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Migrants Are Disguising Themselves as Syrians to Enter Europe
(Washington Post) Souad Mekhennet and William Booth - Moving among the tens of thousands of Syrian war refugees in Europe are many who are neither Syrian nor refugees, but hoping to blend into the mass migration and find a back door to the West. There are well-dressed Iranians speaking Farsi who insist they are members of the persecuted Yazidis of Iraq. There are Indians who don't speak Arabic but say they are from Damascus. There are Pakistanis, Albanians, Egyptians, Kosovars, Somalis and Tunisians. "What we see here has nothing to do with seeking refuge and safety," Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said Monday. "It is nothing but opportunism." A native Arabic-speaking reporter who wandered through train stations in Vienna found plenty of newcomers whose accents did not match their stories and whose stories did not make sense. Swimming in the river of humanity are shady characters, too, admitted criminals and Islamic State sympathizers. At Vienna Westbahnhof railway station, when a reporter asked a group of men where they were from, the men answered, "We are from Syria." When the reporter switched to the North African dialect, the men admitted, "We are Algerians." One said he met Tunisians, Moroccans and Libyans playing the same game.