Refugee crisis: Germany creaks under strain of open door policy

The Manchester Guardian ^ | October 8, 2015 | Kate Connolly in Berlin

[2ndDivisionVet]

After the initial euphoria, Germany now faces daily clashes in refugee centres, a rising far-right, a backlog of registrations, and dissent among the ranks of Angela Merkel’s government.

The realities of shouldering Europe’s refugee crisis are coming home to Germany, amid daily reports of clashes in asylum seeker homes; bureaucrats overwhelmed by a backlog of registration claims and deep divisions within chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative ranks over how to manage the enormity of the challenge.

Just weeks after Merkel responded to the refugee crisis with the declaration: “Wir schaffen es – We can do it” – the euphoric mood has been replaced by a more sombre response with the realisation that the newcomers are here to stay, with all the consequences that entails.

School authorities are calling for at least 25,000 new teaching recruits to cope with the large numbers of new pupils, police officers are being brought out of retirement in their thousands, and the nation is being scoured for suitable accommodation as winter approaches....

[2ndDivisionVet]

Who was euphoric and why?

[Vince Ferrer]

I think for the same reason white people voted for Obama, to relieve their guilt.

[Desron13]

Idiots are often happy without apparent reason.

[doc1019]

Wait until they start raping 10 year old children and demanding neighborhoods ruled by sharia law.

[exit82]

Then, shut the door, Angela.

[RedHeeler]

Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!.....the season is upon us. Right?

[himno hero]

Sharia law also means their own sovereign state within the host.... it’s cancer consuming the host, a little at a time.

[Jane Long]

That needs to be posted, EVERYWHERE, in Germany!!!

SHUT THE DOOR, ANGELA!!!

[lurk]

Germany. Smart and dumb at the same time.

[Cubs Fan]

What? Buyers remorse so soon? This is just getting started.

[Gene Eric]

>> Who was euphoric?

The enlightened idiots.

[nathanbedford]

As someone who lives in Bavaria I would like to offer my anecdotal review of our plight because there is some analogies which can be drawn to the state of affairs at home in the USA.

Anecdotally, I find that there is a huge gulf in the attitude of women who come down on the "compassionate" side of the immigration crisis and men who predominantly understand that compassion is akin to pregnancy, it has ultimate consequences. In that, my neighbors reflect electoral demographics of America, with women supporting Democrats.

The overall problem in Germany concerning immigration has to do with its unique history beyond the mindless shibboleths that, "diversity is our strength" or "we are all immigrants," is unique to Germany in that it has to do with the huge movement of population after the first and second world wars. I speak to my neighbors and they tell me tales of their parents' struggle then to feed passing refugees who have been pushed out of Czechoslovakia or Prussia or elsewhere in the East. Many of them tell tales of their own parents being those refugees roaming the roads and begging for food or sleeping rough. I have read accounts of my local county in which the citizens were organized to go into the forest cut wood to heat with while housing was assigned to desperate Germans pushed here by the communists. At the end of the Cold War there was not so much demographic movement as demographic integration with the incorporation of the former East Germany.

All of this is noted to fill out understanding that immigration in Germany has a more immediate meaning than it does for Americans. We are witness in a rather remote way to the invasion from Mexico but that is an entirely different equation than your parents starving on the road to a refugee camp or to a relative's house somewhere in Germany because you are driven there by the Russians.

But that does not mean that the Germans are free of delusion concerning what Merkel is doing. The whole idea of giving away control of a country's borders unavoidably means giving away sovereignty over one's country. It is not just borders over which Germans have lost control, but their courts and their economy even their land-use controls. They had been for generations used to looking to the county seat, or to Munich as the capital of Bavaria, or to Berlin or Bonn as the capital of Germany but now they must look to Brussels or Geneva. In my anecdotal experience many Germans don't even understand that they have lost control over their own affairs by moving the venue of decision-making far from home.

Bavarians like to consider themselves to be a unique part of Germany with prerogatives such as their own border patrol but that element of sovereignty is being swept away and with it control over immigration. As the venue of control over the lives of Bavarians moves farther and farther away from Bavaria, the men, at least, are beginning to understand the political implications. I usually say that America fought a civil war over the same issues and very often one can see light bulbs lighting up on hearing that.

