A conversation with my brother about the waves of refugees from the war zones coming into Germany

[Mira]

Just talked to my brother, who lives in Karlsruhe, a beautiful large old city near the French Border.
He made a casual comment about the refugees from Syria and the middle Eastern war zones and I then asked a few questions until I could hear no more:

I learned that there are about 1 million refugees being absorbed into the country (realize, Germany is about the size of NC and SC combined, actually I think smaller)

that most of them are men and unaccompanied children

that they intend to bring their families together once they are established somewhere, and that the tally from those already in the country could therefore swell to 3-5 million total

that Germany is thinking of taking into eminent domain unoccupied buildings to house them

that at his daughter’s school there are three classrooms already set up for refugee children

that many are living in tent cities

that his wife goes and cooks in a soup kitchen for them twice a week, and so does his 15 year old son

He says that the population in general has empathy and is trying to incorporate and help, but many are saying it would be cheaper and more appropriate to put them on airplanes and send them to the country that started the destabilization of the Middle East in the first place, which is also a country with wide open plains that once said: Give me your tired…..

I googled the exact quote:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Emma Lazarus

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Excellent post, my dear Mira...

It would certainly be interesting if we absorbed all those people.

K&R

[ncjustice80]

24. Sounds like an oppurtunity.2

Make it clear *Republicans* destroyed their country, and Republicans *hate* them. I like the idea of a permanent super majority

[Recursion]

2. Germany is set to take in 1% of its current population as refugees this year.

We're talking about taking slightly more in actual numbers than they are, but a much smaller percent of our population. 1% of the US would be 3 million, and would mean Europe wouldn't have to take in anybody this year.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. Reading that Lazerus quote, I can't help but think of a more contenporary quote.

"I'll build a wall. It'll be youuuuuuuuge!"

God those people make me sick.

[CrispyQ]

4. We don't take care of our own people. Why would we take care of ones we displaced?

The situation makes me so angry.

Here's The Number Of Refugees The U.S. Would Need To Admit To Match Germany's Intake
The U.S. lags far behind Germany in refugee admissions per capita.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/refugees-us-germany-comparison_55f73b32e4b0c2077efbc52e

If Germany takes in 500,000 of those people per year for "several years," as German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has suggested it could, the country will be absorbing the equivalent of 0.6 percent of its population -- or about 1 in every 160 people.

The 500,000 figure is a conservative estimate, according to an official at the German Embassy in the U.S.; Germany may end up permanently admitting many more. The exact number is a question not just of capacity, but of the new arrivals' eligibility for asylum. In 2014, Germany granted asylum to fewer than half of all applicants, but the official told The Huffington Post that the acceptance rate is likely to be higher this year because of the high number of arrivals from war-torn nations like Syria.



The U.S., for its part, has said it expects to permanently admit a total of 70,000 refugees in fiscal year 2015, which comes to a close at the end of September. (That figure applies to people currently outside the U.S. seeking protection as refugees. To apply for asylum, the refugees must first arrive in the United States.)

The State Department's recent promise to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees in fiscal year 2016 should push this number upward next year.

We go to the other side of the planet & beat the hornet's nest & walk away.

on edit: More telling graphics at link.

[artislife]

22. Perfect description

We go to the other side of the planet & beat the hornet's nest & walk away.

Thanks to Mira for giving us a more personal view than what we have been hearing.

The climate change problems are also to blame, 10 years of drought and people swarm to the cities.

[Jim__]

5. NYRB: The Terrible Flight from the Killing

This article, on the Syrian refugee crisis, was in the Oct 22 issue of the New York Review of Books, although the article itself is dated September 23.

An excerpt:

It is not quite clear when Europeans woke up to the largest movement of refugees on their soil since the upheavals of World War II, but Sunday, August 16, may have been a decisive turning point. In a television interview that day, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, returning from her summer vacation, said that the European Union’s single greatest challenge was no longer the Greek debt crisis. It was the wave after wave of Syrians and others now trying to enter Europe’s eastern and southern borders. It is “the next major European project,” she said. It “will preoccupy Europe much, much more than…the stability of the euro.”

