A substantial number of the people currently claiming refugee status in Europe are actually economic migrants taking advantage of the volatile situation in the Middle East pretending to be war refugees in order to seek a path into Europe. Indeed, besides Iraqis and Syrians and possibly Libyans and Yemenis, the rest of the Middle East isn't bad enough to truly generate war refugees in the numbers we are seeing. And yet, there are also people from Afghanistan, Morocco etc. crossing over.

If we expand the definition of refugee to include economic migrants, or people displaced by internal violence, then undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans in the US could plausibly claim to be refugees from the astronomical levels of drug violence there. In that case, the number of "refugees" the US hosts is over 11 million - a proportion similar in percentage terms to what Europe is seeing.

It is only natural that the US would receive migrants from the part of the world it shares a land border with and the EU receives migrants from the part of the world it shares a land border with - air routes are far better policed and far more expensive to access and sea routes are far more dangerous.

Therefore, debating about whether the US should share the burden of Middle Eastern refugees with Europe is OK, but only if the US can also share the burden of Latin American refugees with Europe. (I'm not saying the two situations are comparable - IMHO the ME is far worse - just that Europeans never seem to understand that the US is dealing with a large surge of low-end immigrants as well and isn't exactly flush with enough resources to be able to help out elsewhere.)