Taking unearned government entitlements from the Germans.
Via Spiegel:
The road to the reception camp in Hesepe has become something of a refugees’ avenue. Small groups of young men wander along the sidewalk. A family from Syria schleps a clutch of shopping bags towards the gate. A Sudanese man snakes along the road on his bicycle. Most people don’t speak a word of German, just a little fragmentary English, but when they see locals, they offer a friendly wave and call out, “Hello!”
The main road “is like a pedestrian shopping zone,” says one resident, “except without the stores.” Red-brick houses with pretty gardens line both sides of the street, and Kathrin and Ralf Meyer are standing outside theirs. “It’s gotten a bit too much for us,” says the 31-year-old mother of three. “Too much noise, too many refugees, too much garbage.”
Now the Meyers are planning to move out in November. They’re sick of seeing asylum-seekers sit on their garden wall or rummage through their garbage cans for anything they can use. Though “you do feel sorry for them,” says Ralf, who’s handed out some clothes that his children have grown out of. “But there are just too many of them here now.”
Hesepe, a village of 2,500 that comprises one district of the small town of Bramsche in the state of Lower Saxony, is now hosting some 4,000 asylum-seekers, making it a symbol of Germany’s refugee crisis. Locals are still showing a great willingness to help, but the sheer number of refugees is testing them. The German states have reported some 409,000 new arrivals between Sept. 5 and Oct. 15 — more than ever before in a comparable time period — though it remains unclear how many of those include people who have been registered twice.
Thousands Still Sleeping in Tents
Six weeks after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s historic decision to open Germany’s borders, there is a shortage of basic supplies in many places in this prosperous nation. Cots, portable housing containers and chemical toilets are largely sold out. There is a shortage of German teachers, social workers and administrative judges. Authorities in many towns are worried about the approaching winter, because thousands of asylum-seekers are still sleeping in tents.
But what Germany lacks more than anything is a plan to make Merkel’s two most-pronounced statements on the crisis — “We can do it” and “We cannot close our borders” — fit together. In the second month of what has been dubbed the country’s brand new “Welcoming Culture,” it has become clear to many that Germany will only be able to cope if the number of refugees drops.
But that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Tens of thousands of people are making their way to Germany along the so-called Balkan route; at the same time, Merkel’s efforts to reduce the influx through diplomacy and tougher regulations remain just that. The European Union has agreed to better secure its external borders, but none of Germany’s neighboring states are willing to take any significant number of refugees off her hands. And Merkel’s forceful announcement that she would send asylum-seekers from Kosovo and Albania home more quickly is being hindered by a regulation that says refugees can avoid the authorities’ grasp simply by producing a medical certificate.
Merkel’s last hope is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president. The chancellor is visiting Ankara this weekend, bringing with her a number of gifts that Europe’s leaders had discussed in their summit in Brussels. The plan is to persuade Erdogan to strengthen the border in the Aegean Sea that “the strong nation of Germany” (as Merkel put it) is unable to.
HT: Theo Spark