What Hath Merkel Wrought?

In an important Frontpage.com article (via Maggie’s Farm) Stephen Brown explains that Angela Merkel bears full responsibility for Europe’s refugee crisis.

Brown quotes an Oxford Professor named Paul Collier who argues that Angela Merkel precipitated the wave of invading migrants by announcing to the world that Germany was open to receiving them. If Merkel had not invited them in, they would not have undertaken the dangerous journey to Germany.

They would have remained where they were. Good, humanitarian intentions have produced a humanitarian calamity and will almost certainly damage Western civilization.

You know the old adage: the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Unfortunately, when people have the best of intentions, when their hearts are in the right place, it is nearly impossible to persuade them that good intentions do not necessarily produce good policy and that good intentions can produce unwanted negative outcomes.

Brown writes:

Despite the negative effects this huge influx of people has had on the German economy and society, such as the mass sexual molestation and rape of hundreds of women last New Year’s Eve in Cologne, increased crime and concerns for personal safety among native Germans, supporters of Merkel’s action believe it was nevertheless justified by the humanitarian emergency and the need to save lives.

But in an exclusive and revealing interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, an internationally recognised migration and Third World expert, Paul Collier, author of the book Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World, convincingly debunks this myth. Collier, a former director of the World Bank who currently holds an economics professorship at Oxford University, believes Merkel’s open-doors decision “…did not save a single Syrian from death.”

“Despite best intentions, Germany has, instead, dead people on its conscience,” Collier told Die Welt. “Many people understood Merkel’s words as an invitation and only after that did they actually set out on the dangerous journey, sacrifice their savings and entrust their lives to dubious smugglers.”

Meant as a humanitarian gesture, Collier maintains Merkel’s announcement had the opposite effect in regard to migrants’ safety and well-being. The refugees, he said, were already in safe, third states, such as Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, and did not come to Germany directly from “war and crisis countries.” But it was this “invitation” that caused them to leave these relatively safe havens, where most lived in tolerable conditions, and risk their lives on the arduous trip to Germany.

“With her communication,” Collier said, “she (Merkel) made migrants out of refugees.”

If the migrants thought that they would find the Promised Land in Germany, they were mistaken. They found refugee camps, places where life has been cruel and brutal.

Brown explains:

And even if the migrants reach the Promised Land, the “affluence heaven” of Germany, their suffering often does not end there. In fact, for some, this may constitute the worst part of their ordeal. In the refugee asylums the Germans hastily erected, life can be very dangerous. As is now well known, violence between young men of different ethnic groups is rampant, and the police’s ability to control it is minimal. But even worse, it is the women and children in these cramped accommodations who are most often victims of sexual assault.

The migrant crisis must, of course, be distinguished from the problems Europe has been having for past willingness to open its doors to Muslim refugees from the Middle East and Africa.