As I recall, there are currently three countries of origin from which a large majority of asylum requests is accepted in Europe - Syria, Iraq and Eritrea (aka "the North Korea of Africa". I suppose Libya and Afghanistan would also have high rates. But other countries, indeed, those people are increasingly being sent back. I believe I saw a 10% acceptance statistic for Pakistan the other day - as you say, there are specific cases where asylum may make sense.

For the majority, yeah. Of course it becomes more complicated in cases of unaccompanied minors etc. - or really for anyone if the war drags on several more years. And as many have pointed out, a number of Syrian immigrants would actually not be a bad thing for many places in Europe which could really use more young people - and many of the Syrian refugees are quite well-educated, perhaps because those are the ones who can gather the money to make the trip. The challenge is in integrating such numbers, teaching them the languages, etc., which will only work if they can be spread out sufficiently.

Will only be possible at all if they get massively more funding for it, though. The Lebanese in particular have accepted insane amounts, to the tune of 25% of their population - they can hardly be expected to take more.

Germany barely has any unemployment - in fact, has labour shortages. That obviously plays a role in what they're doing. It really depends on the country, and in the countries like Spain or Italy where unemployment is indeed high, that's more a matter of a retarded labour market organization (i.e., once you hire a young employee on a normal contract you're basically stuck with him forever unless he quits himself) than a bad economic situation per se. Though I suppose the cause doesn't matter much as long as they don't fix it.