Stranger in Paradise

A sort of documentary, almost entirely set in a classroom, full of refugees, recently arrived in Europe after a dangerous sea crossing. Just over an hour, mostly English, some Dutch with subtitles.

The premise is interesting - the 'teacher' (with the film maker's agenda) is an actor, the refugees are real.

The film starts with an (to me, rather indulged) arty montage of historic clips with a voice-over, about Europe, Africa, and refugees. The film lost me here.

In the first 'class', the 'teacher' explains to the refugees why they aren't welcome - a left winger playing devil's advocate. This part didn't work for me.

In the second 'class', he explains why they should be welcome, and then interviewed them, going through the 'economic or asylum seeker' acceptance procedure. The 'interview' process was interesting, and the most thought provoking part of the film. The subtle but very life changing distinction between the two seemed rather arbitrary.

The film was made with a grant, it didn't need to be commercial and to a certain extent, it showed. It didn't look into the refugees plight very deeply (in the credits, only their first names appeared, not their surname). Being set mainly in a classroom, it didn't take advantage of the medium of film.

There is extensive data showing more than 90% of people claiming refugee status in Europe are NOT refugees, but economic migrants. People who work for resettlement agencies, even government run ones, and "refugee advocacy non profits (often funded by interests who want to keep labor costs down) coach the economic migrants in how to lie and claim refugee status. The German government ran a dentation study (which can establish chronological age by a year with certainty) and around 80% of those claim to be high school age were on average falsifying their age down by three years. With even 25 year olds claiming to be high school age minors.

Being concerned with open borders, or viewing people who encourage or commit crimes of fraud and fraudulent illegal immigration as criminals, is not xenophobia.

Knowing and critiquing northern European based groups, funded in part by low wage employers looking to depress wages even more, setting up scam refugee immigration en masse, is not nationalism or intolerance either. We know for a fact that there is a german group that is encouraging unseaworthy overloaded boats from Libya to go one kilometer from harbor in Libya, declaring a distress emergency, and then being picked up and transported to Italy by private "refugee advocate" boats. These "humanitarian groups" are actively encouraging this, and instead of bringing them one kilometer back to N. Africa, are bringing them hundreds of kilometers up to Italy.

so enough wit the fake refugees please. Again the objective data shows virtually non are. The EU has DEMOCRAT institutions. Sure we all feel empathy, but we have democratically established migrant acceptance numbers. The EU has an agreement about quotas on economic migrants. don't like it? CHANGE THAT. Do not create a laughable falsehood and subvert the refugee laws.

I went to see this because a friend was speaking on a panel about refugees at a film festival, and this was playing before her appearance. I am so glad I did. Very interesting technique -- an actor playing an intake professional faced with three different groups of refugees (played by actual refugees). I know a fair bit about the refugee crisis, because my dear friend works for a resettlement agency, but I learned even more from watching this film. The panelists at the festival had all just seen the film and agreed it was accurate in portraying what refugees experience trying to navigate the rules/laws, Talented director.