In the capitals of Western Europe, Merkel’s words seemed to come as a surprise. And yet across a long corridor of countries, from the Anatolian coast to Greece on up to Hungary and Austria, for anyone who cared to notice there were Syrians waiting to pay human smugglers in back alleys of Turkish beach towns. They were clinging, in the darkness, to hopelessly unseaworthy dinghies in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas; crouching in groups, thirsty and sunbaked, in trash-strewn holding areas on the Greek island of Kos; clamoring to get on rusty trains in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; trudging, in irregular lines, with young children on their shoulders, through the forests of the Serbian–Hungarian border. They were emptying their last savings so they could again pay smugglers to be stuffed into the backs of trucks for a harrowing journey further north to Vienna or even to Munich.

In fact, the new wave had already begun in late spring, when hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans began crossing from Turkey to Greece and continuing, as best they could, into Central Europe. Though it was little noted at the time, by July, well over a thousand people were arriving every day in the Greek islands closest to Turkey, which were woefully ill-equipped to receive them.

International aid workers said that some holding areas had now become the most squalid in the world. At Kara Tepe, a makeshift reception center on the island of Lesbos, the International Rescue Committee, an emergency aid group working in forty countries, reported that there were just two showers for two thousand refugees; the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) described conditions as “shameful.”

more ...

[Cal Carpenter]

6. Thanks for the link

Hoping to read this later - by replying I'll be able to find it again

[jwirr]

14. I read most of this article - can anyone tell me what we went

into the ME for in the first place? And don't forget it started with poppy bush. This is a horrible mess.

When we get our share of refugees want to settle them as close to the bush homes as we can. That way they can help them settle into their new homes.

[ronnie624]

17. The current motive for Western involvement in the ME

Is about controlling energy, and has been for more that 100 years. How on earth do people forget this? Winston Churchill called Persian oil a "gift from fairyland" to the British empire. The US State Department has, over the decades, repeatedly referred to the Middle East as the most important strategic region on earth. Our interventions there, are about controlling key resources and nothing else.

[jwirr]

18. Exactly. And now they are in such chaos that they are out of

control of anyone.

[ronnie624]

19. We absolutely must abandon the current energy system

and our wasteful, unjust economic system as well, if we expect our civilization to survive much longer. It is quite clear that our current crop of political leaders have no intention of doing what needs to be done.

[Depaysement]

7. They are right

We should take more. We benefit from immigration in general. They should be housed in PNAC households but . . . they have suffered enough.

[Surya Gayatri]

8. K & R + 1,000,000

Best OP I've read on DU in a long spell. Thanks, Mira.

We Europeans are on the front lines, desperately trying to deal with the aftermath of the US's warmongering and 'regime changing' madness.

[Liberal_in_LA]

12. Agreed

[msongs]

9. so when syria is stabilized and peace returns will all those people go back? nt

[moondust]

10. On the teevee yesterday

I saw a short interview with a Syrian-American woman, probably in her 30s, who has relatives among the refugees. I don't know how long she has been in the U.S. but she spoke perfect American English. She said "they" DO want to go back to Syria when it becomes livable there again. I don't know if "they" meant many, most, all, or just some of the refugees. Wish I could remember which news channel it was on.

Unfortunately, she blamed Obama for not doing enough to get rid of Assad. I suspect a lot of the "moderate rebels" may feel that way after NATO/U.S. did not come to their rescue when the fighting started.

[Yupster]

16. That's a good one

I choked on my ice tea.

[Liberal_in_LA]

11. Great update. Thanks Mira. Your bro's family are lovely people

[Quantess]

13. The "unaccompanied children" are mostly young MEN under age 21. Most are late teenage males 18 -22

It is completely true that most of the "adult" asylum seekers are also grown men.

I just don't know what else to say. Yes I do live in europe, and I see what is going on.

[CTyankee]

15. I hope we take in a very big share of this population...

this country was built on refugees from many different places in many different areas of the world. We are the hope in the world for refugees.

It is important that we do this!

[malaise]

20. Thanks Mira

Great post

[a kennedy]

21. Wow....thanks Mira.....

The USA could do so much more.

[hifiguy]

23. This will not end well for Germany

unless those immigrants choose to assimilate to the social norms of GERMAN society. The concept of a modern, secular state where ALL are equal before the law is not going to be an easy sell.