping them, or getting rid of them. And once a migrant is inside the Schengen area, it's extremely unlikely he would ever have to leave (even if he is denied residence in one country, he can just freely move to another country and start the process again, and again, and again, and again. After all, there are 31 countries to choose from, and to move to. Once in the Schengen area, always in the Schengen area. You don't have to ever leave.)
I have to wonder if some countries would have signed the agreement if they had been aware of this.
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