Germany Opened Its Doors to Migrants. Now It's Struggling to Cope | Hacker News Reader

Germany Opened Its Doors to Migrants. Now It's Struggling to Cope

wsj.com

29 pointsimpish920829 comments

"In the U.S., migrants seeking asylum typically receive no federal aid, but they are permitted to work once they submit their applications. In Germany, they aren’t generally allowed to work until they are officially deemed refugees, which can take months or even years. But they are entitled to benefits worth as much as hundreds or thousands of euros a month..."

Obviously they may wish to reconsider that policy.

We have a similar issue in the UK. The government has refused to provide enough resources to process the backlog of asylum applications, so people are left in limbo being housed in hotels with no legal rights to work or anything. It costs way more than just processing their applications and allowing them to work, but the government are too scared of looking 'soft on immigration'. And these hotels are often in poor and disenfranchised communities, so people understandably ask "why are they getting hotels paid for by the government when we have such a lack of social housing?". It just creates more tension and doesn't help anyone.

It's also important to separate the different kinds of immigration. Refugees are a very different category from other migrants, because we have international obligations to grant them asylum in legitimate cases. So lumping them all under the banner of 'immigration' isn't really helpful.

One told me that he worked since age 8. Not being allowed to work put him in a completely alien position. On top he was now living from other people's money, like children, old people, handicapped or sick. He was enraged by it.

He kept repeating I've worked 7 days for 30 years, I don't know how to sit on a sofa the whole day. He was getting weak, lost appetite, couldn't sleep. Every day was supposed to be a challenge rewarded with food for your family and a warm bed.

He was 3 months into the process and was clearly going insane.

The real problem is that there are several contradicting ideas at play. You can help people but you do have to employ and tax them asap. If we can't do the work the conveyor belt must slow down. You can house people but you do still have to house everyone. You can't help people by giving them other people's houses. You can assimilate people but speed and quality decline at scale.

You can tax to death and shut down social gathering, clubs, pubs, restaurants and libraries to prevent people from organizing against your sinister agenda but your assimilation capacity will greatly suffer. You must choose one.

How many natives get angry should also play a big role. Angry people are poor assimilators.

There is also a national security angle. If foreign parties want to organize a civil war for you you don't have to make it incredibly cheap and easy. To much nationalism is an ugly thing but the opposite can end the country.

To be frank, being poor in Germany is 10 times better than being poor in the US.

We don’t want to live like in the US.

What a horrible bad faith article

> Germany, which has no history of mass immigration

Germany is historically THE mass immigration country - it’s in the middle of Europe between Asia and Africa - this is the no 1 reason why it’s so successful and relevant at all. Germany has profited from getting the cream of the crop in terms of immigrants for centuries.

Anyone who thinks this is not an immigration country never picked up a history book.

There is a curious way to address this in official immigration statistics: an arbitrary cut-off at the year 1950. Anyone who arrived before that year is not considered an immigrant: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoel...

(Note: The English version of that page is quite different.)

> it’s in the middle of Europe between Asia and Africa

I would say that's a bit of a stretch.

It is true Germany has a long history if immigration, but before modern times that was mostly from eastern and southern Europe, not from other continents [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Germany

Except for Turkey, the no. 1 source of immigration to Germany, which is very much in Asia.

> > before modern times that was mostly from eastern and southern Europe, not from other continent

> Except for Turkey

The mass immigration from Turkey started in the 1960s, well into the modern era. There are plenty of Germans still living today who remember the era when Turks were a rarity in Germany.

No doubt there were Turks who settled in Germany, or the countries which would become Germany, well before then, but the mass immigration is very much a modern thing.

Ah OK, I had a different definition of "modern times" in mind. But if we use that version, "before modern times" Germany (or its equivalent at the time) was generally a net exporter of emigration.

https://archive.is/qziSl

Germany didn't just open its own doors, it opened the door to the whole of the European Union. Shortly afterwards the brexit vote happened. Coincidence?

Brexit happened because the racists thought EU was stealing their money. in reality its the other way around. Has the illegal immigration into Britain stopped since Brexit?

Britain is better off with brexit than if it had stayed. People voted for brexit because they wanted to determine their (british) future and not be tied to the eu. Brexit was never delivered as promised because the vote was only given because they thought that it would fail. Immigration (economic migration) again is the fault of the government bowing down to the echr rules that it actually does not need to. Europe is the sinking titanic and the UK lifeboat needs to detatch itself or be dragged down with it.

Absolutely nonsensical, in what way do the way the vote was given impact the outcome?

Economists and analysts at Cambridge Econometrics found that, by 2035, the UK is anticipated to have three million fewer jobs, 32% lower investment, 5% lower exports and 16% lower imports, than it would have had been. The report states that the UK will be £311bn worse off by 2035 due to leaving EU. The UK is not better off with Brexit at all, it is severely hindered by removing itself out of a trading agreement with it's nearest partners. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit)

Britain is not apart from Europe, the continent. It has, and always will be, deeply connected. Leaving the EU didn't mean it got to sail away to a new place, it just meant no longer having a powerful seat at the table.

Effectively, Britains future is always tied to the EU, as the EUs is tied to Britain. If Europe has a big economic failure then it will drag the UK down regardless of politics. If Europe has a war the UK will not be unaffected. If Europe does well the UK will also do well. Removing yourselves from being part of the decision making for the area that you are part of, especially when you had a great deal of influence, was monumentally stupid.

That all said, I understand why the British people wanted to lash out at the establishment. The problem is that they've been (as have we all, in every country) been manipulated by those who do not have our best interests as a goal. The problems in the UK came from, and could have been solved by, the political and business leaders, regardless of EU membership. They just don't want to.

> Leaving the EU didn't mean it got to sail away to a new place, it just meant no longer having a powerful seat at the table.

Not necessarily: it could also mean that rather than being one voice among 28 in negotiations, they are now one voice against one (the EU as a whole). Potentially. More pessimistically, 3.6 trillion versus 19.4 (in terms of GDP). Or more pessimistically still, as you indicate, no voice versus one.

I think that the truth is somewhere between those options.

Its not what the people want its what the elites want. And the Elites want cheap labour which means immigration. The Elites (the ones who favoured Brexit) wanted Brexit because they could write their own rules regarding a lot of things; all to favour their class not the working class.

Immigration was a handy tool with which to entice the working class to vote for Brexit.

Immigration never stopped. It just switched from cheap Eastern European Labour to African and Middle Eastern cheap labour.

Once again the Working Class got duped. They voted for it.

the irony is that the immigration in UK increased after brexit. source: some random tweet I've seen.

Here’s a source with the bias that immigrants prefer Britain over the EU because Britain offers more incentives. And yet, needs more migrants:

> The population growth was driven entirely by net migration because more people died than were born in Britain for the first time in 50 years

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/immigration-fuel...

It's a coincidence. David Cameron promised the Brexit referendum in 2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Brexit And even that was a reaction to UKIP's growing popularity.

Furthermore, the United Kingdom has never been part of the Schengen area and was not immediately impacted anyway.

Germany welcomed people from war torn countries(Syria) not just to help them but also to grow economy. Its a good gesture other European countries should replicate it for better future.

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