Question: What happens when a country accepts a million or so immigrants in one year’s time, from a place where violence and misogyny is a way of life, while tolerance and assimilation is not? A place where the million could have stopped at numerous other countries, but made a beeline to because of all the social services and other goodies they knew would be handed to them on a silver platter?
Let me help you with that answer.
Excerpted from Thorsten Severin and Holger Hansen’s article for Reuters, via yahoo.com:
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government agreed on Thursday to require migrants granted residence rights to show willingness to integrate by learning German and seeking work or see their benefits cut.
The deal capped months of disagreement about how to handle over a million migrants and refugees who poured into Germany last year. Those fleeing war in Syria and Iraq have the best chances of staying while economic migrants may be sent home.
Merkel said the agreement, to be approved by her cabinet on May 24, contained “an offer for everyone, but also duties for everyone”. Along with language learning, it says that migrants who break off job training courses will also lose benefits.
“We will have a German national law on integration – this is the first time in post-war Germany that this has happened, it is an important, qualitative step.”
Tensions within Merkel’s coalition mounted towards the end of last year with all three parties espousing different priorities for coping with the migrant crisis.
I am happy to see that the million are no longer being called “refugees” – at least not in this one article.
I have the greatest sympathy for real refugees, who are fleeing the hell on earth that is today’s Syria. But how can that be reconciled with them winding up in Germany? Or Hungary, or Sweden or Norway?
To remind you: a refugee is someone who flees a country for various reasons… usually by crossing a border into the next country over.
But, the Syrians who wound up in Germany had, literally, 20 or so countries closer – with many of them far more culturally in tune with their lives than Syria. Sweden and Norway, are even more countries away.
So why do you suppose the preponderance of Syrian migrants did not stop in any of those countries? What is it about Western Europe that is so intriguing…other than a host of free social services?
And why haven’t the Western European countries – along with the Barack Obama-led United States – worked together to liberate parts of Syria taken over by ISIS, and then helped resettle these people in their own country?
Believe me when I tell you that I am asking rhetorically. I do not in any way expect any kind of answer…and won’t get one.
What is happening in Syria – and Libya, and Iraq, among others – is horrific. But how will it be resolved by large contingents of those countries’ populations resurfacing in Western Europe?
Can someone explain? I’d love to know the answer.
