Merkel’s Deadly Misstep
The dark and tragic details of what the German chancellor’s open-door “refugee” policy really caused.
February 4, 2016
Stephen Brown
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced last August that her government would allow unregistered refugees to come to Germany, she set off the biggest migrant wave since the Second World War.
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.”
And for some, the journey was deadly. Three-year-old Alan Kurdi was the most famous child/refugee death that occurred after Merkel’s “invitation.” Along with his mother and a sibling, he drowned trying the smuggler’s route of reaching Europe, travelling by boat with his family from the Turkish coast to a nearby Greek island. A picture of him lying dead on a Turkish beach where his little body washed up flashed around the world, generating deep concern and much sympathy for the migrants. One report stated his father had paid smugglers more than $5,000.
While there is no exact figure regarding how many unfortunates have lost their lives on the trek to and through Europe, drowning deaths have increased in recent months. It is believed more than
250 people perished last month alone trying to reach a Greek island. And many of those who drowned were also children like Kurdi. They obviously would be the least able to fend for themselves in an emergency.
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.
In his
Die Welt interview, Collier expressed a special interest in potential African migrants, especially the 100 million people living south of the equator. He cites a former World Bank economist, Serge Mikhailov, who holds that this region is “the next Afghanistan.” And it is this mass of humanity that could pose Europe’s next huge migrant crisis.
“The chaos in Africa is definitely increasing,” he said. “… above all, the situation in Mali and Niger is already very unstable. And then the German chancellor comes along and announces that Europe’s doors are open. Simply consider for a moment how that catches on with these people.”
When one speaks of Syrian refugees, Collier says this concerns 14 million. But hundreds of millions more living in poor countries “are setting out for the rich, western world."
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Merkel’s Deadly Misstep