Europe — do the right thing by the refugees and what is practical also

Sir, "Europe is better than this," says François Heisbourg in his stinging indictment of Europe for the absence of vision, creativity and decency in its responses to one of history's most alarming refugee crises ("France cannot indulge the xenophobes on immigration", August 28). Indeed, but perhaps the embattled Kantian peace project needs some nudging from the outside to do not only the right thing but what is practical as well.
 
It is clear that Europeans need to shift their narrative on the migrants risking their lives to reach asylum-granting countries such as Germany, from a drain on resources, competition for limited jobs, and sources of potential extremism and social instability, to sources of enhanced tax revenue and social revitalisation for the diminishing and ageing populations of Old Europe.
 
Germany and other countries willing to embrace the migrants, therefore, should not passively wait until the fittest and luckiest of them make it to migrant-friendly borders. Germany in particular should establish processing centres in Turkish refugee camps to determine asylum eligibility of the thousands of Syrian refugees in the country and then airlift those successfully vetted to Germany and other European countries willing to take in these desperate souls — actual or potential university professors, lawyers, physicians, entrepreneurs and CEOs among them — and deal with local populist, anti-immigrant sentiments and rage as necessary.
 
How many more discoveries of decomposing bodies will it take before Europe is shamed into doing the right and practical thing?