Germany is essentially a country without talk radio and therefore no opposition to leftism. Angela Merkel does not face a Mark Levin and the people have been indoctrinated for so long according to what Nancy Pelosi believes that there is no instinctive conservative position, only a preposterous and disreputable far right. Couple this with the reaction to the "Hitler time" and one can see that the death grip of political correctness which we encounter in America over immigration can be even more severe in Germany.

My German neighbors think like suburbanites in America but they are simply not exposed to conservatism. Their instincts are the same as the instincts of my neighbors with whom I grew up but they are not refined by exposure to conservatism. The result, a myopic view of politics, and inability to break free of political correctness that binds because of Germany's unique history, and a centuries long confidence in the power of government and respect for institutions which have been there since Bismarck.

Yet Germany has an amazing history of coping with adversity and emerging with an astonishingly well functioning society. One wonders if that history will repeat itself when Germany is no longer Germany because of immigration.

[odds]

Recently read Denmark is curbing refugee intake by publicizing reduced welfare to the ‘incoming’.

[Lucy Hamilton]

“My German neighbors think like suburbanites in America but they are simply not exposed to conservatism. Their instincts are the same as the instincts of my neighbors with whom I grew up but they are not refined by exposure to conservatism.”

I’m very familiar with Bavaria and Bavarian politics and have many Bavarian friends. The CSU has ruled Bavaria for pretty much 70 years, the region is very Catholic and VERY Conservative.

I mean the last State Election, the CSU = 101 seats, SPD = 42, Freie Wähler = 19, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen = 18.

I’m just curious as to which bit of Bavaria you hang-out in. Are your neighbours Bavarian or have they moved there from other more Leftish parts of Germany?

[Joe Boucher]

Great job there angie, ya dope.
Goodluck assimilating these sub human animals.

[scriblett]

The violence and attacks have started allready but not reported in N.A. Female students in schools where refugees are housed have been asked to dress modestly so as not to offend the migrants. Women have been advised not to walk near those areas or near train stations.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11896855/Christian-and-Muslim-refugees-should-be-housed-separately-says-German-police-chief.html

[TXBlair]

Germany expected a great, big global pat on the back and instead is getting a kick in the hiney from within.

As Jim Gaffigan would whisper, “Sad.”

[nathanbedford]

the region is very Catholic and VERY Conservative.

Compared to whom, the preuss?

[Lucy Hamilton]

If one looks at Bavarian history, it’s always been very Catholic and very Conservative....apart from the crazy bit in the 1920s when the Communists took over and declared it a Communist Republic.

Since 1946, the CSU have only lost their majority once, that was in 2008.

Sporadically in bits of Bavaria, the SPD and the Greens have some support, but it’s minimal compared to the large support for the CSU. Horst Seehofer is exceptionally popular, as is Ilse Aigner, Markus Söder and Hans-Peter Friedrich.

A few years ago Hans-Peter Friedrich said that Islam in Germany is not something supported by history at any point.

I believe that the majority of Germans would agree with him, except the Berlin area, which isn’t really representative of Germany and never has been.

[Lucy Hamilton]

I should also add, that the FPÖ doubled their support the other week in the elections in Upper Austria, simply on the Muslim horde issue.

The Upper Austrian’s mentality is very similar to the Bavarians, whom they share many cultural points with, heck their dialect is even called Austro-Bavarian.

A number of Germans have been caught up in the propaganda, which is mega at the moment. Grandma was once a refugee, then they’ve just experienced the re-unification thing, where Merkel and Fatso Sigmar Gabriel et al, were all babbling on about how Germany had a similar situation with taking on millions of new people....absolutely absurd comparison that, considering those “new people” were GERMANS, unlike the Muslim horde.

Germans are slowly waking up, Merkel’s poll numbers are dropping and now a majority of Germans are saying enough is enough.

Now Horst Seehofer is threatening this:

http://www.dw.com/en/seehofer-widens-rift-with-merkel-over-refugee-policy/a-18773458

And this:

http://www.dw.com/en/bavarias-self-defense-measures-against-refugees-cause-outrage/a-18771821