"Germany, Sweden, and Austria deserve great credit for their willingness to accept refugees, but elsewhere on the Continent the reaction ranges from passivity to outright hostility," said Michael Haltzel, a visiting senior fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs who advised Joseph R. Biden Jr., now vice president, when he served in the Senate. "There is a considerable danger of overload. And I fear that the political beneficiaries in many countries will be right-wing ultranationalists."

...[Former prime minister] Bildt, of Sweden, says ... "But we have to find a coherent European response. Controlling the outer border of Schengen is vital to the system," he said, referring to the passport-free zone within Europe. "It is uncomfortable but necessary, and it needs to be done."

Talks about some survivors of a shipwreck at Lampedusa. After suffering a horrible journey most of them advise their friends and families back home not to take the same route. Of course they don't listen.

A New Wave of Migrants Flees Iraq, Yearning for Europe

In recent weeks, the phenomenon has snowballed, as Iraqis track migrants on messaging apps like Viber and WhatsApp and hear back from friends who have reached places like Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has welcomed migrants and has become a hero to many Iraqis. The stories Iraqis hear from relatives in Europe are often euphoric, and full of possibility.

"When you go to Europe, they treat you well, they give you a house, they pay you money, they take care of your health," said Ali Hattam Jassim, 37, whose brother recently arrived in Belgium. "We have so many friends there, and they tell us how great the life is."

German Quota System Highlights Possible Path and Pitfalls for Handling Crisis

So far, Germany has not had much success persuading its European partners to adopt a similar quota system for the whole of the European Union. Resistance to the proposal, and in many countries to the migrants themselves, ranges from outright hostile, like in Hungary and other parts of Eastern Europe, to a more polite but equally hardened insistence on the right to "opt out" of such quotas, in Britain and Denmark.

The poorer Eastern European countries argue their societies cannot handle the burden of integrating thousands of largely Muslim refugees, and others insist that any system will just encourage more people to risk the hazardous trip to Europe.