GOTHA, GERMANY:
In welcoming thousands of refugees shunned by others Germany occupies
moral high ground. Stories and images of desperate migrants fill television
news. Nightly there are informed debates about the challenge of integrating
Syrian and other Muslim asylum seekers into German society.
The impulse to help is visceral, shared by the public and elected
leaders. Chancellor Angela Merkel
probably speaks for millions when she declares, “I am happy that Germany has become a country that many people outside
of Germany now associate with hope.”
Germany’s
biggest political parties, Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the Social
Democrats, are at one on immigration, agreeing that Germany can absorb 500,000
refugees this year. Only Bavaria’s
Christian Social Union is skeptical.
The welcome
signal from the top resonates. This
week I watched youthful volunteers at the Frankfurt train station wearing
“refugees welcome” shirts in English and Arabic handing out fruit and soft
drinks to new arrivals.
Germany’s
affirmative stance has struck a chord elsewhere, including the Pope’s call for
Catholic families to take in refugees, and Britain and France increasing the
number they’re willing to accept.
But there is a limit to German generosity and of course the
burden of accepting refugees must be shared. The ongoing flood of refugees underscores a complete absence
of EU consensus on immigration.
Much of the disagreement is historical and cultural.
Greece, the first EU country where Iraqi and Syrian migrants
arrive after transiting Turkey, is weak politically and prostrate
economically. Greek authorities on
islands adjacent to Turkey were overwhelmed. EU migration guidelines were ignored.
Greece merely transported refugees to Athens and put them on trains headed
north.
A single rail line links Greece with Belgrade through
Macedonia. Departing from a EU country the refugees walk the final mile to the
border where the Macedonians have been ill prepared to receive them. Once
aboard trains—as I observed last weekend in Skopje—the refugees arrive in
another non EU country Serbia, which has done well in moving them through to
the Hungarian border.
It is in EU member country Hungary where the problem is most
severe. Hungary, led by a rightist
nationalist party, has greeted the refugees with contempt and the ugly scenes
at the Budapest station and the Serbian border have spread worldwide.
But it’s not just Hungary. Other EU countries-- formerly
communist Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and the three Baltic States—oppose
quotas on accepting refugees. Romania and Bulgaria, the poorest EU members, say
they won’t take any. And Bulgaria—where 500 years of Turkish oppression is
still talked about—is viewed as the EU country least welcoming to Muslims.
Critics of Germany’s stance say the country is naïve and
foolish, that the floodgates having been opened, ISIS and other terrorist
groups will have placed their people among the refugees. Germans are aware of
that danger but count on strict accountability as migrants are required to
study German and regularly update their status. Unlike illegal immigrants into United States those coming to
Germany seldom vanish into a marginalized shadow economy.
Much is at risk in this refugee crisis. Unless resolved soon
the free movement of people within the EU’s single market—the Schengen
agreement—could be modified. Germany’s asylum policies are in flux and already
migrants from countries no longer labled conflict zones—Albania, Kosovo and
Montenegro—are being sent back.
Germany is no stranger to mass migrations and is acutely
aware of its horrific failure to protect Jews during the Nazi period. After the
war Germany resettled over five million Germans expelled from lost territories.
There was a wave of migration out of East Germany prior to unification. The
current flood of people, however, is the greatest since the war and shows no
sign of abating.
As with the euro currency crisis, Chancellor Merkel says the
future of the European Union is at stake. “If Europe fails the refugee
question,” she says, “then a founding impulse for a united Europe will be
lost.”
For now at least Germany holds high the banner of human
rights.
