Muslim Migrants in Germany

The problem of Muslim refugees in Germany is so bad that it has become impossible to ignore. Or perhaps, now that Angela Merkel has escaped political oblivion, it’s a good time to discuss it.

The New York Times account of the situation in the German city of Essen is compelling, fair and balanced. Naturally, it’s about food, in particular, about feeding the migrant population. After all, the German word Essen means: to eat.

Before looking at the story, I would note, and I would emphasize, that such stories never ask what the migrants are contributing to their host countries. Everyone seems to have accepted that the migrants cannot contribute anything. This makes them parasites, and it explains the chagrin of those German citizens whose labor is paying to feed them. I will not emphasize the fact that the migrants are all Muslim and that news stories always neglect this salient fact. You know this already.

Another part of the problem is that these migrants do not have any manners. It’s bad enough that they are bringing a crime wave to their host countries. As they overwhelm the resources of the local food bank, they do not even know how to queue up. As you know, queuing up is basic, one would say, essential to civilization, especially in places like Great Britain. People who refuse to queue up, to take their turn and to contribute fairly should not expect to be well treated.

The Times reports on the situation:

Jörg Sartor does not like to turn newcomers away from his food bank, especially single mothers like the young Syrian woman with her 5-year-old son who had waited outside since before dawn.

But rules are rules. And for the moment, it is Germans only.

“Come here,” said Mr. Sartor, waving the boy over. Mr. Sartor disappeared into a storage room and re-emerged with a wooden toy. Then the boy and his mother were shown the door, which for the past two weeks has had five letters scrawled across the outside: “Nazis.”

The decision of one food bank in the western city of Essen to stop signing up more foreigners after migrants gradually became the majority of its users has prompted a storm of reaction in Essen, a former coal town in Germany’s rust belt, and across the country. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel weighed in: “You shouldn’t categorize people like this.”

But the controversy has highlighted an uncomfortable reality: Three years after Germany welcomed more than a million refugees, much of the burden of integrating the newcomers has fallen on the poorest, whose neighborhoods have changed and who have to compete for subsidized apartments, school places and, in the case of the food bank, a free meal.

Ask any of the Germans lined up outside the former water tower that houses the food bank one recent morning and they will call Mr. Sartor a “people’s hero.”

“He stands up for us,” said Peggy Lohse, 36, a single mother of three.

Until recently, groups of young migrant men had sometimes elbowed their way to the front of the line, Ms. Lohse recalled. She went home empty-handed more than once. Some older women were so intimidated that they stopped coming altogether, she said.

It is hard to imagine that Frau Merkel is still incapable of accepting that she made a gigantic mistake, one that has seriously damaged her country. And yet, it’s true.

Many of the Essen migrants are Syrian. They have affected the character of the city:

Essen, a city of 600,000 people, has seen its Syrian community grow to nearly 11,000 from 1,300 in 2015, said Peter Renzel, who is in charge of social policy at City Hall. Most of them live in the working-class districts of the north.

And also:

The image of a line in which some wait their turn and others unfairly push to the front is a familiar one for Karlheinz Endruschat, a local Social Democrat, who represents the northern district of Altenessen.

Apartments have become scarcer. Schools report that nine out of 10 of their students are non-German. Some German residents feel alienated by the number of newcomers.

“There are times when you walk down the street and you are in the minority,” Mr. Endruschat said.

  

Until three years ago, roughly one in three food bank users were foreigners, he said. By last November, it was three in four.

For the record, the Social Democrats are the German version of our progressive parties.

Migrants notwithstanding, the German economy is forging ahead. It even has a budget surplus:

The nationwide head of the charity, Jochen Brühl, said the debate currently animating the country was largely missing the point. Germany is Europe’s richest country and has a budget surplus of more than 40 billion euros ($55 billion), he pointed out.

“The whole country is up in arms about this one little food bank in Essen,” he said, “when the real scandal is that in this rich country we have this kind of poverty.”

Apparently, the cure for poverty is government handouts.