Hungarian Police Fire Tear Gas, Water Cannons at Migrants Who Break Through Razor-Wire Fence

Chaos erupted on the Hungarian border Wednesday as riot police quelled refugees with water cannons and tempers escalated among EU nations struggling to control the human flow.

Serbia swiftly denounced Hungary for peppering desperate refugees with tear gas and water cannons 24 hours after closing its border crossing and putting up razor wire.

The border shut down Tuesday created a panicked bottleneck and trapped migrants from Syria and other war-torn countries in a no-man’s land between Hungary and Serbia.

The flare-up came as Hungary arrested 519 migrants it said tried to sneak across the border after its stricter controls were imposed

Authorities launched 46 criminal prosecutions and found two Iraqi men guilty, the first convictions based on the new laws.

Two men were expelled from Hungary, with one banned from re-entering the country for one year, the other banned for two years.

Amid Europe’s disorder, the Obama administration prepped for a new plan that would admit more refugees — but the number was too small to ease the overseas overflow, according to reports.

Senior national security officials are talking about lifting the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. from 70,000 this year to 85,000 next year and 100,000 in fiscal 2017, Bloomberg News reported.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s aggression Wednesday upset its neighbor Serbia.

Serbian minister Aleksandar Vulin expressed “the harshest possible protest” to Hungary’s actions on state TV, near the border village of Horgos where the clashes took place.

“Hungary must show it is ready and capable to accept these people,” Vulin said.

Austria also started selective controls on its border with Slovenia, meaning refugees would have to pass through a specific checkpoint where they could apply for asylum.

Austria was looking to send “a clear signal” that the country cannot handle an uncontrolled mass influx, Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner told the Austria Press Agency.

That more cautious approach was reflected across the European Union at large, where leaders were rethinking a plan to share 120,000 refugees across multiple nations.

The initial idea was to relocate refugees from Greece, Italy and Hungary to other nations over the next two years.

But Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn of Luxembourg, which holds the EU presidency, told EU lawmakers on Wednesday there would be an “important change” to the plan when it comes up for debate next Tuesday.

France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls said his country is ready to restore its border controls too — a move that rolls back 20 years of trying to open Europe’s internal frontiers, known as the Schengen program.

“Schengen means free movement for people and that’s part of our security and identity,” Valls told lawmakers in the National Assembly. “But Schengen also means controls on the borders of Europe, otherwise it won’t work.”

Poland echoed the sentiment, telling lawmakers it was willing to accept refugees — but only if its officials controlled the spigot.

Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said her country must verify the refugees are truly in need of asylum — and not just migrants looking to move for economic benefit.

Polish officials said it has 11 refugee centers that can immediately offer 700 places and another 5,000 places can be quickly added at military facilities. Warsaw has offered to take in 2,000 refugees, but the EU wants it to handle 12,000.

Elsewhere in Europe migrants remained on the move.

Greek police said about 5,000 refugees and migrants crossed the country's northern border with Macedonia in the 24 hours from Tuesday morning to Wednesday morning

Otis, Ginger Adams. "Hungarian Cops Fire Tear Gas as Migrants Break through Fence." 

NY Daily News. New York Daily News, 17 Sept. 2015. Web. 21 Sept. 2015

From <http://www.easybib.com/cite/view>

This article talks about a recent struggle in the ongoing immigration crisis. Hungary recently closed off their borders, but immigrants are still trying to find a way into the country.  This resulted in a riot that lead the police to fire tear gas and water cannons at the immigrants. The author of this article has a slight bias towards the immigrants. This bias doesn’t come out in the authors choice of words, but rather in the pictures chosen. A fair number of the pictures presented in this article show kids who are crying because of the actions of the riot police. Seeing those kids cry in the pictures automatically makes you relate to them and their story. This shows the authors bias. I would agree with the author. I understand where the countries that are closing their borders are coming from, but I think more efforts need to be made to find somewhere for all these people to go. The EU is trying, but at the moment they don’t appear to be having great success.